We are in process of reengineering several of legacy applications and doing fresh database design. Currently each of these legacy applications has it own seperate OLTP database.

To achieve operational efficiciency and have integrated view of data, we are considering that new reengineerined applications access one integrated OLTP database. There will be some entities common to all applications and some entities I guess specific to each application but in one integrated logical database schema.

This is not Datawarhousing kind of integration. This is for financial / Banking applications.

What are your views on it? Has some one tried this before?

If you are aware of any resources on this topic , Please point me to them.

Thanks

Design a normalized OLTP database and use it to create a DW model. A DW model can force you to ask alot of tough questions about the workings of the OLTP. Best and maybe only opportunity to standardize entities and attributes.

What information do you need on the integration that you can think of?

Would you know of anyone who has done it? Any published case study with benefits, I can use to convince my management that having an integrated OLTP database is way to go?

The benefit of your OLTP will be the speed of your transactions, however the quality of your reports will depend on your DW. You should attempt to show them both sides of the coin. You should also carefully consider a phased development and implementation of your OLTP/DW. You should have each phase cover a defined data domain.

I'll hunt around for a business case.