Question

Why do you have to do staging and mapping when designing a data warehouse? Describe both processes of staging and mapping. Discuss the considerations that you can take into account when deciding whether to use a staging area, or not, for the source data.

Answer 1

Answer)

The staging area or the landing zone is considered to be an intermediate area meant for the data processing for extraction, transformation as well as loading of the processes. One would need to have a staging area for holding the data and then performing the data cleansing as well as merger much before the data gets loaded to the warehouse.

The staging is mostly meant for quick extraction of the data from that of the data sources, for minimizing the impact of the sources and once the data would be loaded into this particular area then it is merged or combines or mapped with many other data sources for specific transformation, or validation or that of the data cleansing.

The process of staging is as mentioned above. The process of mapping happens with few steps as mentioned below:

• There should be a separate team who can be present for the process routing and to find the processes
• The current process diagram are checked and processed
• The current process is analyzed and the improvements are proposed
• The mapping is checked and aligned
• The final step happens with prioritization and automation

The consideration of staging area comes into the picture mostly for data consolidation from many of the other source systems and having a staging area would help in adding the bucket where the data from many sources can be placed temporarily for further processing.

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