Overview of SAS/Warehouse Administrator

SAS/Warehouse Administrator Data Flow

The following figure illustrates the flow of information through a data warehouse managed by SAS/Warehouse Administrator.

[Data Flow Through a Warehouse]

The methodology for the data flow illustrated in Figure 2.1 might be summarized as follows:

Information is extracted from data sources and is stored in a table or view that is registered in a Warehouse Environment. The table or view is called an Operational Data Definition (ODD).
The ODDs are used as inputs to data stores. The data stores are organized under grouping elements called Data Warehouses and Subjects.
The detail data stores can be used as inputs to summary data stores.
Within SAS/Warehouse Administrator, you can use Information Marts to generate output from the detail data stores and the summary data in the warehouse. For example, an InfoMart Item might be used to display a chart that is generated from summary data.
After the data stores are available in the data warehouse, you can exploit them using SAS software or other software products.

For example, you could use SAS Enterprise Miner to analyze patterns in detail data. You could use SAS/EIS software to analyze multidimensional summary data, and you could have a link from a Web page to an InfoMart Item that displays a chart that is generated from summary data.