Decision Support Databases Essentials

In our information-based society one of the most important applications for computers is information storage and management with a DBMS to support organizations both in performing the business and in bringing the business to the Web to allow new routes to market. It is also well known that information overload is a huge challenge for businesses, but it is also an enormous opportunity in making smarter decisions based mainly on data analysis to improve productivity. Consequently, starting from the 1990s another important application of information storage and management to support organiza- tions is analyzing the business with data-driven Decision Support Systems designed for summarizing large amounts of data into a form that is useful and easily interpretable to help managers to analyze the performance of key business processes, wor- thy of improvement. Decision support applications involve quite complex analysis which cannot be efficiently executed against operational databases, optimized for online transaction processing. For this reason, organizations maintain a separate database, called a data warehouse, which is specifically organized for such complex analysis. The term data warehouse is a metaphor: a warehouse is a large structure where things are stored and organized for easy accessibility. However, a data warehouse is not only a large repository for historical data extracted from operational systems, but is organized to create the right models for measurable key business processes, to support informed decisions about how to improve them.