Initially, the data warehouse was a historical database, enterprise-wide and centralized, containing data derived from an operational database.
The data in the data warehouse was:
Rows in the tables supporting the operational database were loaded into the data warehouse (the historical database) after they exceeded some well‑defined date.
Data could be queried, but the responses returned only reflected historical information. In this sense, a data warehouse was initially static, and even if a historical data warehouse contained data that was being updated, it would still not be an active data warehouse.