Data Warehouse Development and Management: Practices of Some Large Companies

While data warehousing (DW) has emerged as a key component of many organizations' information systems, few studies have assessed companies' DW practices. This research examines a range of DW development and management issues. Data collected from more than two dozen large companies suggest that the DW concept has been implemented quite differently across enterprises, and that DW practices are still at an early stage of development. The results are also compared across two different DW architecture types, the hub & spoke and federated data mart approaches. This analysis suggests that the choice of architecture appears to have an important effect on a number of DW development and management measures. The results of this study should be useful to companies looking to initiate or expand their DW operations and to researchers in understanding the current scope and operations of companies' data warehousing efforts.