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Hospital Example
by W. H. Inmon
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As a simple example of the interaction and the differences between a data warehouse and an operational system, consider a hospital environment.Suppose a patient - George Coleman - walks into a hospital at 11:32 am with a terrible stomach ache. A record is created at 11:46 am for George in the operational system. The record contains suchinformation as George's patient number, George's temperature, George's current location in the hospital, and a brief description of why George has been admitted to the hospital. At 12:10 pm a record iswritten to the data warehouse with the same information in it. At this point in time there is redundancy of information between the operational environment and the data warehouse. At 1:34 pm, George ismoved from the emergency room to the pre op room. It is determined that George has a case of appendicitis. George's primary care changes from nurse Wilson to Doctor Smith. George's temperature has gonedown from 104 to 101 because the hospital has given him Tylenol. All of this new information is updated into the operational record as of 1:45 pm. At two o'clock a new record is written for George inthe data warehouse. At 4:14 pm George is moved into the operating room. Surgeon Johnson is now in charge. George has been given anesthesia and the operation commences. At 4:54 pm George's operationalrecord is updated to reflect the operation. At 5:17 pm a new data warehouse record is written reflecting the operation that has been done. In comparing the different records between the operationalenvironment and the data warehouse environment, it is seen that update is done in the operational environment while new snapshots of records are created in the data warehouse. If there is a desire forthe most current information, the operational environment is the place to go. But if there is a desire for historical information, then the data warehouse is the place to go.

The data in the data...