What is the difference between a database and a data warehouse?

Question

What is the difference between a database and a data warehouse?

Aren\'t they the same thing, or at least written in the same thing (ie. Oracle RDBMS)?

Answer 1

The simplest way to explain it would be to say that a data warehouse consists of more than just a database. A database is an collection of data organized in some way, but a data warehouse is organized specifically to "facilitate reporting and analysis". This however is not the entire story as data warehousing also contains "the means to retrieve and analyze data, to extract, transform and load data, and to manage the data dictionary are also considered essential components of a data warehousing system".

Data Warehouse