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

A data lake is a repository that stores all of your organization's data — both structured and unstructured. Think of it as a massive storage pool for data in its natural, raw state (like a lake). A data lake can handle the huge volumes of data that most organizations produce without the need to structure it first. Data stored in a data lake can be used to build data pipelines to make it available for?data analytics tools ?to find insights that inform key business decisions.

Data Lake Benefits

Because the large volumes of data in a data lake are not structured before being stored, skilled data scientists or end-to-end?self-service-bi ?tools can gain access to a broader range of data far faster than in a data warehouse.

1. Massive volumes of structured and unstructured data like ERP transactions and call logs can be stored cost-effectively.
2. Data is available for use for faster by keeping it in a raw state.
3. A broader range of data can be analyzed in new ways to gain unexpected and previously unavailable insights.

Similar to a data lake, a data warehouse is a repository for business data. However, unlike a data lake, only highly structured and unified data lives in a data warehouse to support specific business intelligence and analytics needs. Think of it like an actual warehouse, where contents are first processed, then organized into sections and onto shelves (called?data marts ). Data from a warehouse is ready for use to support historical analysis and reporting to inform decision making across an organization’s lines of business.

A?cloud data warehouse ?is a database stored as a managed service in a public cloud and optimized for scalable BI and analytics. It removes the constraint of physical data centers and lets you rapidly grow or shrink your data warehouses to meet changing business budgets and needs.

Data Warehouse Benefits

A data warehouse offers enormous benefits to organizations, especially as it relates to BI and analytics. After the initial work of cleansing and processing, data stored in a warehouse serves as a consistent "single source of truth" which is invaluable to business data analysis, collaboration, and better insights. Three major advantages of a data warehouse include:

1. Little or no data prep needed, making it far easier for analysts and business users to access and analyze this data.
2. Accurate, complete data is available more quickly, so businesses can turn information into insight faster.
3. Unified, harmonized data offers a single source of truth, building trust in?data insights ?and decision-making across business lines.

Hope this post helps you in your Data lake and Data warehouse understanding.