What is a Logical Data Warehouse?

A logical data warehouse (LDW) is usually defined as an architecture layer that rests on top of data warehouse persisted data and allows viewing data without transformation or movement. 

A logical data warehouse set-up allows analysts and other business users to access fresh data without formatting and eliminates the need to transform and consolidate data from disparate sources in order to view it. 

Although a "logical data warehouse" may seem like a redundant term, it essentially provides a more holistic view of an organization's data at any point of time regardless of where that data may reside.

The Snowflake Data Warehouse

A workload within the Snowflake Data Cloud, Snowflake's analytic data warehouse is faster, easier to use, and far more flexible than traditional data warehouse offerings and data warehouse architectures.

Snowflake's data warehouse is not built on top of an existing database or data software platform  It leverages a unique SQL database engine architectured for the cloud. While Snowflake has numerous similarities to other enterprise data warehouses, it also offers powerful new functionality and capabilities.

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