Summary

This chapter provides a brief introduction into the world of data warehousing. It details the six steps to creating a data warehouse. These steps include documenting the existing environment, choosing the proper data warehousing technologies, designing the data warehouse model, developing the extraction and scrubbing routines, building the metadata repository, and creating multidimensional cubes.

The chapter also explains data marts, executive information systems, and data mining. Understanding how all the pieces fit together hopefully will help you create rock-solid data warehouses. Be sure to read Chapter 33, “Working with Very Large Databases,” for additional information on Oracle features that can be used in a data warehouse.