The 1988 Superfund Reauthorization Act prompted a reengineering frenzy that radically altered how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) handles data. That legislation contained a provision requiring the agency to make toxic release reports from more than 675,000 companies available to the public. The agency had to create a standard data structure so that someone other than experts could access the information, and it decided to build a centralized data warehouse and link it to the World Wide Web. That way, information could be made available to the general public, as well as the EPA's 17,000 employees. Using a relational database management system from Oracle Corp., the agency replicated information from 6 EPA databases onto a Web site called Envirofacts (www.epa.gov/enviro/). Reports on everything from air pollution levels and water-discharge permit compliance to hazardous waste site assessments can be retrieved quickly and easily....

Data warehouses hit the Web