Standard reporting solutions rarely satisfy Information Surfers who normally require true interactive desktop OLAP and powerful ad hoc access and analysis tools. Information Planners will constantly test, validate, tune, and observe the data warehouse. Centralized deployment and automatic use of metadata are essential if you wish to reduce the burden of maintenance for this group. The best data warehouse architecture leverages the relative advantages of desktop clients and database servers. Your database server may have a lot of disk capacity or storage space, but not a lot of memory relative to the number of users accessing it.
Clients have limited disk capacity but lots of available memory.
Bearing in mind the fact that server delays inevitably frustrate users, it's clear that the optimal model performs sorting, selecting, and aggregating data on the server, leaving the memory and processor intensive analysis for the client. Organize and structure the database with a star-schema that your users can understand. This is how you monitor the acceptance and usage of your data warehouse, and it gives you the opportunity to correct problems before they become apparent to your users. One of the most easily overlooked tasks of the data warehouse project is, ironically, also one of the most important-the selection of end user tools. If I could leave you with only one thought from this booklet it would be the importance of choosing a product that meets the needs of your end users.