Q.1 Define the term business intelligence tools? Briefly explain how the data from one end gets transformed into information at the other end? [10 Marks]
Answer : Business intelligence tools. The various tools of this suite are:
-Data Integration Tools:
These tools extract, transform and load the data from the source databases to the target database. There are two categories; Data Integrator and Rapid Marts. Data Integrator is an ETL tool with a GUI. Rapid Marts is a packagedETL with pre-built data models for reporting and query analysis that makes initial prototype development easy and fast for ERP applications. The important components of Data Integrator include;
Graphical designer:
This is a GUI used to build and test ETL jobs for data cleansing, validation and auditing.
Data integration server:
This integrates data from different source databases.
Metadata repository:
This repository keeps source and target metadata and the transformation rules.
Administrator:
This is a web-based tool that can be used to start, stop, schedule and monitor ETL jobs.
-BI Platform:
This platform provides a set of common services to deploy, use and manage the tools and applications. These services include providing the security, broadcasting, collaboration, metadata and developer services.
-Reporting Tools and Query & Analysis Tools
: These tools provide the facility for standard reports generation, ad hoc queries and data analysis.
–Performance Management Tools:
These tools help in managing the performance of a business by analyzing and tracking key metrics and goals.
-Business intelligence tools are a type of application software designed to help in making better business decisions. These tools aid in the analysis and presentation of data in a more meaningful way and so play a key role in the strategic planning process of an organization. They illustrate business intelligence in the areas of market research and segmentation, customer profiling, customer support, profitability, and inventory and distribution analysis to name a few.
-Various types of BI systems viz. Decision Support Systems, Executive Information Systems (EIS), Multidimensional Analysis software or OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) tools, data mining tools are discussed further. Whatever is the type, the Business Intelligence capabilities of the system is to let its users slice and dice the information from their organization’s numerous databases without having to wait for their IT departments to develop complex queries and elicit answers.
-Although it is possible to build BI systems without the benefit of data warehouse, most of the systems are an integral part of the user-facing end of the data warehouse in practice. In fact, we can never think of building a data warehouse without BI Systems. That is the reason; sometimes, the words ‘data warehousing’ and ‘business intelligence’ are being used interchangeably.
-Figure 1.1 depicts how the data from one end gets transformed to information at the other end for business information.
Q. 2 what do you mean by data ware house? What are the major concepts and terminology used in the study of data warehouse? [10 Marks]
Q.3 what are the data modelling techniques used in data warehousing environment? [10 Marks]
Q.4 Discuss the categories in which data is divided before structuring it into data ware house? [10 Marks]
Q.5 Discuss the purpose of executive information system in an organization? [10 Marks]
Q.6 Discuss the challenges involved in data integration and coordination process? [10 Marks]
