The increasing search for computational solutions to support the decision-making led to the development of new technologies that aim to transform the large volume of data in information and knowledge useful. The data warehousing technology emerged with the aim of structuring the data in the best way possible to facilitate its access, making the process more efficient and effective. Along with it, other areas of research evolved and contribute directly or indirectly to achieve this goal, such as: OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing), data mining, artificial intelligence, knowledge discovery in database and business intelligence. The creation of a data warehouse (DW) involves the choice of architecture. Thus, this article presented a discussion on the origin of the DW architecture based in the information systems architecture proposed by Zachman.