What is the difference between a data mart and a data warehouse?
A. Data marts are specialized databases designed to handle the reporting needs of a single department or single line-of-business application. A data warehouse is typically several data marts “rolled-up” into one giant database so reporting can be done enterprise-wide instead of on a departmental level. Warehouses are often expensive and time-consuming to build while marts can be built quickly and inexpensively. Typically, an organization will build a mart for their most important department first and later (if ever) build the warehouse.
