It is not futuristic, it's just yet another fancy business tool, just like the ERP systems were. Data Warehousing is mainly to learn (or check instantly) why people buy goods. Not much. Or to have a company's all data (not only operational) in one place, for further analysis and statistics. All you do is employ AI algorithms, mostly dated in 70s and present the results before a VP - THAT's the value added.
If I was asked about futuristic IT I'd gladly mention bioinformatics. Predicting proteins, designing drugs - that's a challenge, unlike another oracle 10i DM installation!!! What else - multiagent systems, not just their military applications. M2m mobile communications and so on. Please do not flatten advanced IT topics to some issues taught in schools twenty years ago, having ZERO value in general technology advancement!
I respectfully disagree. Data Warhousing and related technologies account for a large portion of the technological breakthroughs you see today. You talk about pharma industry. When analyzing proteins, studying DNA, examining cell structure... where do you suppose all of those observations are stored and housed? Deciding HOW to store that information so that it can be analyzed... so that it can be usable... is of utmost importance. It is in itself a science and is taught at universities around the glob as such. Take search engines for example... various bots out scouring the web looking for information... tucking that way into a data warehouse such that it can be logically analyzed and searched against... for entertainment... for research... for p0rn. Haha!
Original data warehousing technologies relied upon things like bubble sorts, full table scans the progressed into binary tree searches... then conceptual logic algorithms we see today.
Computers are number crunchers... they follow predefined instructions and act on data... so I would argue that data warehouse techniques are a very key part of technological advancement. Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying it is the end-all and be-all but I think it is a very critical part of the equation.
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