CST(42)-Production versus Informational Databases

We need to understand the differences to get some better insights into what data warehousing can do for information hounds. The key point of difference is that decision-support data needs to be stable at a snapshot in time for reporting purposes. Production databases reflect the up-to-the-minute state of the business in real time. Information hounds typically don’t want the data changed so frequently that they couldn’t get the same answer twice in a row. So informational copies may be updated less frequently.

Decision-support data – or information data – is collected from multiple sources; production data is collected by OLTP applications. The raw data that decision support systems extract from production databases is not normally updated directly. However, information hounds have a high requirement to tailor the informational database to their specific needs. This process is called “ derived data enhancement.” The informational database may contain derived data that records changes over time and summaries. Information hounds are rarely interested in a specific past events. They’re always looking at summaries and trends.