The challenge of delivering data from a data warehouse or data mart to end users can be daunting. When I present data-warehousing talks, people often ask me, "But after you build it, how do you give users access to it?" Giving users access to the data they need is what turns a data warehouse into business intelligence (BI). Even in the best warehouse, data is meaningless unless users can quickly access it and easily understand it. Many options exist for delivering BI data to end users, and the methods you choose depend entirely on the end users and how they'll work with the data.

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