Departmental or subject-specific data warehouses – known as “data marts” in the industry – seem to be gaining in popularity.  Fueled partly by companies wanting to start small with focused projects in today’s economy, and partly by advances in data warehousing technology improving affordability and deployability, data marts seem to be popping-up everywhere.

In most cases, data mart projects are driven by the head of a business unit or a functional group (like Sales) needing to analyze their own slice of data in order to run their department more efficiently and effectively.  The data may come directly from an operational system or a combination of source systems resulting in what’s called an “independent data mart”, or it may come directly from a larger, enterprise data warehouse in a hub-and-spoke or “dependent data mart” configuration.

In either case today, according to industry analysts, companies …

Departmental or subject-specific data warehouses - known as "data marts" in the industry - seem to be gaining in popularity.  Fueled partly by companies wanting to start small with focused projects in today's economy, and partly by advances in data warehousing technology improving affordability and deployability, data marts seem to be popping-up everywhere.

In most cases, data mart projects are driven by the head of a business unit or a functional group (like Sales) needing to analyze their own slice of data in order to run their department more efficiently and effectively.  The data may come directly from an operational system or a combination of source systems resulting in what's called an "independent data mart", or it may come directly from a larger, enterprise data warehouse in a hub-and-spoke or "dependent data mart" configuration.

In either case today, according to industry analysts, companies are looking for data …