The Data Warehouse is a database designed for analytical and information processing. Data are extracted from the university's business systems into a single integrated information asset. The warehouse is a read-only collection of data intended to answer business questions.

A Data Warehouse can:

• enable users with better information,
• improve accessibility to integrated data,
• enable informed decision-making leading to increased or improved service,
• improve data quality in the OLTP (On-Line Transaction Processing) systems,
• improve consistency with data from multiple systems,
• help identify hidden business opportunities, and
• act as a strategic planning tool.

The Data Warehouse is an On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) system that is populated using data from the University's operational systems—also known as an On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems. An OLAP system provides a means of archiving data gathered over time by OLTP systems, and then analyzing that data for trends. OLAP and OLTP can be compared in the following ways: