FASTER AND BETTER DECISIONS IN CHANGING ENVIRONMENTS USING A HYBRID APPROACH OF DATA WAREHOUSE INTEGRATION

Abstract

We live in a globalized and fast changing world. The financial crisis means a lot of trouble for governments, administrations, companies and people. Sometimes the environment changes faster than the actors are able to react. So, at the moment Heraclitus’ proverb ‘Nothing is more constant than the change’ is still up-to date, still valid and of high relevance. Companies merge with other companies; build joint ventures and virtual organizations. What has not been changed for a long time is the fact that only successful companies survive. Successful companies could be characterized as companies which are able to make better decisions faster. Therefore it is necessary to have the relevant data at the right time. This means that data for strategic decisions have to be available shortly after a merger or the establishment of a virtual organization for the whole new organization in a unified, complete and consistent form. It is not possible to build a data warehouse all from the scratch because this means a project of several years which is often still not in time and not in budget. A new way to develop an integrated data warehouse is needed. In this paper we show how a hybrid approach of data warehouse integration could look like.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.17.2.2209