DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A COMPUTER BASED FINANCIAL AUDIT SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

According to Shuhua and Yanzhu, (2009) a data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time-variant collection of data in support of management’s decisions. The data warehouse contains granular corporate data. Data in the data warehouse is able to be used for many different purposes,    including sitting and waiting for future requirements which are unknown today Data warehouse provides the primary support for Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Business Intelligence (BI) systems. Data warehouse, combined with On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) operations, has become and more           popular in Decision Support Systems and Business Intelligence systems. The most popular data model of Data warehouse is multidimensional model, which consists of a group of dimension tables and one fact table according to the functional requirements. The purpose of a data warehouse is to ensure the           appropriate data is available to the appropriate end user at the appropriate time. Data warehouses are based on multidimensional modelling. Using On-Line Analytical Processing tools, decision makers navigate through and analyze multidimensional data.

Data warehouse uses a data model that is based on multidimensional data model.This model is also known as a data cube which allows data to be modelled and viewed in multiple dimensions. And the schema of a data warehouse lies on two kinds of elements: facts and dimensions.Facts are used to memorize measures about situations or events. Dimensions are used to analyze these measures,           particularly through aggregations operations (counting, summation, average, etc.). Data Quality (DQ) is the crucial factor in data warehouse creation and data integration. The data warehouse must fail and cause a great economic loss and decision fault without insight analysis of data problems. The quality of data is often evaluated to determine usability and to establish the processes necessary for improving data quality. Data quality may be measured objectively or subjectively. Data quality is a state of completeness, validity, consistency, timeliness and accuracy that make data appropriate for a specific use

Accordingly to Mantel, et al., (2007), Warehouse is where goods and commodities are kept for further clearance.  Narrowing it to Nigeria Ports Authority, there are many warehouses where imported consignment and goods    are stored. This is cleared by carrying the billing papers from post to post,       waiting and wasting much time in seeing who is in charge.  Goods that takes about two weeks to berth into the country takes another two weeks to get cleared. This makes the importers and the clearing agents to run from port to port, in search of where the goods were kept.

The introduction of computer in warehousing will enable importers know which and where their goods are kept, as it will always be stipulates on the bill of laden    papers.  Computer is hereby seen as a way of handling, by systematically organizing them, recording or making notations on them, following up with the appropriate action or the like.