We build data marts by the dozens. In some lucky organizations we build enterprise data warehouses, and that helps - providing someone can get the builders of the data marts to link them to the data warehouse. But what they are, exactly, is something about which hardly anyone can agree. Most of us don't really have the foggiest idea. In our major enterprises, we have outgrown the data in- frastructure.
Data warehousing is one important and valuable form of data integration.
But as implemented, for the most part, it is focused on historical, static data for query and analysis. E-commerce and other changes have brought us into a new era, the era in which we need data integration across the enterprise. Any vendor that can provide a scalable solution to the enterprise data-integration problem is sure to become part of the database dozen in years ahead.