Data Collection Frequency, just as the name suggests refers to the time frequency at which data is collected at regular intervals. This often refers to whatever time of the day or the year in any given length of period.

In a data warehouse, the relational database management systems continually gather, extract, transform and load data onto the storage system. Along with these processes, there could be a potentially large number of data consumers simultaneously accessing data warehouses getting aggregated data reports for statistical analysis of both company and industry trends.

Having a log of the data collection frequency of a data warehouse is very important for a lot of reasons.

For one, having knowledge about data collection frequency is extremely important in recording inventory transactions. A company can take a physical inventory to be used later in reconciling quantities recorded in stocks. The inventory transaction records can be used to record inflows (receipts) and outflows (shipments) of inventory at loading stocks. At the final stage, the data of inventory transactions will be batch updated along with implementing extensive and intensive error checking for quantities, negative inventories validated warehouse amounts and valid serial numbers.

All these activities are monitored by the data warehouse system and data collection frequency will be useful in analyzing so many things like if the transactions were legal or illegal and many other related useful information.

In a company data warehouse, data collection solutions are important because they enable the business organization to have real time information and visibility in supply chain. This can greatly improve decision making processes, accuracy in customer information and products or services sales and material availability and reporting data warehouse operations. The data collection frequency can also help increase return of investments (ROI) through improved equipment and labor productivity.

Data collection frequency is particular a great help in advertising and marketing by determining media exposure of, say, an e-commerce website. And e-commerce website needs to have intensive media exposure. In the internet where e-commerce takes place, there are thousands of other competitors. There competitors will do all they can to get top exposure to internet users and buyers. One way to do this is to get top ranks in search engines.

Data collection frequency record is a good determinant for media exposure of the e-commerce site and the products and services it offers. The record for frequency of data collected could be used in calculating the number of prospects which have been reached with different media vehicles at different levels of frequency of exposure.

Sometime, data warehouses can experience problems both hard and software in nature. To troubleshoot problems, IT professionally generally look at the logs to see which point the system encountered such problems. Having a record for data collection frequency can give the troubleshooter some hints about problem. For instance, at some point, data collection was so heavy that it could cause processing to be intensive to the point of hardware breakdown.

Business intelligence is fast evolving and has long been a critical component of a company’s daily operations. As it continues to evolve, the need for real time data warehouse which can provide data consumers with rapid updates becomes even more demanding.

Many companies are finding that they need to refresh their data warehouses on more frequent basis because tools in business intelligence are being used more and more often for decision making in operations. According to may data warehouse specialists, data warehouse is not just about loading data for business analyst to forecast; it is more about daily decisions.

With real time data collection, for sure database managers and data warehouse specialists will surely make more room for recording data collection frequency.