A data warehouse aims to provide a simplfied manner in which business data can be obtained and utilised...
Across your data estate there are hundreds, if not thousands of tables containing complex and often apparently unrelated data.
Extracting any insightful information from this data requires extensive knowledge, or time, from your IT department or business users, which would be better spent making decisions based on data and not looking for it.
The data warehouse, therefore aims to provide a quantified single point of access for all of your business data, with key metrics and values all linked together and in the required format - Ensuring that apples will always be apples!
The data is then exposed to the business and forming the repository from which you business insights are obtained via whichever front end interrogation tool you wish to use.
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A data lake is a very different proposition than a data warehouse and it is often not understood what the differences, or simularities, are...
Both are data repositories, where a source of business data can reside, however where a data warehouse is a sanitised and quantified amalgamation of your source systems and facts, a data lake is a less structured pool of raw unadulterated data...
The data lake solution is usually employed as an all-encompassing data store, but would not be formatted and quantified in the way a data warehouse is, so its use would not be subject to the same levels of governance and simplification that are inherent in a warehouse model and will typically be something that is not deployed for self service use, more as an admin tool.
As the data lake does not carry out any transformation on the contained data, just consolidation into a single source, its core advantage is that the data held within it will remain ‘pure’.
At Ceredata, we see the data warehouse as a vital solution within information delivery, as the data warehouse provides a single source of information to be utilised across the business, bringing a more structured approach to reporting, true self service in obtaining data and true governance to both data access and structure.
We also understand the value that data lakes can add to large scale data sets, to provide a pool of information from which your business intelligence administrators can utilise. The decision comes down to your business’ specific needs, but we are more than happy to assist in helping you make the decision to drive your BI project forward.
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