Use of EDW technologies, ETL and reporting tools, to create client reports

Good afternoon,

We are a smaller business creating a 'software as a service' application for clients. We have been using a transaction grain level EDW as a query tool for our in house users. Concurrently customers have asked for special 'reconciliation' level reports. It would seem feasible to use the EDW as the basis for these custom reports. However an internal concern has arisen as to the 'validity' of the EDW data. The business driver is, based on the in place logic to build and verify the transaction grain level data, building custom reports is much simpler. The logic to access required 3NF data is done once, and maintained as an application. In place issues such as data synchronization can be managed.

Is this commonly done? Are there drawbacks beyond assuring data integrity?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and help. Dan

There are really two issues here. First and foremost, the business questioning the validity of the data warehouse data. This is something that needs to be addressed immediately. You need to find out why. Have the users uncovered data issues? Does the DW data accurately reflect what is in the operational systems? Was their a quality review before the DW was released? Did the business sign off on it? If there are problems, resolve them and show the business they have been corrected. If there are no problems, spend time with the busines to help them understand and demonstrate the consistancy with the operational systems.

You can't really proceed until the business is confident with the data in the DW. Once that has been accomplished, then, sure, you can do reconciliations using DW data provided that data is in the timeframe the business is interested in.