This document provides an introduction and background on data warehousing. It defines a data warehouse as taking data from different operational systems, transforming it into a uniform format, and integrating it into a single entity for easy access to support decision making. It explains how a data warehouse is different from operational systems in that it combines historical and operational data, does not perform data entry, and keeps historical data even for past customers or events. The amount of historical data retained depends on factors like industry, storage costs, and economic value of the data. Updates to the data warehouse are usually periodic or batch-based rather than real-time.