By Stephen Swoyer – TDWI
Is building an enterprise data warehouse (EDW) the best path to business intelligence (BI)? It’s a perennially vexing question that — thanks to a couple of recent trends in BI and data warehousing (DW) — has taken on new life. The value of the full-fledged EDW seems unassailable. Over the last half-decade, however, some of the biggest EDW champions have moderated their stances, such that they now both countenance the existence of alternatives and, under certain very special conditions, are even willing to admit they’re useful. The result is that although the EDW is still seen as the Holy Grail of data warehousing, departmental (and even enterprise) data marts are now countenanced as well.
