An enterprise data warehouse is often the cornerstone of a business intelligence environment, but a new Forrester Research report says that can make the data store either a key enabler or a painful bottleneck in the delivery or urgent analytics to decision makers.

In a report entitled "Really Urgent Analytics: The Sweet Spot for Real-Time Data Warehousing," Forrester advises intelligence and knowledge management professionals to familiarize themselves with the various approaches for adapting a data warehouse to meet real-time requirements, and, if necessary, consider bypassing the data warehouse altogether.

Unfortunately, real-time is too often an afterthought or a bolt-on to many data-warehouse environments, which are mostly used for accessing historical data sets batch-loaded overnight, or as frequently as every few minutes, but not continuously, Forrester said. That's because most business intelligence use cases are satisfied by such scenarios.