Data Warehouse
A relational database that is designed for query and analysis rather than transaction processing. Data warehouses:
- Are often subjected to a heavy load of periodic and ad hoc queries.
- Contain historical information that enables analysis of correlations and trends over long periods of time.
- Integrate data from various production (transactional) databases. Extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) software converts the data to a common format and copies it into a data warehouse at regular intervals.
- Typically consist of one or more star or snowflake schemas.