Business Intelligence

Zamaneh Jahed

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) is a broad category

of applications and technologies for

gathering, storing, analyzing and providing

access to data to help enterprise users make

better decisions.

1

A Brief History of BI

BI has its root in the MIS reporting system of the 1970.

This term was introduced by Gartner Group in the middle 90s.

Until 2005, BI systems had Artificial intelligence capabilities.

2

3/

Data

sourc

e layer

Data storage, retrieval LayerAnalytical Layer

NightlyReplication Fact Tables

ConformedDimensions

Metadata Registry

Metadata Web Services

Presentation

Portal Portal

Portal Portal

Web Portal

Excel

Flash

Dashboard

Semantic

Security

HTML

SASInformationMaps

BI Architecture

Data Transformation

5

Operational Data Source:

Business Intelligence system collects data from various sources including operation

database, OLTP, ERP, external database and etc.

ETL tools (Extract, Transform, Load):

They are used to pull data from source database, transform the data so that it is

compatible with the data warehouse and then load it into data warehouse.

6

ETL Process

Customer

AccountingEXTRACT

Orders

E

E

E

E

TRANSFORM

T

T

T

T

LOAD

Inventory

BI TargetDatabase

7

Data Warehouse

Data warehouse is a database that stores current and historical data. It consolidates and standardizes information from different operational database so

that the information can be used across the enterprise for management analysis and decision

making.

8

Data Mart

Data Mart is a subset of a data warehouse in which a summarized or highly focused portion

of the organization’s data is placed in a separate database for a specific population of

users.

10

CubeThe basic unit of storage and analysis in Analysis Services is the cube. A cube is a collection of data that’s been aggregated to allow queries to return data quickly.

DimensionEach cube has one or more dimensions, each based on one or more dimension tables. A dimension represents a category for analyzing business data

Fact tableA fact table contains the basic information that you wish to summarize. This might be order detail information, payroll records, or anything else that’s amenable to summing and averaging.

OLTP and OLAP

9

OLTP (On-line Transaction Processing)Major task of traditional relational DBMS.Day to day operations: purchasing, inventory,

banking, manufacturing, payroll, registration, accounting, etc.

Aims at reliable and efficient processing of a large number of transaction and ensuring data consistency.

OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing)Major task of data warehouse system.Data analysis and decision making.Aims at efficient multidimensional processing

of large data volumes.

Customer

Tim

e

Produc

t

Revenue:2,000,000.

Measure

OLAP or multidimension

al analysis: Means you can

analyze ‘measures’ at

the intersection of any

combination of dimensions:

“Show me the Revenue we made from Customer

A for Product 1 in January 2007”

11

12

References

Butuza- A. 2011.Increasing the Business Performances using Business Intelligence

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Step by Step.

Kenneth C. Laudon and Jane P. Laudon, Management Information systems.

Larissa T. Moss, Shaku Atre, Business Intelligence Roadmap: The complete Project Lifecycle for Decision Support Applications.

Turban, Efraim.Business Intelligence: managerial approach.