Data Warehouse

The primary purpose behind a data warehouse is to provide strategic information to the business. In the pursuit of this goal, complex questions are often asked. The size of data warehouse tables in combination with these complex questions can lead to performance issues. These performance issues come in two forms.

The first performance challenge comes when moving operational data into the data warehouse through an ETL (extract, transform, load) process. This I/O intensive process can take a very long time depending on the amount of data loaded into the warehouse.

The second performance challenge revolves around the questions end-users ask. With sophisticated desktop tools, very complex SQL can be generated. Complex SQL can lead to long running queries that need to be tuned so they finish in a reasonable amount of time.

Leftfield helps address these issues and others through the following products:

• insure/INDEX and insure/ANALYSIS - performance tuning of SQL queries. This allows more complex questions to be answered so more value can be extracted from the data warehouse investment.
• insure/SECURITY - provides a layer of security to protect access to very valuable and potentially sensitive information. This is very important because data in a warehouse is more valuable to because it contains a much more comprehensive view of company operations.