What is a Data mart?
A data mart is a collection of subject areas organized for decision support based on the needs of a given department. Finance has their data mart, marketing has theirs, sales has theirs and so on. And the data mart for marketing only faintly resembles anyone else’s data mart. Perhaps most importantly, the individual departments OWN the hardware, software, data and programs that constitute the data mart. The rights of ownership allow the departments to bypass any means of control or discipline that might coordinate the data found in the different departments. Each department has its own interpretation of what a data mart should look like and each department’s data mart is peculiar to and specific to its own needs. Typically, the database design for a data mart is built around a star-join structure that is optimal for the needs of the users found in the department. In order to shape the star join, the requirements of the users for the department must be gathered. The data mart contains o
A data mart is a collection of subject or department specific data that has been extracted, transformed, restructured and loaded into an external data repository. The data is usually aggregated and summarized. The environment is stable and typically used to make strategic decisions. A farm of data marts can be used instead of a data warehouse. With the data transformed and restructured, the end user can easily access the information using a variety of desktop decision support tools. Decision support staff can concentrate on analyzing information instead of determining how to access the data. Data marts put the right information into the hands of the decision makers when they need it. MB Foster delivers data marts for Escalate Retail on HP 3000 and other platforms, Amisys HP 3000 and Amisys Advanced, ManMan HP 3000 and Custom applications.
