Data Warehouse Performance

A data warehouse is a large electronic repository of information that is generated and updated in a structured manner by an enterprise over time to aid business intelligence and to support decision making. Data stored in a data warehouse is non-volatile and time variant and is organized by subjects in a manner to support decision making (Inmon, Rudin, Buss, & Sousa, 1998). Data warehousing has been increasingly adopted by enterprises as the backbone technology for business intelligence reporting and query performance has become the key to the successful implementation of data warehouses. According to a survey of 358 businesses on reporting and end-user query tools, conducted by Appfluent Technology, data warehouse performance significantly affects the Return on Investment (ROI) on Business Intelligence (BI) systems and directly impacts the bottom line of the systems (Appfluent Technology, 2002). Even though in some circumstances it is very difficult to measure the benefits of BI projects in terms of ROI or dollar figures, management teams are still eager to have a “single version of the truth,” better information for strategic and tactical decision making, and more efficient business processes by using BI solutions (Eckerson, 2003).