What is difference between data mart and data warehouse?

n my previous articles I have given the idea about the different Business intelligence concepts.. This article will give you information about Data Mart vs Data warehouse. In this article I will first try to give you idea about the what exactly the key difference between Data Mart vs Data warehouse. Before discussing the Data Mart vs Data warehouse first we will check about some important concepts of Data mart and data warehouse. After that i will try to explain the Data Mart vs Data warehouse in tabular format.

Data Warehouse is a big central repository of historical data. This data is assembled from different departments and units of the company. Data Mart can be considered as a subset of data warehouse or simply a data repository which is generally focused on a single functional area. They both primarily vary in their scope and usage area.

What is Data-warehouse?

Data warehousing is subject oriented,time variant,non-volatile collection of data which is used for creation of transactional reports as well as historical reports.

There are following characteristics of data warehouse.

Data warehouse is a database which is separate from operational database which stores historical information also.
Data warehouse database contains transactional as well as analytical data.
Data warehouse helps higher management to take strategic as well as tactical decisions using historical or current data.
Data warehouse helps consolidated historical data analysis.
Data warehouse helps business user to see the current trends to run the business.
Data warehouse is used for reporting and data analysis purpose.

What is DataMart?

Data Mart is a simplest set of Data warehouse which is used to focus on single functional area of the business. We can say Data Mart is a subset of Data warehouse which is oriented to specific line of business or specific functional area of business such as marketing,finance,sales etc.. The data come in to Data Mart by different transactional systems, other data warehouse or external sources.

Data Mart is simply a subset of Organization’s Data warehouse.

These are the basic concepts of Data warehouse and data mart.It is very easy to find out the difference between Data Mart vs Data warehouse in tabular format.

Data Mart vs Data warehouse :

Data warehouse

Data mart

Data warehousing is subject oriented, time variant, non-volatile collection of data which is used for creation of transactional reports as well as historical reports.

Data Mart is simply a subset of Organization’s Data warehouse

Definition:

The Data Warehouse is a large repository of data collected from different organizations or departments within a corporation.

Definition:

The data mart is an only subtype of a Data Warehouse. It is designed to meet the need of a certain user group.

Focus:

Data warehouse focuses on multiple business areas.

Focus:

Data mart focuses only on single subject area.

Usage:

It helps to take a strategic decision.

Usage:

The data mart is used to take tactical decisions for growth of business.

Type of system :

This is centralized system where one fact is at center surrounded by dimension tables.

Type of system :

Data mart system is de centralized system

Scope of Business:

The Data warehouse will cover all business areas.

Scope of Business:

The scope of Data mart is within the line of the Business.

Data Model:

Data warehouse always follows top-down model

Data Model:

Data mart always follows bottom-up model.

Data Size:

Data warehouse contains all historical data so the database size is large.Approximate size of data warehouse is greater than 100 GB.

Data Size:

Data mart contains data with only one business area so the size of database is smaller than data warehouse.

Source:

Data warehouse data comes from multiple heterogeneous data sources.

Source:

Data mart data is data of only one business area.Many times it will come from only one data source.

Implementation Time:

Data warehouse contains all data which will come from multiple data sources. It will take time to build data warehouse. The Time to build data warehouse is months to years.

Implementation Time:

Data mart is small data warehouse which will contain the data of only a single business area. The implementation time to build data mart is in months.

Hope you like this Data Mart vs Data warehouse article. If you have any suggestions about Data Mart vs Data warehouse article kindly comment in comment section.

Amit S

Oracle Consultant with vast experience in Oracle BI and PL/SQL Development. Amiet is the admin head of this website who contributes by preparing tutorials and articles related to database technologies. He is responsible to manage the content and front-end of the website.