The ins and outs (and everything in between) of data warehousing

Data warehousing is the latest “hot topic” in the industry. With market projections of $8 billion by the year 2000, vendors of all flavors are claiming the suitability and superiority of their products for this market segment. This has led to a great deal of confusion, with terms such as OLAP, ROLAP, MDDB, decision support systems (DSS) and data warehousing being defined, re-defined, and sometimes even used interchangeably.