What is a Data Warehouse?
A data warehouse is a central environment for collecting and managing data from multiple sources, turning raw information into structured, business-ready insights. It combines technologies, processes and standards that make data easy to organise, query and analyse. In practice, it is the layer that transforms large volumes of transactional data into something meaningful, accessible and actionable for decision-makers across the organisation.
Tech Start Consulting has many years of experience delivering data warehouse development services and solutions. Over that time, we’ve built a strong reputation for helping organisations design and implement reliable, scalable and insight-driven data platforms.
Different Names for Data Warehouses
In traditional 3NF transactional databases, such as those used in stock or inventory systems, a single report might need to join a dozen or more related tables. This can quickly lead to slow queries and poor reporting performance. A data warehouse is designed to avoid these issues by restructuring and optimising data specifically for analysis and reporting.
You may also see data warehousing platforms referred to as:
- - Decision Support Systems (DSS)
- - Management Information Systems (MIS)
- - Executive Information Systems (EIS)
- - Business Intelligence (BI) Solutions
- - Analytic Applications
- - Data Warehouses
A data warehouse acts as a central repository where information from one or more operational systems is consolidated. Raw data flows in from transactional systems, line-of-business applications and other databases, and is then transformed and modelled so that it can be accessed quickly and consistently by business users.
Using our business intelligence tools, SQL clients and reports, users can work with this prepared data directly from the warehouse. Our data warehouse development services in the UK focus on blending data from disparate sources into a single, coherent and trustworthy data platform.
Enterprise Data Warehouses
An Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) is a centralised, organisation-wide data platform. It provides a single, governed source of truth to support reporting and analytics across all departments. An EDW allows data to be organised by subject area (for example, sales, finance, operations) while still remaining connected, giving users a consistent view of performance and trends regardless of their role.
Operational Data Stores
An Operational Data Store (ODS) is a complementary data layer used when neither a pure transactional system nor a full data warehouse can meet day-to-day needs on its own. In an ODS, data is refreshed frequently (often in near real-time), making it ideal for operational reporting and routine activities such as tracking customer interactions or employee records.
Data Marts
A data mart is a smaller, subject-focused subset of a data warehouse, created for a specific business area such as sales, marketing or finance. Data marts allow teams to access the information most relevant to them without having to work directly with the entire enterprise warehouse. In some cases, standalone data marts can also be built by sourcing data directly from operational systems.