Data Warehousing has been the buzzword for the past two or three decades and big data is the new trend in technology. A question that often arises in our mind is, “Are they similar and will Big Data replace a Data Warehouse”, the reason being, both have similarities like holding data, used for reporting purposes and managed by electronic storage devices. There is an underlying difference between the two, namely; Big Data Solution is a technology whereas Data Warehousing is an architectural concept in data computing.
An organization can have different combinations such as Big Data or Data warehouse solution only or Big Data and Data Warehouse solutions based on the four consideration factors such as: Data Structure, Data Volume, Unstructured Data, Schema-on-Read.
This blog post tries to bring out the similarities and differences between the two and illustrates with a use case Use Case example.
What is a Data Warehouse?
Data Warehouse is a conceptual architecture that helps to store structured, subject-oriented, time variant, non-volatile data for decision making. Data Warehouse typically stores the historical data, a copy of transaction data specifically structured for query and analysis. The physical data consolidation has been shifting to a more logical one which accommodates real time data as well. Data from the sources are transformed (cleansed, applying business rules, enhanced) and analysis is done in ETL/ELT phase to load into a structured form (Can be relational, dimensional, hybrid etc…).
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