Data marts and workload focus: Judge the statement. “A data mart is designed to optimize performance for well-defined and predictable uses.”

Difficulty: Easy

Correct Answer: Correct

Explanation:


Introduction / Context:
Data marts are subject-oriented slices of an enterprise warehouse (for example, sales, marketing, finance). They prioritize the needs of a particular analytical community, shaping schema and storage to match predictable queries and reports. This item asks whether a data mart is designed to optimize performance for well-defined, predictable uses.



Given Data / Assumptions:

  • Marts are scoped by subject area and governed by known KPIs and dashboards.
  • Models are commonly dimensional (star/snowflake) to accelerate aggregation and slicing.
  • Users expect fast time-to-insight on recurring analytic patterns.


Concept / Approach:
By constraining scope, marts tune storage, indexing, partitioning, and semantic models to the team’s predictable workload (for example, month-end, pipeline conversion, cohort analyses). This contrasts with enterprise hubs that must serve diverse, less predictable needs. Thus, performance optimization around specific, repeatable queries is an intentional property of marts.



Step-by-Step Solution:

Identify target user group and their core KPIs and grain.Model facts and conformed dimensions to reflect those needs.Optimize aggregations, clustering/partitioning, and materialized views for frequent access paths.Benchmark recurring workloads and adjust storage/compute accordingly.


Verification / Alternative check:
Compare query performance on a broad enterprise layer vs. a tuned mart; the mart typically shows lower latency for its scoped questions.



Why Other Options Are Wrong:

  • “Incorrect” conflicts with standard mart design goals.
  • “Only for EDW” reverses the relationship—marts are subsets of an EDW or curated layers.
  • “Real-time only” is unnecessary; batch marts also optimize known workloads.
  • “Depends solely on hardware” ignores modeling and semantic design.


Common Pitfalls:
Over-scoping marts; duplicating logic across marts without conformance; neglecting governance leading to siloed metrics.



Final Answer:
Correct

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