Data Marts

A data mart is a database of information designed to help managers make strategic decisions about their business. In contrast to a data warehouse, which combines databases across an entire enterprise, a data mart tends to be smaller, more tactical, focused on a particular subject or department, and directed toward meeting an immediate business need. In MicroStrategy Web, a data mart is represented as a relational table containing the results of executing a report. You limit the size and focus of the data mart by the way that you define the report.

In addition to the primary purpose of creating focused data sets, some common reasons for building data marts in MicroStrategy Web include:

creating aggregate fact tables
creating tables for very large result sets and then using other applications, such as Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access, to access the data
creating tables for off-line analysis

It is easy to build data marts using the MicroStrategy SDK. You simply convert a regular report to a data mart report, name it, configure it to include certain data mart properties, and execute it. Once the report is executed, the data mart table is created and saved in the data warehouse of your choice. You can then add this data mart table to a project and use it as a source table from which to execute other reports.

Refer to the interfaces section for all the interfaces that are available for data mart functionality. These interfaces help you understand the code samples provided in the examples section. Refer to Data Mart Events for a description of the events used when setting or unsetting a data mart report instance.