It's no longer good enough to gather data about products and customers in a relational database, however. Today, enterprises want that information to tell a story. To make it possible, many organizations are turning to data warehousing - a combination of hardware and specialized software that organizes and stores data in a way that makes retrieval and analysis easier. The goal is improved business decision making. Mass. Companies reengineering their business often look at ways information flows through the organization.
Data warehousing is on the rise.
Figures from the Data Warehousing Institute in Bethesda, Md., show 90 percent of companies are setting up data warehouses this year, up from 33 percent in 1994. The growth of multidimensional databases. The willingness of users to clean up their bad data. The teaming up of online transaction processing and data warehousing. Experts say the Internet will make access to data warehouses much more prevalent among business users because analytical tools no longer have to be installed at every desktop.