Data Warehouse Definition

A data warehouse is a type of database that stores current and historical data from multiple sources in a centralized location. Data warehouses are used to support business intelligence (BI) activities, such as data analysis, reporting, and forecasting.

Data warehouses are subject-oriented, meaning they store data in a way that supports the information needs of specific business processes. For example, a data warehouse might contain information about product sales, customer orders, and financial transactions. This information would be organized in a way that makes it easy to answer questions about sales trends, customer behavior, and financial performance.

Data warehouses typically use a relational database management system (RDBMS) for storing data. However, newer warehouses may use alternative storage technologies, such as Hadoop or NoSQL databases.