| You probably heard about datawarehouses & | | | | Product_code: Shoes A Code_Branch: South ...". This |
| analysis tools in the past in database related | | | | is not meaningful for a report containing information, not |
| discussions or in job meetings. | | | | only raw data that can not answer complex business |
| The fact is that everyday more and more companies | | | | questions which would allow us to make a manager |
| are starting to think (and build) data warehouses or | | | | decision. |
| other data analysis and statistical tools. | | | | These and a few other points are the key reasons to |
| It is no more a large-companies-only matter; today with | | | | build a datawarehouse to do analysis. |
| the right knowledge and expertise (or a little education) | | | | So how I move or copy the data from my everyday |
| small companies can also make analysis and get | | | | transactional database to my datawarehouse? |
| valuable information to boost sales or revenues. | | | | Here is where ETL comes to play. |
| So what is a datawarehouse? | | | | ETL is the process for Extracting, Transforming and |
| In simple words, a Datawarehouse is a common | | | | Loading data from one database to another. |
| repository (a database, for simplicity) of information | | | | There are several ways for doing this, from coding |
| about a company's activities and operations. | | | | your own processes to the more often used way of |
| This means, all your company's transactions such as | | | | implementing ETL tools. |
| sales, payments or acquisitions end up in the data | | | | These ETL tools can do the job very well, and if |
| warehouse. | | | | chosen wisely can save you a lot of coding efforts |
| This "database" is a technical product or platform that | | | | and money, since you can graphically build processes |
| allows us to "ask" real life business questions such as | | | | and in most cases without knowing how to program |
| "which branch sold more products this month?" or | | | | for databases. |
| "who is my top performing salesman?" | | | | There are a lot of ETL tools in the market right now. |
| You may be thinking "I currently HAVE a database | | | | As and advice, I suggest you to invest some research |
| which records sales/transactions/movements of my | | | | time (and testing if possible) before choosing the one |
| company everyday". | | | | that suits your company's needs. |
| Yes, of course you have one of those. But that is a | | | | They can range from open source free tools to high |
| transactional database. This means that this database | | | | price commercial tools. Neither of them is perfect in |
| is heavily used everyday to store our company's | | | | every situation, and you will have to take into account |
| operations, and because of this we cannot use it for | | | | your data volumes, the analysis and answers you |
| analysis. | | | | want from your datawarehouse, and the periodicity |
| Also, this database holds data, not information. | | | | needed of those answers, among other aspects. |
| A typical example for a record would be "Qty:1 | | | | |