What are Data Warehouses?

The definition of a Data Warehouse varies depending on who you talk to. However, a general consensus exists that the purpose of a Data Warehouse is to provide end users with easy access to large amounts of company data to assist with operational and strategic business issues.

Why is Building a Data Warehouse Complex?

When building an infrastructure to support a Data Warehouse, you must address the usual issues relating to management of client/server systems, as well as additional, complex issues relating to the special problems that Data Warehouses present. These special problems include transporting large data volumes to target sites, applying data to multiple, heterogeneous databases, and refreshing data as it changes. It's also important to provide system users with tools they can use to easily mine and work with data, even if the user does not know any programming language.

Tell Me About the Infrastructure that I Need

The infrastructure to support a Data Warehouse should ensure that the desired data is transported to the correct target site in an efficient, rapid, and cost-effective way. It should allow Data Warehouse applications to run complex data mining queries in the same environment as other client/server applications - without affecting overall performance.

Expert capacity planning and performance tuning are therefore essential to successfully implementing a comprehensive Data Warehousing solution. In addition, security issues need to be addressed, to ensure that only authorized users will have access to all of the data you will be moving around the system.

Most important - the Data Warehouse Infrastructure should be based on business, rather than technical, requirements! Remember the purpose of Data Warehouses to begin with!

Can I Use Off-the-Shelf Products?

Yes. Many product vendors supply tools that you can use to build and mine Data Warehouses. You will want to select the best of those, and seamlessly integrate them into your own Data Warehouse infrastructure. However, you will find that there is no such thing as a Data Warehouse in a box. The best way to design and build a Data Warehouse and data mining applications for your company depends heavily on your needs and environment.

How can Unif/x Help Build Data Warehouses?

UNIF/X are your independent database experts. We have Partnerships with and Professional Certification from virtually all of the leading vendors of database systems today - including Sybase, Oracle, Informix, CA-Ingres, and Microsoft. In addition, we are partners with hardware vendors including Sun, IBM, HP and DEC.

UNIF/X works with the technologies and tools developed by these, and other leading product vendors, using our extensive expertise building database systems. Our expertise in related fields includes:

		Database System Development Investment
		Database Architecture and Design
		Database System Connectivity
		Data Replication, Fault Tolerant, and High Availability Software

 
What Services Does Unif/x Provide?

UNIF/X can build your entire Data Warehouse and Data Mining Applications for you. We also provide high-level consulting to help you:

		Perform Capacity Planning and Design a Data Warehouse
		Infrastructure to exactly match your needs and environment
		Conduct Performance Tuning and Optimization
		Build the Data Warehouse
		Develop Data Mining Applications
		Select and integrate best-of-breed tools and products into your Data Warehouse Infrastructure

 
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