An operational data store (ODS) is used for operational reporting and as a source of data for the enterprise data warehouse (EDW). It is a complementary element to an EDW in a

decision support A decision support system (DSS) is an information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and ...

environment, and is used for operational reporting, controls, and decision making, as opposed to the EDW, which is used for tactical and strategic decision support. An ODS is a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

designed to integrate data from multiple sources for additional operations on the data, for reporting, controls and operational decision support. Unlike a production master data store, the data is not passed back to operational systems. It may be passed for further operations and to the

data warehouse In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for Business intelligence, reporting and data analysis and is a core component of business intelligence. Data warehouses are central Re ...

for reporting. An ODS should not be confused with an enterprise data hub (EDH). An operational data store will take transactional data from one or more production systems and loosely integrate it, in some respects it is still subject oriented, integrated and time variant, but without the volatility constraints. This integration is mainly achieved through the use of EDW structures and content. An ODS is not an intrinsic part of an EDH solution, although an EDH may be used to subsume some of the processing performed by an ODS and the EDW. An EDH is a broker of data. An ODS is certainly not. Because the

data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...

originates from multiple sources, the integration often involves cleaning, resolving redundancy and checking against

business rule A business rule defines or constrains some aspect of a business. It may be expressed to specify an action to be taken when certain conditions are true or may be phrased so it can only resolve to either true or false. Business rules are intended to a ...

s for

integrity Integrity is the quality of being honest and having a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and Honesty, truthfulness or of one's actions. Integr ...

. An ODS is usually designed to contain low-level or atomic (indivisible) data (such as transactions and prices) with limited history that is captured "real time" or "near real time" as opposed to the much greater volumes of data stored in the data warehouse generally on a less-frequent basis.

General use

The general purpose of an ODS is to integrate data from disparate source systems in a single structure, using data integration technologies like data virtualization, data federation, or extract, transform, and load (ETL). This will allow operational access to the data for operational reporting, master data or reference data management. An ODS is not a replacement or substitute for a

or for a data hub but in turn could become a source.

External links

Bill Inmon Information Management article on the five classes of ODS
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Operational Data Store Data management Data warehousing Management cybernetics

General use

See also

Further reading

External links