Datasheet

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Part I: The Data Warehouse: Home for Your Data Assets
The key concept in this definition is that a data warehouse breaks down
the barriers created by non-enterprise, process-focused applications and
consolidates information into a single view for users to access.
A Brief History of Data Warehousing
Many people, when they first hear the basic principles of data warehousing —
particularly copying data from one place to another — think (or even say),
“That doesn’t make any sense! Why waste time copying and moving data, and
storing it in a different database? Why not just get it directly from its original
location when someone needs it?”
To better understand the “why we do what we do” aspect of data warehous-
ing, I outline its historical roots — how data warehousing became what it is
today — in the following sections.
Before our time — the foundation
The evolution of data warehousing can trace its roots to work done prior to
computers being widely available, including
✓ The continuous marketing research conducted by Charles Coolidge
Parlin (1872–1942). Parlin is now recognized as the Father of Marketing
Research. He did marketing research for the Curtis Publishing Company
to gather information about customers and markets to help Curtis sell
more advertising in their magazine, The Saturday Evening Post.
✓ In 1923, Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr., established ACNielsen in the United
States. Arthur C. Nielsen was one of the founders of the modern
marketing research industry. Among many innovations in consumer-
focused marketing and media research, Mr. Nielsen created a unique
retail-measurement technique that gave clients the first reliable,
objective information about competitive performance and the impact of
their marketing and sales programs on revenues and profits. Nielsen
information gave practical meaning to the concept of market share and
made it one of the critical measures of corporate performance.
These two events in history led to what we now know as data warehousing
because each of them required high-quality data to formulate trends and
enable business users to make decisions.
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