Traditionally, data warehouses have had a one-way relationship with the transaction systems that supply the raw data. However, with the advent of SOA, the data warehouse and the transaction systems can be looped, each feeding the other. This is key for effective business intelligence and business analytics. In his report," Service Oriented Architecture Assimilates Data Warehousing," Lou Agosta, an analyst at Forrester Research, describes the feedback loop:

Third-generation data warehouses go beyond forecasting and decision support with their high volumes, large numbers of users, and complex workloads to close the loop from the data warehouse to the transactional systems.