Comment on Bill Inmon?s versions of the truth by Rob Mol

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Bill Inmon makes a distinction between an ODS and a data warehouse.
The main difference is the volatility of the data and the focus on current-values (ODS) or data over a lengthy period of time.
So we only talk about different architectural layers.
A “data warehouse environment” can in this way serve both purposes (providing integrated operational data and providing integrated historical data).

I agree with Wouter and Lidwine that it can be useful to provide operations with historical data. In addition I think there is business value in providing the management with operational data (for instance for alerting of exceptional volumes of transactions).

So in my opinion there are two issues:
1. the business value (and the costs and risks) as the main factor in deciding which users may have access to which data in the ODS and/or the data warehouse;
2. the architectural discussion about ODS and data warehouse as different architectural layers or as one integrated data layer (logical or physical).



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