Planning ahead is a good idea. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.
—Anonymous
In the previous chapter, we discussed the various ways business intelligence can aid in making effective business decisions. We also looked at the characteristics of the business intelligence used at different levels within our organizations. Finally, we were introduced to Maximum Miniatures, Incorporated, the source for all sample data in this book.
In this chapter, we begin planning the database structures to serve as the source of our business intelligence. In some cases, we can extract our business intelligence information directly from the same database used to store the data from our daily business operations. In many cases, however, we need to move that data into another location before we can use it as business intelligence. This "other location" is known as a data mart.