What is a Data Warehouse? A Business Perspective

You are in charge of a retailer’s data infrastructure. Let’s look at some business activities.

• Customers should be able to find goods & make orders
• Inventory Staff should be able to stock, retrieve, and re-order goods
• Delivery Staff should be able to pick up & deliver goods
• HR should be able to assess the performance of sales staff
• Marketing should be able to see the effect of different sales channels
• Management should be able to monitor sales growth

Ask yourself: Can I build a database to support these activities? Are all of the above questions of the same nature?
Let's take a closer look at details that may affect your data infrastructure.

• Retailer has a nation-wide presence → Scale?
• Acquired smaller retailers, brick & mortar shops, online store → Single database? Complexity?
• Has support call center & social media accounts → Tabular data?
• Customers, Inventory Staff and Delivery staff expect the system to be fast & stable → Performance
• HR, Marketing & Sales Reports want a lot information but have not decided yet on everything they need → Clear Requirements?

Ok, maybe one single relational database won’t suffice :)