Data Warehousing and Technology

Data Warehousing and Mobile Computing

In the contemporary competitive environment, organizations are being forced to collect, store and analyze a large volume of data to make an analytical decision. However, business executives are faced with the time constraints when analyzing data, thus, data warehousing over the mobile computing have come into existing to assist in analyzing data quickly anywhere to assist in enhancing an effective timely decision. The study presents the literature reviews on the application of the data warehousing over the mobile computing. The study reveals that as firms are increasingly doing their businesses online, thus, storing and accessing data over the mobile devices are becoming a necessity. With the growth of the powerful laptop and internet, it is now possible to store a large volume of data in the mobile devices and cloud computing.

Introduction

Data warehousing is defined as the database system that organizations use for reporting and analysis. Typically, DW (data warehousing) has been identified as the core components of business intelligence by storing both the current and historical data to create an analytical report. With the rapid development of information technology, the application of mobile devices has become a norm. Moreover, the emergence trends in the use of mobile devices have made a large number of developers integrate data warehousing tool in the mobile technology to enhance competitive market advantages. (Bakar, & Ta's, (2012). Towards the middle of the 2000s, the data warehousing is only used to support business strategic decisions. However, in the contemporary competitive business environment, organizations are being forced to make quick and quality decisions to improve financial performances, enhance administration, increase profitability, and assist human resources. Faced with time constraints, businesses are being forced to collect and analyze data quickly, thus, the data warehousing tools are increasing being integrated into the mobile devices to enhance faster decision.

The objective of this paper is to conduct a literature review on data warehousing and mobile computing.

Literature Review

Golfarelli, & Rizzi, (2009) argued that an increase in the demand of data warehousing in the business environment has necessitated a move to data warehousing model into the mobile devices. However, the approach to achieve the mobile data warehouse objective is to use the DM (dimension modeling) to enhance a consistency in the design environment. According to Bakar, & Ta's, (2012), the dimension modeling has been proved successful for the development of the mobile data warehousing since 1999. However, mobile devices such as iPhone, Tablet, and Palm Top have limited computing power (memory, computer power, display screen and weight). To solve this problem, Gaspar et al. (2011) propose a warehouse application over the "Microsoft Dynamics Navision 5.0 Enterprise Resource Planning system." (Gaspar et al. 2011 p 1).

Golfarelli, & Rizzi, (2009) contribute to the argument by pointing out that data warehousing technology needs to be modified for the mobile technology to create a modular mobile warehousing that will provide the enterprise's resources planning functions. The solution that can be employed to achieve this objective is to integrate the mobile framework supplemented by NET Compact Framework using the MDM (Microsoft Dynamics Mobile) 1.5. The designing framework assists in providing the best ERP technology for Window. On the other hand, Yei-Sol, W. (2015) believe that Big Data Warehousing is increasing being applied to the "Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology" (p 1). The author defines the RFID as the technology that allows businesses to track moving object. In the United States and another part of the world, major retailers use the RFID to manage their supply chain systems by using the RFID to track the movement of materials from suppliers to the warehouse and finished to the customer. However, the amount of information generated from that system is enormous making an integration of the data warehousing tool in the RFID to be ultimately important. The RFID data warehousing tool assists businesses to collect, organize, and analyze datasets from the RFID to make a strategic decision. The benefit of RIFD data warehousing is that it assists in analyzing data to manage the inventory, process procurement and track moving objects. Moreover, a business can use their mobile devices such as the laptops, Tablet and other mobile devices to track their moving objects anywhere they are, thus, assisting in enhancing quick decisions.

Despite the benefits derived from the RFID data warehousing system, some organization still face challenges to scaling their systems to manage the large size of data. As an organization grows in size, the volume of data to process increases in size making processing of large dataset become more complex and expensive. To solve this problem, the cloud computer services offer technology to store massive data sets over the internet allowing the owner to access, manage, and analyze the data anywhere in the world. However, a large database has to be designed to store the dataset before storing them in the cloud computing. Both normalize and denormalized schema are the effective tools to support RFID data before being transferred to the cloud. Despite the benefits of the data warehousing and mobile devices, businesses are still facing challenges to secure their sensitive data from the hackers. The study recommends using the encryption technology to protect the data from an unauthorized access.