A lot of times, a question comes up as to what value a warehouse based solution brings. Below are a few use cases that exemplify the need for a persistent storage. Both real time and warehouse based analytics are complementary to each other and serve different use cases. In a follow up post we will also cover the use cases best served by real time and not warehouse based solution.
Feature |
Description |
Sample Use Case |
Currency Conversion |
4 corporate level and functional currency available in |
Show my worldwide bookings for last week in US dollars e.g. Bookings / Billings / Backlog report |
UOM conversion |
Common UOM reporting |
Show me units shipped worldwide in Sales UOM for a product |
Snapshots / Trend Reports |
Balances / Snapshot |
Inventory Balance, Headcount Balance, Opportunity Revenue “What changed” report |
Time Series Calculations |
Enable usage of time series calculations |
Year Ago, Qtr Ago, Month Ago YTD, QTD, MTD etc, % Growth metrics |
Event Interpretation |
Assignment record |
# of hires, # of transfers, # of promotions, # of |
Hierarchies / SCD / As Is vs As Was reports |
Report on various |
Show me revenue numbers with current sales org over |
Also, performance is one of the key value of the warehouse which is due to the following transformations or services provided by the warehouse.
Feature |
Description |
Comments |
Denormalization |
Most |
2 – 3 x |
Symmetrical |
All One |
Normalized |
Indexing |
All |
Can be |
Outer |
OLTP |
Large |
Class |
Overloaded |
Sometimes |
Transpositions |
Use column Require a |
Cannot be |
Date |
Timestamp |
Suppress |
Aggregates |
No |
Enable |