technical opinion

DOI: 10.1145/ 1400181.1400213

We ultimately investigated five archi-
BY THILINI ARIYACHANDRA AND HUGH J. WATSON tectures: independent data marts, bus,
hub and spoke, centralized (no depen-
dent data marts), and federated. While

Which Data other architectures (e.g., hybrid) are

mentioned in the literature, they tend
to be variations on these five.
For many organizations, indepen-

Warehouse
dent data marts are the initial efforts
to provide a repository of decision sup-
port data. These marts are typically
independent of other data stores, and

Architecture
serve specific, localized needs, such as
providing data for a particular applica-
tion or business unit. The data is stored
in a data model that best supports how

is Best?
the data is used (e.g., an OLAP cube).
The bus architecture has data marts
that support various business process-
es, such as orders, deliveries, or custom-
er calls. The first mart is built for a sin-
gle business process using dimensions
and measures that are used with other
marts (i.e., conformed dimensions).
Additional marts are developed using
Over the past 15 years, companies have spent billions these conformed dimensions, which
results in logically integrated marts and
of dollars on data marts and warehouses. Despite this an enterprise view of the data. There is
experience, there is an important design decision that no normalized, relational data in this
still causes heated discussion: Which data warehouse architecture; it is entirely dimensional.
The hub and spoke architecture begins
architecture is best? with an enterprise-level analysis of data
While there are many consultants and vendors requirements. Attention is focused on
building a scalable and maintainable
that claim that a particular architecture is best, infrastructure. Using the enterprise view
there has been surprisingly little rigorous, empirical of the data, the architecture is developed
research on the topic. The literature tends to describe in an iterative manner, subject area by
subject area. In this architecture, atom-
the architectures, provide case study examples, or ic level data is maintained in the ware-
present survey data about the popularity of the various house in 3rd normal form. Dependent
data marts are created that source data
architectures. The lack of empirical research on the from the warehouse, thus maintaining
topic motivated our study. a “single version of the truth.” The de-
For the research, in addition to reviewing the pendent data marts may be developed
for departmental, functional area, or
data warehousing literature, we formed a group of specialized purposes (e.g., data mining)
20 experts to help identify the architectures to study and may have normalized, denormal-
ized, or summarized dimensional data
and the success metrics to use. Bill Inmon and Ralph structures depending on user needs.
Kimball, leading authorities in the field and advocates The centralized architecture is simi-
of the two major competing architectures (i.e., hub lar to the hub and spoke except that
there are no dependent data marts.
and spoke and bus, respectively), were among the The warehouse contains atomic level
experts who participated. data, some summarized data, and logi-

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cal dimensional views of the data. This
architecture is a logical rather than a
physical implementation of the hub
and spoke architecture.
The federated architecture is advocat-
ed when there is a fragmented decision
support data environment and there is
a need to integrate at least some of the
data. This is often the case when there
are mergers, acquisitions, and company
reorganizations. The federated archi-
tecture leaves existing decision support
structures (e.g., operational systems,
data marts) in place. The data is either
logically or physically integrated using
shared keys, global metadata, distrib-
uted queries, or other methods.
The literature and expert interviews
identified two major categories of suc-
cess metrics. Product measures are as-
sociated with information and system
quality, impacts on individual users,
and impacts on the organization. Proj-
ect measures relate to the time and cost
of implementing the architecture.
The Survey and Findings
We developed a Web-based survey that
asked about the data warehouse in the
respondent’s company, the architecture
that was implemented, the success of the
architecture, the respondent’s company,
and the respondent; 454 respondents
provided completed questionnaires.a
The respondents were relatively even-
ly distributed over data warehouse man-
agers, data warehouse staff members,
IS managers, and independent consul-
tants/system integrators. The latter were
asked to complete the survey with a par-
ticular client in mind.
The companies participating in the
survey ranged from small (i.e., less than
$10M in revenues) to large (i.e., in excess
of $10B). Most of the companies are lo-
cated in the U.S. (60%) and represent a va-
riety of industries, with financial services
(15%) providing the most responses.
The hub and spoke is the most prev-
alent architecture (39%), followed by
the bus architecture (26%), centralized
(17 %), independent data marts (12%),
and federated (4%). The most common
platform for hosting the data ware-
houses is Oracle (41%), followed by Mi-
crosoft (19%) and IBM (18%).
Most of the data warehouses sup-
a The full research report is available at http://www.terry.
uga.edu/~hwatson/DW_Architecture_Report.pdf
port either several business units (38%)
or the entire company (36%). Fewer
than 12 percent of the warehouses sup-
port a single function area or sub unit.
However, the domain or scope of the
warehouse varies with the architecture.
The hub and spoke and centralized ar-
chitectures have the broadest domain
and are company wide in over 40% of
the organizations. The bus architec-
ture is enterprise wide in about 30 per-
cent of the companies, followed by the
federated (26%), and independent data
marts architecture (18%).
We computed mean product success
measures for the various architectures.
The independent data mart architec-
ture scored lowest on all measures. Next
lowest on all measures was the feder-
ated architecture. What was most inter-
esting was the similarity of the success
scores for the bus, hub and spoke, and
centralized architectures. No statistical-
ly significant differences (MANOVA was
used) were found for any of the three
architectures’ product success metrics.
All of these three architectures provide
similar, consistently high scores on all
of the product success metrics (gener-
ally in the mid 5s on the 1-7 scale).
The survey instrument asked respon-
dents to indicate the average amount of
time required to implement the first
subject area or business process in
the warehouse. It took just under nine
months for the independent data marts,
bus, and centralized architectures. The
next longest time was required by the
federated architecture, with the hub
and spoke architecture taking the most
time, at 11.5 months.
The average initial roll out cost for
the hub and spoke was the most expen-
sive of all the architectures at close to
$2.5M. It was also the most costly ar-
chitecture to maintain, at an average
cost of $1.24M.
Conclusion
We found why there are both agreements
and disagreements over which architec-
ture is best. The study findings show con-
clusively that independent data marts are
the weakest solution in terms of informa-
tion quality, system quality, individual
impacts, and organizational impacts.
This is consistent with conventional wis-
dom. Though not as weak, the federated
architecture tended to score relatively
low on the success metrics. This is also
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technical opinion
not surprising. A federated architecture
must “make do” with an existing deci-
sion support infrastructure and to some
extent has to live with its weaknesses.
The most important finding is how
similar the bus, hub and spoke, and
centralized architectures scored on the
product success metrics. It also helps
explain why these competing archi-
tectures have survived over time—they
can be equally successful.
The similarity of the product success
of the bus, hub and spoke, and central-
ized architectures may not be too sur-
prising. Over time, each approach has
incorporated strengths from the others.
For example, the hub and spoke architec-
ture typically includes dimensional data
marts, which is fundamental to the bus ar-
chitecture. Advocates of all architectures
now recognize the importance of rolling
out an initial version quickly in order to
realize early “wins” or financial “lift” and
maintain management support.
There were differences in terms of
development time and cost. Because
of the up front planning, large organi-
zational domain, and additional com-
ponents (e.g., dependent data marts),
the hub and spoke architecture takes
the longest time and is the most costly
to initially develop. The other architec-
tures tend to be similar in terms of de-
velopment time and cost.
Overall, we found that the major
data warehouse architectures can de-
liver good information quality, system
quality, individual impacts, and orga-
nizational impacts. The study did not
find a clear “winner” in the “data ware-
house architecture wars” because there
is not one. The product success metrics
are very similar for the bus, hub and
spoke, and centralized architectures.
Companies can select an architecture
based on other relevant factors, such
as the availability of resources, the ur-
gency of the need for the warehouse,
management’s strategic view of the
warehouse, the organizational domain
served, compatibility with existing sys-
tems and technologies, the recommen-
dations of consultants, and others.
Thilini Ariyachandra (tariyacha@yahoo.com) is an
assistant professor of MIS in the Williams College of
Business at Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH.
Hugh J. Watson (hwatson@terry.uga.edu) is a professor
of MIS in the Terry College of Business at the University
of Georgia, Athens.
© 2008 ACM 0001-0782/08/1000 $5.00
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