Administering and Managing a Data Warehouse

As internal and external demands on information from managers are increasing rapidly, especially the information that is processed to serve managers’ specific needs, regular databases and decision support systems (DSS) cannot provide the information needed. Data warehouses came into existence to meet these needs, consolidating and integrating information from many internal and external sources and arranging it in a meaningful format for making accurate business decisions (Martin, 1997). In the past five years, there has been a significant growth in data warehousing (Hoffer, Prescott, & McFadden, 2005). Correspondingly, this occurrence has brought up the issue of data warehouse administration and management. Data warehousing has been increasingly recognized as an effective tool for organizations to transform data into useful information for strategic decision-making. To achieve competitive advantages via data warehousing, data warehouse management is crucial (Ma, Chou, & Yen, 2000).