Architecture Overview

Data Warehouses can be architected in many different ways, depending on the specific needs of a business.

The model shown below is the "hub-and-spokes" Data Warehousing architecture that is popular in many organizations.

Typical Data Warehousing Environment

In short, data is moved from databases used in operational systems into a data warehouse staging area, then into a data warehouse and finally into a set of conformed data marts.

Data is copied from one database to another using a technology called ETL (Extract, Transform, Load).