Data warehousing offers the ability to implement
consumer decision support systems that allow
consumers to identify an interesting subset of fine-grained transactions and produce a customized
report. Example applications such as home sales,
automobile shopping, school choice, and health care
could all benefit from consumer access to detailed
data rather than highly summarized reports. Using
online analytic processing (OLAP) functionality,
consumers could focus on particular characteristics
or geographic areas rather than large-scale trends.
Consumer decision support system challenges
include the availability of and familiarity with enduser data access tools, but several industry trends are
likely to mitigate these concerns.