A data warehouse is a database that is dedicated to data analysis and reporting. It combines data from multiple operational applications and restructures the data for ease of analysis. Warehouses can become large given the multiple feed sources. They can also evolve as business needs change over time.

A warehouse is more flexible and user friendly if views mediate access to tables. Views can paper over differences in jargon and separate data for different user groups.

Traditionally access views are created manually with data modeling tools. This presentation will discuss several other approaches (most notably recursive SQL) that can be used to generate access views.

This session will deliver the following benefits to participants:

• An explanation of access views and their importance to a data warehouse project
• Simple examples of access views
• Rules for constructing access views
• Four approaches for creating access views with trade-offs
• A sample recursive SQL query that generates access views