Data Mart: A key component in I/T strategy.  At InfoDesign Inc. we have been building Data Marts for Fortune 100 companies since the late 1970's.  These grew out of the Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Information Centers of the 1980's. It would be fair to say that it's a Marketing tag put on something that was already well established at some of the larger companies.

Data Marts provide all the information that a Group or Department requires.  In reality these are smaller Data Warehouses.  Because they are less encompassing they are easier to build and organizations have had a lot more success with these types of projects. They can be built on a variety of platforms ranging from Windows NT to large UNIX servers and IBM Mainframes.  No matter what the size they have several things in common

• A Database, almost always relational. Popular ones include MS SQL Server, Oracle, and IBM's DB2.

• Data Reporting Mechanism. This will include an Enterprise Reporting System, and other specialized tools especially modeling languages. Experience has shown that no one product can meet all the needs of an organization.

• Data Load and Cleanup routines.  This is the heart of the project.  Good data is always the most critical part of any successful project and requires about 80% of the effort. Often times the data comes from internal legacy sources and external sources.  Two tools have found to be very important are IBI's Copy Manager™ and Syncsort.  Good data and OK tools are far more useful than slick looking tools and data with problems.  In fact, data issues are one of the biggest risk factors in any project of this type.

 Call InfoDesign Inc. for your Intranet Data Mart project, we have the experience to get it done right.