What is a Data Mart?

The Definition, Advantages and Disadvantages

A data mart is a subset of a data warehouse.

It is really similar to a data warehouse but limited in scope and purpose and is usually aligned with one department, function, application or business unit.

It could also be defined as a single domain aggregation used for reporting, analysis and decision support. A single domain or subject could be Customer or Supplier.

A mart could be extracted from a data warehouse or could feed a data warehouse.

Example of Use

An example application would be where the marketing department what to some predictive analysis on which sales locations would be best at selling a new line of products.

Advantages

1. When you don’t have the full data warehousing expertise available to your company.
2. It is faster to implement as you are only concentrating on a subset of the data you need for application area.

1. You can readily end up with a ‘bowl of spaghetti’ with many disparate and unrelated marts. This becomes a nightmare to maintain.
2. They have limited value as they can’t see the organization as a whole and the reporting and analysis potential is limited.

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