Access means several things. The managers and analysts of an organization must be able to connect to the data warehouse from their personal computers. This connection must be immediate, on demand, and with high performance. It is not acceptable if the access is through another person, or if the access is unreliable or slow. High performance access means the tiniest queries run in less than 1 second.
Access also means the tools available to the managers and analysts are very easy to use.
The data in a data warehouse is consistent . Consistency means that when two people request the sales for the Southeast region for January they get the same number, even if they request the data at different times. Consistency also means that if yesterday's data has not been completely loaded, the analyst is warned that the data load is not complete and to not expect the final data load until tomorrow. The data in a data warehouse can be separated and combined by means of every possible measure in the business. The slicing and dicing requirement speaks directly to the dimensional approach.