The data warehouse (DW) is a central repository for enterprise data and hence a key element of a business intelligence architecture. It usually extracts and stores data from various sources in order to transform and provide data for reporting and analytics. Consequently, DWs are usually rather sophisticated solutions and the management of a DW can be challenging. Moreover, changes in a DW are often very slow since they have to be approved by many stakeholders, and the subsequent deployment process is often very complicated and involves manual interventions.

All this begs the question, “What is a data warehouse?” In my humble opinion, a data warehouse is a business view of data that supports decision making. At a logical level, it’s a data model that is subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and non-volatile—Bill Inmon’s definition from the 1990s, which is still valid....