DATA WAREHOUSE - NEW DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

Competition on the global market, high complexity and dynamics of environment as well as internal complexity of firms demands effective management and efficient decision making process. Correct, prompt, aggregated and visually appealing information becomes an important resource for every level of decision making and management, and it depends mostly on capability and knowledge in the usage of modern information technology. Only information system based on modern information technology can provide data (information) needed for management of business processes. Operational databases (on-line transaction processing) store detailed data about every business process so they are large and not searchable in real time. Furthermore, operational databases cover only current data during short-time periods, which is not sufficient forhigh quality analysis and decision making support. If we want to explore longer time period, the problem of large databases becomes even more critical. In addition, a complexquery on such a large database would last for hours, and transaction processing would have been unacceptably slowed down. If we finally receive the result of the query, its visual form is usually not suited to final user needs, especially for higher levels of management. In most cases the query result is a two-dimensional report on dozens of pages, and is in fact selected data reprints from a database. The solution to this problem is a data warehouse – new generation of the decision support system. A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated and time variant collection of data in support of management’s decisions. It gives as a unique picture of business reality and is an aid to understanding global business systems. The data warehouse is the dimensional data model. Dimensional modeling gives usthe ability to visualize data and it is a new name for an old technique for making databases simple and understandable. The data warehouse is an informational processing and knowledge discoverer tool and it is a key factor of the effective management information system of the company.