June 8, 2009
The future of data marts by DBMS2
Greenplum is announcing today a long-term vision, under the name Enterprise Data Cloud (EDC). Key observations around the concept — mixing mine and Greenplum’s together — include:
• Data marts aren’t just for performance (or price/performance). They also exist to give individual analysts or small teams control of their analytic destiny.
• Thus, it would be really cool if business users could have their own analytic “sandboxes” — virtual or physical analytic databases that they can manipulate without breaking anything else.
• In any case, business users want to analyze data when they want to analyze it. It is often unwise to ask business users to postpone analysis until after an enterprise data model can be extended to fully incorporate the new data they want to look at.
• Whether or not you agree with that, it’s an empirical fact that enterprises have many legacy data marts (or even, especially due to M&A, multiple legacy data warehouses). Similarly, it’s an empirical fact that many business users have the clout to order up new data marts as well.
• Consolidating data marts onto one common technological platform has important benefits.

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