DW's better on distributed or mainframe?

[sweetleaf]

What if any are the biggest reasons for why to consolidate all a company's DW's onto distributed vs mainframe db's? or even more granularly onto one dbms platform such as oracle/sql etc?

Does anyone know if there is an advantage that distributed has over mainframe when it comes to data warehousing?

Thanks.

 

[johnherman]

first question:
Where the data resides and in what database is secondary to ease and speed of retrieval of the data the users need. If the data can be retrieved by the user with their standard query/analysis tools in an understandable and timely manner, DW has provided what is required for BI/Analytics, or whatever the latest buzzword is for "Using Information to Run the Business Better".

second question:
Reliability, Contingency Planning, Disaster Recovery
Mainframe = single point of failure.
Distributed = one node fails, remainder carry on.


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