Video Transcript: Database vs Data Warehouse

Hi I'm Jared Hilam. At one of our workshops, we had an attendee ask, what's  the difference between a database and a data warehouse? Now over and over  I've been asking myself, what should be the topic of my next video, but often I  forget that I haven't really addressed some of the more foundational questions.  So let's get into the question that this attendee asked, a database is a structured place to store data. There are many kinds of databases, and they are often  designed to optimize for various functions. However, one thing that most  databases have in common is that they have a schema. A schema is a defined  set of tables and columns which all the rows of data get loaded into people,  design schemas to fit the database's proposed function. If you're designing an  application, then you will design the schema to help drive the application  screens and record each event. This type of database is called an OLTP  database. However, if you're designing a data warehouse, the schema is going  to be built for a different purpose. Rather than soaking in records, you want the  database to cough up records in bulk. To effectively get the database to do this,  the organization of the tables and columns needs to be structured so that the  measures and attributes to be analyzed are closely connected. This greatly  optimizes the speed at which the database can execute a query, a database  designed for analytical purposes like this is called a data warehouse. So what's  the difference between a database and a data warehouse? Well, a data  warehouse is a database, but it's designed for centralizing the data for optimized analysis. What can often get confusing is that various vendors might either cater to transaction processing or to data warehousing or even do both, not every  vendor is exactly upfront about their capacity to do one or the other. So it's  important to really investigate this so you're using the right database for the right function. Intricity, conducts strategies to help companies with the decision on  what solution to deploy to support their business. I have a white paper that you'll find in the video description that outlines this strategy. Now, alternatively, you  can reach out to Intricity to talk with a specialist about your specific  requirements.