Mark Beyer of Gartner introduced the term Logical Data Warehouse and defined it as
"a new data management architecture for analytics which combines the strengths of traditional repository warehouses with alternative data management and access strategies."
Gartner predicts that the Logical Data Warehouse will form a new best practice by the end of 2015.
Data Virtualization is a critical part of the Logical Data Warehouse architecture enabling queries to be federated across multiple data sources – both traditional structured data sources, such as databases, data warehouses, etc., and less traditional data sources, such as Hadoop, NoSQL, Web Services, SaaS applications, and so on – while still appearing as a single ‘logical’ data source to the user.
Click to enlargeThe Denodo Platform provides query federation capabilities to support Logical Data Warehouse architecture while also isolating the user from the complexities – different technologies, formats, protocols, locations, etc. – of underlying data sources and provides a common and consistent view into this data.
Many Logical Data Warehouse implementations augment and extend existing enterprise data warehouse systems with data from additional sources, such as Hadoop or NoSQL databases, and offer tremendous flexibility to publish the augmented information in many different formats to suit the consuming applications.