A practical guide for implementing data warehousing

Data warehousing is a method by which an organization stores its data so that the information contained in that data can be ascertained, accessed and analyzed more quickly and efficiently than would be possible when using a conventional architecture. Multidimensional databases (MDD) provide an efficient means to analytical processing, but the cost is prohibitive for many small and mid-sized organizations. This paper addresses the need for an inexpensive solution to an information management problem that can be solved by database application developers using conventional tools. A relational database management system (RDBMS) can be used to emulate a MDD and still maintain an acceptable performance level in a client server environment.