Data Lakes vs. Data Warehouses

Successful analytics depends on choosing the right approach to storing enterprise data. Data warehouses, data marts, and data lakes are distinct technologies for storing business data and guiding business decisions. A data warehouse is a relational database designed for analytical queries, while a data mart is an organizational structure within a data warehouse containing summarized rather than raw data. A data lake is an object or file store that can accommodate large volumes of unstructured data such as free-form text, images, videos and other media, as well as structured data. Data warehouses are the most appropriate repository for structured business data used in analytics, while data lakes can store large quantities of media such as documents, images, videos, and audio. Some new technologies combine characteristics of both data warehouses and data lakes, known as data lakehouses.