As the central repository for statewide financial and administrative information, ISIS contains awide varietyof data of interest to ISIS users, managers, Budget Office and Legislative analysts and others.The ability to create ad hoc reports from ISIS data is a critical requirement. To satisfy this requirement, ISIS offers 2 options. Users can create reports using data in the production systems, or they can access data using the data marts developed specifically for that purpose.

A data mart is a database, or collection of databases, designed to provide information needed to make strategic decisions for a business or government entity. As opposed to a data warehouse, which has the same purpose and provides enterprise-wide data, a data mart is relatively small and focuses on a particular subject. Because a data mart is more specialized, the data can be manipulated and summarized to meet reporting requirements. The end result is that producing a report using a data mart is much easier than reporting against production data.

OIS currently has eight data marts in production and various stages of development. The standard tool for reporting against the data marts is Business Objects.