Data Warehouses
Dramatic advances in data capture, processing power, data
transmission, and storage capabilities are enabling organizations to integrate
their various databases into data warehouses. Data warehousing is defined as a process of
centralized data management and retrieval. Data warehousing represents an ideal
vision of maintaining a central repository of all organizational data.
Centralization of data is needed to maximize user access and analysis. Dramatic
technological advances are making this vision a reality for many companies.
And, equally dramatic advances in data analysis software are allowing users to
access this data freely. The data analysis software is what supports data
mining.
Data
Data are any
facts, numbers, or text that can be processed by a computer. Today,
organizations are accumulating vast and growing amounts of data in different
formats and different databases. This includes:- operational or transactional data such as, sales,
cost, inventory, payroll, and accounting
- nonoperational data, such as industry sales,
forecast data, and macro economic data
- meta data - data about the data itself, such as
logical database design or data dictionary definitions
Information
The patterns,
associations, or relationships among all this data can provide information. For example,
analysis of retail point of sale transaction data can yield information on
which products are selling and when.
Knowledge
Information can be
converted into knowledge about historical patterns and future
trends. For example, summary information on retail supermarket sales can be
analyzed in light of promotional efforts to provide knowledge of consumer buying
behavior. Thus, a manufacturer or retailer could determine which items are most
susceptible to promotional efforts.
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