Data Marts: 2025 guide
Data Marts: 2025 guide

Data marts are customized sections of a larger data warehouse, specifically designed to meet the unique requirements of your team or business line. Think of them as your go-to sources for accurate, relevant data that streamline your decision-making processes. By integrating these data marts with business intelligence systems, you can swiftly generate detailed reports. Detailed reports enhance data usage and improve insights.
In the past, separate data marts functioned as isolated units, separate from the central data warehouse. They could be structured from the top down, pulling specific data models created for different business units from a centralized repository. Alternatively, a bottom-up method might involve pooling data from multiple business units into a single, overarching data warehouse. Thanks to cloud technology, these old methods have evolved from their limited scope into more flexible and integrated practices, simplifying data management across organizations.
How to use a data mart
A data mart can strengthen your organization's data architecture by acting as a specialized segment within a larger data warehouse. It supports your business units by delivering focused data subsets tailored for precise data analysis. A data mart:
- Streamlines analytics, making it easier for a particular business unit to access and analyze data.
- Enhances the management and accessibility of data, ensuring that the right people have the right information when they need it.
- Prevents information overload, allowing analysts and business users to focus on relevant data without getting bogged down.
- Simplifies the search and navigation process within a hierarchical data organization.
By curating data specifically for distinct user groups, you can maintain tighter control over data access and permissions, ensuring sensitive information is only visible to authorized personnel. A targeted approach helps prevent your team from being overwhelmed by extensive datasets. It also streamlines their search and navigation processes. The result is quicker access to the insights that matter most, boosting productivity and decision-making across your organization.
Traditionally, data marts were standalone systems that held smaller tables, often with fewer than 100,000 rows, which led to significant data silos. The modern approach integrates these data marts into a single cloud-based data warehouse. This approach allows your organization to develop flexible and easily managed logical data models, such as views and materialized views.
By incorporating strong data governance practices, this integrated method eliminates the need for separate physical machines. It provides granular access tailored to your team's requirements while maximizing the scalability of cloud technologies.
The way your organization structures its technology and analytics teams can significantly influence ownership and access to data marts. In some cases, individual teams may manage their own data marts, which might result in more siloed data environments. On the other hand, adopting a more collaborative approach with fewer boundaries and shared access can boost data sharing and encourage insights across specific departments or business units.
Ultimately, data marts enable you and your teams to make more informed, data-driven decisions more efficiently, enhancing overall business performance.
Integrating data marts with data warehouses
Although traditional data marts are less common now, using views and materialized views to segment data for your specific teams is still incredibly valuable. An effective data infrastructure that integrates data marts with a data warehouse usually includes:
- Data sources
- Data pipeline
- Centralized data warehouse
- Independent data marts
- Business intelligence tools
In this setup, each data mart meets the specific needs of your team or specific business area. The effectiveness of this arrangement will hinge on your unique requirements. Factors such as your company's size, organizational structure and the skill levels of your analysts and engineers play crucial roles.
In modern data architecture, central data warehouses, data marts and data lakes are core components. They collect and centralize data from various sources into one cohesive system. This consolidation ensures that data is readily accessible and strategically valuable across your entire organization, helping you and your team make informed decisions effectively.
Challenges and solutions in data mart integration
Integrating data marts into your organization’s broader data architecture can present some unique challenges. With the right strategies and solutions, however, you can overcome these obstacles and streamline your operations. Here's a breakdown of common challenges you might face and effective solutions to address them:
Data consistency issues
Challenge: Keeping data consistent across all marts and an enterprise data warehouse is tough, especially with multiple sources and updates.
Solution: Establish strong data governance policies and use integration tools that enforce data quality and consistency.
Performance bottlenecks
Challenge: As you integrate multiple data marts, you might encounter performance bottlenecks that slow down data processing and data retrieval. As your business grows, the accompanying surge in increased data volumes can further strain the system.
Solution: Optimize your data storage and facilitate faster query performance. Consider scalable cloud solutions to enhance overall performance.
Complex data integration
Challenge: The technical challenges of integrating varied data marts with different schemas and formats can seem overwhelming.
Solution: Standardize your data formats and employ middleware or data integration platforms to ease the merging process.
Security and access control
Challenge: Maintaining tight security and managing access properly becomes more complex as you integrate more data marts due to increased access points.
Solution: Implement stringent security measures and access controls, like role-based access and data encryption, to protect your data.
High maintenance costs
Challenge: The cost of maintaining an integrated system with several data marts can escalate, demanding more resources and expertise.
Solution: Leverage automation and consider managed services to reduce the burden of manual maintenance and cut costs.
Adapting to business changes
Challenge: Ensuring your data mart integration remains flexible to adapt to business changes can be challenging.
Solution: Design your data architecture to be modular and flexible, making it easier to update and modify as your business evolves.
By tackling these challenges with tailored solutions, you can ensure that your data integration efforts are robust and effective, enhancing your operational efficiency and empowering your team to make smarter, data-driven decisions.
Ready to enhance your data management strategy? Discover how Fivetran can streamline your integration of data marts and enterprise data warehouses, ensuring seamless access to the information you need, when you need it. With robust data governance and performance optimization, Fivetran is your partner in navigating the complexities of modern data architecture. Learn more about Fivetran with our 14-day free trial and get started today!
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