Data Mart
Description
A data mart is a subset of a data warehouse. It's designed to cater to the needs of a specific business unit or team. Think of it as a department store within the larger shopping mall (the data warehouse).
Specifications:
- A mechanism through which business users access data that lives in a data warehouse
- Is a subset of a data warehouse
Varieties
- Functions without relying on an existing data warehouse
- Focuses on one specific business objective
- Data is stored from either internal or external sources
- Lives on top of an existing data warehouse
- Data lives in a centralized location and when it's time to run analytics, only the relevant data is accessed
- Integrates data from external operational sources with an existing data warehouse
- Higher speed, flexibility, and capacity to handle large storage structures