Search Engines and their Impact on Data Warehouses

Abstract

Over the past ten years or so data warehousing has emerged as a new technology in the database environment. “A data warehouse is a global repository that stores pre-processed queries on data which resides in multiple, possibly heterogeneous, operational or legacy sources” (Samtani et al, 2004). Data warehousing as a specialized field is continuing to grow and mature. Despite the phenomenal upgrades in terms of data storage capability there has been a flood of new streams of data entering the warehouse. During the last decade there has been an increase from 1 terabyte to 100 terabyte and, soon to be 1 petabyte, environments. Therefore, the ability to search, mine and analyze data of such immense proportions remains a significant issue even as analytical capabilities increase. The data warehouse is an environment which is readily tuned to maximize the efficiency of making useful decisions. However the advent of commercial uses of the Internet on a large scale has opened new possibilities for data capture and integration into the warehouse. While most of the data necessary for a data warehouse originates from the organization’s internal (operational) data sources, additional data is available externally that can add significant value to the data warehouse. One of the major reasons why organizations implement data warehousing is to make it easier, on a regular basis, to query and report data from multiple transaction processing systems and/or from external sources. One important source of this external data is the Internet. A few researchers (Walters, 1997; Strand & Olsson, 2004; Strand & Wangler, 2004) have investigated the possibility of incorporating external data in data warehouses, however, there is little literature detailing research in which the Internet is the source of the external data. In (Peter & Greenidge, 2005) a high-level model, the Data Warehousing Search Engine (DWSE), was presented. However, in this article we examine in some detail the issues in search engine technology that make the Internet a plausible and reliable source for external data. As John Ladley (Ladley, 2005) states “There is a new generation of Data Warehousing on the horizon that reflects maturing technology and attitudes”. Our long-term goal is to design this new generation Data Warehouse.