Bill Inmon was asked to provide an example of textual integration engine (Erickson, 206):

BI: Sure. We have been working with a large health care inslilulion. As we brought information to the structured environment, we kept seeing the term “HA” appear In med-ical circles, it turns out that if you are a cardiologist, HA means heart attack. If you’re an endocrinologist, HA means bepatitis A. If you’re any other kind of doctor, HA means headache. So If you want to have proper meaning in the structured environment you’ve got to condition the data before it gets there”

Having a common understanding is crucial for many activities. Data warehouses allow to maintain the data for years and can represent the “tradition”. On the other hand, data from the past can be used to create forecasts.

An innovative enhancement of a data warehouse would be the KNOWLEDGE WAREHOUSE.

According the (Nemati at al,2002) the knowkledge of an organization is available in the head of employees and not stored in a knowledge repository. “What is needed is a new generation of knowledge-enabled systems that provides the infrastructure needed to capture, cleanse, store, organize, leverage, and disseminate not only data and information but also the knowledge of the firm”.

(Nemati at al,2002) explain the aim of the knowledge warehouse:

“The KW architecture will not only facilitate the capturing and coding of knowledge but will also enhance the retrieval and sharing of knowledge across the organization. Essentially, the KW will provide the same service for knowledge that a DW provides for data. The primary goal of the KW is to provide the decision maker with an intelligent analysis platform that enhances all phases of knowledge.”

The transition from a data warehouse to a knowledge warehouse my be supported by the Artificial Intelligence. In particular, AI can be used to perform the transition from implicit to explicit knowledge (Nemati et al, 2002).

The capacity to retrieve the knowledge in a particular situation can allow an organization to keep its competitive advantage.

The competitive advantage is a “know-how” which is often propagated in people and processes.

The writer thinks that the creation of a knowledge repository would allow organizations to preserve, distribute and enhance the knowledge and also to understand how the knowledge was used and to evaluate the impact of this knowledge on the organization KPIs.

References

Erickson, Jim, DM Review. Jun2006, Vol. 16 Issue 6, p10-13. 4p.(Interview)

Knowledge warehouse: an architectural integration of knowledge management, decision support, artificial intelligence and data warehousing

Hamid R.Nemati^aDavid M.Steiger^b1Lakshmi S.Iyer^c2Richard T.Herschel^d3a

Available online 13 January 2002.Show lesshttps://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-9236(01)00141-5