data mart (database) A type of data warehouse designed primarily to address a specific function or department's needs, as opposed to a data warehouse which is traditionally meant to address the needs of the organisation from an enterprise perspective. In addition, a data mart often uses aggregation or summarisation of the data to enhance query performance. However, it is important to maintain the ability to access the underlying base data to enable drill-down analysis as necessary.
Last updated: 1998-04-24
