Databases Intermediate

What is Data Warehouse?

A centralized repository optimized for analytical queries that integrates data from multiple operational sources.

Data warehouses are optimized for read-heavy analytical workloads (OLAP) rather than transactional operations (OLTP). They use columnar storage, star/snowflake schemas, and materialized views for fast aggregation queries.

Popular solutions include Snowflake, BigQuery (Google), Redshift (AWS), and Azure Synapse. Data warehouses typically receive data via ETL/ELT processes and serve business intelligence tools, dashboards, and ad-hoc analysis.

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Related Terms

Full-Text Search

A technique for searching natural language text in databases using word stemming, ranking, and relevance scoring.

An SQL operation that combines rows from two or more tables based on a related column between them.

Database Constraint

Rules enforced by the database to maintain data integrity, including NOT NULL, UNIQUE, CHECK, PRIMARY KEY, and FOREIGN KEY.

The default index type in most databases that organizes data in a balanced tree structure for efficient searching, sorting, and range queries.

A query that transforms rows into columns, creating a pivot table view of aggregated data.

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)

A data pipeline process that extracts data from sources, transforms it into a suitable format, and loads it into a destination system.

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