Data warehousing is the process of collecting data which is gathered and organized in such a way so that it can easily be analyzed, extracted, reported on, and otherwise used for the purposes of further understanding the data.
The data warehousing process consists of the extraction of data from one or many source databases. The data is then transformed or cleaned up to remove all anomalies and brought into a central repository, the data warehouse. The data is taken from the data warehouse into datamarts which are specialized versions of the data warehouse and which have been designed to suit the needs of the customer/target audience. The data can then be viewed in the form of graphs or charts, etc.
Business intelligence refers to the set of software tools that enable an organization to analyze and report on the measurable aspects of their business. The data warehouse can be thought of as the back office while business intelligence can be considered as the entire business including the back office.
Application provides the infrastructure to build data warehouses and provides business specific datamarts in solutions areas such as Income Support and Child Services as well as embedded analytics in the out of the box application. Application integrates with BIRT as the out of the box viewer and also supports more advanced viewers such as Actuate. Alternatively, customers can instead use Cognos software as the reporting tool/viewer. The Cúram Business Intelligence and Analytics solution encompasses the data warehousing and BI techniques described above which provide a number of options to organizations for accessing and viewing the data to support effective management of their business.