Three Tier level Data Warehouse Architecture For Ghanaian Petroleum Industry

Abstract

The data warehouse (DW) is a modern proven technique of handling and managing diversity in data sources, format and structure. Recent advances in database technologies are leading to the proliferation of different kinds of information design with independent supporting hardware and software. This technology was developed therefore to integrate heterogeneous information sources for analysis purposes. Information sources are progressively becoming autonomous and they change their content rapidly due to perpetual transactions (data changes) and may change their structure due to continual users' requirements evolving (schema changes). Handling correctly all type of these changes however is a real challenge. Thus, strategic decision making is an ongoing process and part of human life. Businesses all over the world are faced with challenging decision making which is the very livelihood to their very existence. There has been intensive research in the field of databases including the grandfather of data warehousing Inmon which they offered tremendous insight into how the power of computing can be harnessed in strategic decision making. There achievement in the petroleum industry has been highlighted and written about by Nimmagadda and his fellow professionals. However how this can be implemented in Africa is remain to be solved. In this paper we investigated the various data capturing systems which they currently in use at the Ghana National Petroleum Cooperation (GNPC) – a state agency responsible for the overall management and supervision of the hydrocarbon endowment of the sub-region and recommending a tree tier level petroleum data warehouse architecture for cutting- edge decision making on petroleum resources.