a data - warehousing system allows various areas of an enterprise to view data at varying levels of data freshness . the system acquires data that represents an event in the life of a business enterprise , such as a transaction between the enterprise and one of its customers , and loads this data into a database table . the system then makes the data available for retrieval from the table and stores information indicating when the data was made available for retrieval . in some embodiments , the system also acquires data that is related to and more current than the data representing the event and stores the more current data in the database . the system then stores information indicating when the more current data was stored in the database . such a data warehouse allows decision - makers in the business to see some information up - to - the - moment and other information as it stood at some specific point - in - time , such as at the end of the previous month . the data - warehousing system does this without requiring duplication of data , i . e ., without requiring the replication of data in multiple databases or tables . the system allows the enterprise to maintain all of its data in a single database with refresh periods as short as the enterprise wishes . departments that demand data that changes less frequently can view the data as it stood at some point prior to the last refresh .