data warehouse
compound.compound. a large digital storage system where a company keeps all its important information in one place. It helps businesses look at their history and make better decisions.
compound. a large, centralised repository of data integrated from multiple sources, specifically structured for query and analysis rather than transaction processing.
The company stores all its sales records in a data warehouse.
By moving all customer information into a data warehouse, the marketing team can easily track buying trends over the last five years.
The architecture of a modern data warehouse allows for the consolidation of disparate data streams, enabling complex analytical processing that informs long-term corporate strategy.
A compound of the Latin-derived 'data' and the Middle English 'warehouse'. The term gained prominence in the late 1980s, notably through the work of IBM researchers Barry Devlin and Paul Murphy.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Often used in business and IT contexts; typically takes a singular verb when referring to the system as a whole.
Last updated July 22, 2026