The invention of data warehouse automation (DWA) as a technology category was inevitable. And it was invented in a real sense: the first DWA tools evolved to address gaps in the development, deployment, and maintenance of data warehouse systems.

In this report, we’ll put three representative DWA tools to the test. How does DWA technology promise to simplify and accelerate the process of building the data warehouse? More important, does DWA technology make it easier and faster to custom-fit the data warehouse? How does DWA simplify the process of maintaining (e.g., making changes to) a production data warehouse? This report aims to get into the details of how DWA works in practice.