What is Data Warehousing and Why Cryptography Disrupts Traditional Data Warehouses
Analytical tasks in business intelligence (BI) are best served by a data management system known as a data warehouse. Data warehouses are massive, specialised databases whose primary purpose is to store and facilitate analysis and querying over vast volumes of previously collected information. The information in a data warehouse might come from various places, including transactional software and application log files.
With the help of a data warehouse, vast volumes of information from many locations may be easily accessed and analysed. Analysing data helps businesses get the knowledge that may be used to make better decisions. Data scientists and business analysts may benefit significantly from the historical record that accumulates over time. With these features, a data warehouse may serve as an organization’s “single source of truth.”
Further, an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) is an organization’s data repository in one convenient location. Employees use it all around the company to help them make decisions. It provides a standard method for cataloging and displaying information. This feature also allows data to be categorised by topic, allowing for more granular levels of access control. With the use of distributed ledger technology, this single source of truth can be protected via cryptography and an underlying decentralized network which minimizes the risk of a single point of failure during a cyber attack or breach.
Blockchain and Data Warehousing
Improved data warehouse operations result from close coordination among all parties involved in the supply chain. However, weak cooperation and poor transparency are the effects of having several organisations working with many sophisticated technologies.
Blockchain provides secure data sharing and streamlined communication by connecting all essential parties on a single data hub, this central database may be automatically updated with new information in conjunction with the IoT (Internet of Things) and further protected by a decentralized network.
For instance, in the meat industry, the transported beef must be kept at a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius or less. Verifying and recording its temperature at each stage of the supply chain while keeping the data secure and easily accessible is achievable with the help of blockchain and IoT. Since both methods disclose the food’s condition, the whole supply chain may rest comfortably knowing it has been checked, verified and authenticated. Furthermore, Walmart and IBM have shown how using Blockchain technology in the food supply chain can significantly improve food safety.
The warehouse may also employ Smart Contracts, which are contracts written in code that execute themselves based on the conditions agreed upon by both parties. For example, if a linked pallet is delivered, the system would broadcast the confirmation, delivery time, and condition to the blockchain for verification, provided they meet the agreed-upon criteria. If everything checks out, the right people will be paid. Automation of this kind significantly improves productivity, transparency and safety for stakeholders where blockchain plays an instrumental role in protecting the data in rest and data in transit.
What is Happening?
Space and Time, a Web3 native data platform, has raised $20 million in strategic capital from notable investors led by Microsoft’s M12 fund to enable the trustless business logic automation using the company’s patent-pending Proof of SQL encryption.
Many other Web3 prominent communities and angel investors are also part of this fundraising round, in addition to Framework Ventures, HashKey, Foresight Ventures, SevenX Ventures, Polygon, Blizzard the Avalanche Fund, Stratos, Hash Capital, Coin DCX, and others. For $10 million, Space and Time’s inaugural fundraising round was spearheaded by the cryptocurrency investment company Framework Ventures.
Space and Time merge on-chain and off-chain data in a trustless setting to facilitate low-latency transactions and enterprise-scale analytics. Through the protocol’s decentralised data warehousing features, users of Space and Time’s next-generation data platform may create, combine, and query immutable and changeable tables with cryptographic assurances.
The company can speed up engineering and product development processes with these funds. Space and Time’s product and customer adoption will get over 90% of the budget. In order to unleash Web3’s full potential, it will be necessary to provide enterprise-grade tools capable of handling data sets much greater than what can be processed on-chain at now.
As a result of advancements in both Space and Time, the business logic of centralised systems will be automated and directly linked to smart contracts. As a firm that specialises in both platforms and tools, Microsoft is dedicated to helping its partners and customers with all of their technological requirements, including those related to Web3 scenarios and use cases.
By integrating with Azure, Space and Time will make it easier for Azure users to access, manage, and analyse blockchain-native data. In this age of pervasive computing, Microsoft Azure’s complete cloud platform and market-leading identity and security features provide a reliable set of services to build and operate Web3 apps.
Vested Interest Disclosure: The author is an independent contributor publishing via our
What is Space and Time?
To provide smart contract applications with a wide range of enterprise-grade use cases, Space and Time is the first Web3-native decentralised data warehouse that integrates on-chain and off-chain data. The platform, built as part of Chainlink Labs’ Startup with Chainlink project, enables users and developers to link analytics directly to smart contracts using unique Proof of SQL cryptography, expanding the scope of possible use cases and business logic for smart contracts. For Web3 programmers working on DeFi and Web3 games, or any other project requiring next-gen analytics, Space and Time was designed from the bottom up as a multichain data platform.
Final Thoughts on the First Decentralized Data Warehouse
In my opinion, a database management system backed by distributed ledger technology which uses cryptography as a mode of encryption will be the next game changer in the field of data management and will be critical for the future of building web3 applications.
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Image credits: Chris Liverani and Luke Chesser.