Data Warehouse Load Methods

A data warehouse is a warehouse that contains data. Sounds funny doesn't it? Imagine a warehouse as a storage structure that may be physical or logical. In the DW it's both...logical as in the data model representation and physical as to the hard disks and other computer equipment that support the data warehouse.

The first question should be "How does the data get there?" Here are three key areas to keep in mind....

Availability - will someone create a report with transactions completed 20 minutes ago or will it be with yesterday's data?