Skip to content

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

Types:

  • Independent Data Mart

    • Functions without relying on an existing data warehouse
    • Focuses on one specific business objective
    • Data is stored from either internal or external sources

  • Dependent Data Mart

    • 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

  • Hybrid Data Mart

    • integrates data from external operational sources with an existing data warehouse
    • higher speed, flexibility, and capacity to handle large storage structures