A method and apparatus for transporting data for a data warehousing application. Data is extracted from one or more source containing data having a standard data structure and is translated into data that contains meaningful business terms. The translated data is then stored. In the present embodiment, an analytic business component is operable for extracting data from the source, translating the extracted data and for storing the translated data into a staging area. The translated data is then processed to obtain data having a common structure. In the present embodiment, a source adapter processes the translated data to obtain data having a common structure. The data having a common structure is then transformed into a format suitable for loading into a data mart. In the present embodiment, an analytic data interface receives the data having a common structure and transforms the data for loading into a data warehouse. The data is then stored in a data warehouse.