Updated April 14, 2023
Overview Data Warehouse Tools
In computing, a data warehouse system does data analysis and reporting. Also known as an enterprise data warehouse, this system combines methodologies, a user management system, a data manipulation system, and technologies for generating insights about the company. The data warehouse stores current and historical data as repositories of data from multiple sources. They are then used to create analytical reports that can either be annual or quarterly.
Companies then use these reports to make detailed sales analyses and marketing campaigns that can effectively take them to the next growth stage. Before the use of data in data warehouse reporting, it may also be used for operational data storage. Many big companies use separate warehouses to collect and maintain data effectively.
How did the Data Warehouse Originate?
Data warehousing dates back to the late 1980s when Barry Devlin and Paul Murphy from IBM developed a business data warehouse. They developed it to provide an architectural model for data flow, specifically from operational systems to decision support environments. By addressing problems related to the flow, it tried to support multiple domains effectively. Thus by introducing the concept of a data warehouse, Bill and Ralph were considered the pioneers of the data warehouse. No one conducted data storage and synchronization before the data warehouse concept. Post the development of business data warehouses, it has come a long way and is today an integral part of companies and economies worldwide.
Features of Data Warehousing
Some essential features are:
It Provides Companies with Comprehensive Decision-making Support
As the core components of any company involve making plans and developing methodologies and techniques to achieve organizational goals, a data warehouse can support great support to help them in doing this. Proper compilation and conceptualization can go a long way in assisting companies with strategies and creating long-term plans.
It Helps in Subject Orientation
An essential feature of this is that it orients towards the subject. As numerous sources gather data, it helps companies to use specific data that applies to their field. It helps a company gain insight into how to properly use data to benefit every company’s sectors. In addition, assisting companies in handling specific areas like management or IT can help them grow strategically and comprehensively.
It Helps to Integrate Data
After data complies from different sources, it allows for data integration. It means that data is dynamic and applicable to various departments. Therefore, data integration is one of the essential features of the data warehouse.
It Allows for Flexibility in Time
As data is stored strategically, data has a specific time duration. It makes it easier for companies to access data for a particular period. The data warehouse is always better to have data structured in a time-specific manner because it can help companies to find loopholes in management and overall functioning on the one hand and make an effective comparison on the other hand.
It Keeps Data Safe and Secure
Before the development of the data warehouse, secondary storage was considered the best way to save data. However, data warehouse supports integration, cohesiveness, and multi-application of data, making them a more suitable choice. It is because it helps to preserve data for future use as well. Moreover, as data in a warehouse is secure, it is one of the effective methods to store data for future use.
It Allows Companies to Store Large Volumes of Data
Today the data available to companies is almost limitless. And data warehouse is more than capable of meeting this challenge as the warehouse size can be increased depending on the data. In addition, different organizations have different amounts of data they want to save for future use. Hence, a data warehouse is one perfect way to meet that requirement effectively.
It is Accurate and Grounded
Data in a data warehouse is accurate and grounded, containing all techniques and theories. Many companies depend on data insights to make future decisions, which is a significant feature. If data is incorrect, it can affect the company’s-company’s progress and growth. As many technologies protect data in the warehouse, companies feel secure that their data is effective, discrete, and multi-dimensional.
It is the Future of All Companies, be they Big or Small
Since its official introduction in 2002, it has steadily grown in popularity and has become an integral part of many companies and brands. As many companies use a data warehouse to preserve and gain insights about data, there are many advancements in this field by engineers that are making data warehouses more progressive and advanced. A data warehouse is one of the most effective techniques to save significant amounts of dynamic data; a data warehouse is something that all companies must consider to reach the next stage of growth and development.
Note: Become a Data Scientist
What are Some of the Popular Data Warehouse Tools Available?
Therefore, every company must look at these tools going into the future. Here are some of the most popular data warehouse tools to help your company meet its growing and comprehensive needs.
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Ab Initio Software
Developed by Ab Initio Software, the products produced by this company are aimed at helping companies to perform functions related to fourth-generation data analysis, batch processing, data manipulation, and graphical user interface (GUI) based parallel processing software. (GUI-based software extracts, transforms, and loads data.) Ab Initio Software, a 20-year-old company, specializes in producing high-volume data processing applications, giving them considerable expertise in this field. Some of the products manufactured by the company include Graphical Development Environment, Co-operating System, and Enterprise Meta, among others. Further, the company also introduced a free feature-limited version known as Elementum in 2010, though it was only available to customers with a commercial license.
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Amazon Redshift
Another hosted data warehouse product, Amazon Redshift, is a part of Amazon Web Services, a large cloud computing platform. Based on technology from the massive parallel processing, Redshift differs from other databases offered by Amazon. It is because Amazon Redshift can handle analytics workloads of large quantities. To handle such massive data, the company uses massively parallel processing. Amazon Redshift partners that provide data integration tools include Alooma, Attunity, FlyData, Informatics, SnapLogic, Talend, and Xplenty.
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AnalytiX DS
A software vendor, AnalytiX DS provides specialized data mapping and tools for data integration, data management, enterprise application integration, and robust data software and services. With its main office in Virginia, the company has offices in Asia and North America with an international team of service partners and technical assistants. The founder of AnalytixX DS, Mike Boggs, was responsible for coining the term pre-ETL Mapping. Further, the company launched AnalytiX Mapping Manager, a premier tool capable of automating pre_ETL source to the target mapping process. With an investment of 50-100 crore, AnalytiX Ds might soon open a new development center in Bangalore in the coming years.
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CodeFutures
Founded in 2001 by Andy Grove, CodeFutures is in the United States. This company’s leading software is DB Shard, a NewSQL platform based on database sharing. What sets this apart from other SQL products is that DB shard provides scalability to companies and can combine with traditional database platforms like MySQL and PostgreSQL. As a result, companies will not have to replace their existing database engine, but DB shards can integrate with them.
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DATAllegro
Another database warehouse tool, DATAllegro, provides companies with appliances that perform various data warehouse functions. Founded by Stuart Frost in 2003, it was a direct competition to the data warehouse appliance created by Netezza. While Netezza used commodity PowerPC chips, DATAllegro was implemented on the commodity hardware. These included hardware on systems like Dell, CISCO, and EMC Corp. However, like Netezza, DATAllegro also used open source software stack. In 2008, Microsoft acquired the company, and the SQL Server Data Warehouse is a successor to DATAllegro, which uses a version of the SQL server database engine.
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Holistic Data Management
A framework that is AHISDATA, holistic data management implements software within a company network. The framework can perform various functions, including data governance, quality, integration, and master data management. Some Holistic Data management specifications are: 1. All data objects in the warehouse must be a child data object or a parent data object 2. The data network scope must have only one parent data object Data mapping link must be present within all child data objects 4. In the data management modules, there must exist at least one data object relationship.
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Informatica Corporation
A software development company, Informatics, was founded in 1993 in California. A product portfolio focuses on data integration, cloud data integration, B2B data exchange, ETL, Information lifecycle management, data replication, data virtualization, complex event processing, and other functions. Together, these components provide data warehouse facilities to companies across sectors. The Informatics Power Center has three main parts: Informatica Power Center client tools (installed at the developer end) and Informatics Power Center repository (where all the metadata for an application is stored.) Informatica Power center server (where all the data executions occur.) With a customer base of over 5000 companies, Informatics has also launched Informatica Marketplace to allow the company to stop sharing and leverage data integration solutions. With many features, this tool has over 1300 pre-built mapping, templates, and connectors to help companies effectively manage and empower their data.
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ParAccel
A California-based software company, ParAccel, provides a database management system for companies and organizations across all sectors. The company was acquired in 2013 by Actian. Two of the products offered by ParAccel are Amigo and Maverick. Amigo speeds up the process of queries generally directed toward the existing data warehouse. Maverick is a stand-alone data store for companies. ParAccel scrapped Amigo in favor of Maverick, which later evolved into the ParAccel Analytic Database. A parallel relational database system, the ParAccel Analytical Database uses a shared-nothing architecture with columnar orientation and memory-centric design to provide data analysis comprehensively. In addition, ParAccel also offers built-in analytic functions like standard deviation and two-shelf Analytics packages called Base Package and Advanced Package.
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Teradata Corporation
A publicly held international company headquartered in Ohio, Teradata offers analytic data platforms and related services to different companies. The analytical products of Teradata are supposed to help companies to consolidate data from numerous sources and help them infer unique and essential insights from them. It has two divisions: data analytics and marketing applications, which look after data analytics platforms and marketing software. Teradata allows companies to recall and analyze data simply and effectively by providing a parallel processing system. One of the essential features of this data warehouse application is that it segregates data into hot and cold, whereas the use of cold data is not frequent. Further, Teradata is considered one of the most popular database warehouse applications.
Scriptella: An open-source ETL and script execution tool, Scriptella is written in Java. It allows using SQL or another scripting language for the data source. However, it does not offer any graphical user interface. In addition, Scriptella works on database migration, creation/update scripts, cross-database ETL operations, and import/export, among other functions.
Overall the number of database warehouse tools available to companies is many. That is why companies must access their requirements and determine which data warehouse tool can effectively help them grow and empower their growth story strategically and successfully.
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