An integration warehouse is a data warehouse specifically geared to the purpose of integrating information from various sources or systems. Integration warehouses are quite often used in the reinsurance industry instead of conventional data warehouses.
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History
The concept of integration warehousing dates back to mid 2000. In the reinsurance industry it became quite obvious that data warehouses didn't cover all the business requirements and therefore IT started to focus more on the integration aspects. This finally led to solutions that now specifically fit the reinsurance business requirements.
Architecture
The integration warehouse architecture is quite similar to the data warehouse architecture. The main difference is in the integration aspect and the overall data model which is based on a holistic reinsurance business model.
Advantages
It is said that load performance of integration warehouses can be nearly real time, as opposed to data warehouses, which can be slower.