Data Warehouse Federation
Problem – Multiple Data Warehouses Means Even More Data Silos
One of the main reasons enterprises implement data warehouses is to overcome the various transaction and analytic system silos typical in most large enterprise and government agencies today. However, for a number of often pragmatic reasons, the single “enterprise” data warehouse remains elusive. Instead, for these same reasons, multiple data warehouses and data marts have been developed and deployed, in effect perpetuating rather than overcoming the data silo issue.
Optimizing business performance requires data from across these various warehouses and marts. But physically combining multiple marts and warehouses into a singular and complete enterprise-wide data warehouse is often too costly and time consuming.
Solution – Use Data Virtualization to Federate Multiple Data Warehouses
You can use Composite data virtualization to federate multiple physical warehouses, for example to combine data from the sales and financial warehouses or to combine two sales data warehouses after a merger. This approach achieves logical consolidation of warehouses by creating an integrated view across them, using abstraction to rationalize the different schema designs.
In the figure below, the Composite Information Server hosts federated warehouse views that logically integrate both data warehouses.
Use Data Virtualization to Federate Multiple Data Warehouses or Marts
Selected Examples
- Federating Financial Trading Data Warehouses – To enable more flexible customer self-service reporting and meet SEC compliance reporting mandates, this prime brokerage uses Composite data virtualization to federate equity, fixed income, and other investment positions and trades information from siloed trading data warehouses. The net result is higher customer satisfaction and lower reporting costs.
- Federating Research and Development Data Warehouses – To enable research scientists to access and analyze data from research, clinical trial, FDA submission, and other data warehouses, this pharmaceutical company uses Composite data virtualization to federate these diverse warehouse sources. Scientists use this federated data to accelerate time to market for new compounds and drugs, thereby increasing revenues.
