The pros and cons of data warehousing

There are a number of good books on DW. You can read anything by Ralph Kimball ( kimballuniversity.com), a DW guru.

Maybe it would help you to categorize the issues, rather then pro/cons as each potential "pro" can be "con" depending...

on your point of view. The factors affecting the DW discussion are a combination of business and technology issues. Business people will want reports with a certain level of quality and timeliness. The infrastructure folks will want security and scalability and the other "abilities". The question for me is really, AS cube or no cube- relational reporting as it is called. Many times depending on the reporting need, a DW will be good enough. The case for a cube in my opinion is tied to aggregation and time analysis.

In the end the decision to use DW comes back to what are the reporting requirements.

Read questions and answers from all of our SQL Server experts here.