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An Assessment Penn State first embarked on a data warehouse project in early 1994 when a group of approximately two dozen University technical staff members met to discuss obtaining ad hoc access to data. The group had many years of experience accessing administrative data on the mainframe (using tools like Natural and AIDA) and was concerned about making the data more easily and widely accessible with greater flexibility. The first table was made available on the warehouse in September, 1995. Since that time, the warehouse has grown to more than a dozen databases containing approximately 100 tables and just under 100 million records. Between 600 & 700 power users have access to the data warehouse. Usage statistics indicate that hundreds of users log into the warehouse on a regular basis to help them accomplish their work. Although no formal assessment of the success of the warehouse has been attempted, anecdotal evidence indicates that the warehouse has made a tremendous improvement in the ability of many users to obtain data in ways that are easy, quick, and user-friendly. The original aim of the effort was to 'unlock' the data from a mainframe environment and make it accessible to the desktop.
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