Data warehouses support business decisions by collecting, consolidating, and organizing data for reporting and analysis with tools such as online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining. Although data warehouses are built on relational database technology, the design of a data warehouse database differs substantially from the design of an online transaction processing system (OLTP) database. The topics in this chapter address approaches and choices to be considered when designing and implementing a data warehouse. The chapter begins by contrasting data warehouse databases with OLTP databases and introducing OLAP and data mining, and then adds information about design issues to be considered when developing a data warehouse with Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000.
