Data Warehousing

Data Warehousing is a process by which different databases are combined within an organization. Data warehouses are implemented to provide business intelligence and support management decisions. The broad presentation afforded by data warehousing allows for a more complete view of business conditions at any given instant. By using a specialized database to provide information from a variety of sources, data warehousing allows employees to access information in ways that would not otherwise be possible ...

Andrews University defines data warehousing as "The coordinated, architected, and periodic copying of data from various sources, both inside and outside the enterprise, into an environment optimized for analytical and informational processing." Their excellent online data warehousing dictionary provides definitions on all of the most relevant terms in the field.

Microsoft's Creating and Using Data Warehouses Overview is also worth a look.