MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

1/29

Business Intelligence and Tools Unit 15

Sikkim Manipal University Page No.: 307

Unit 15 Implementing Business Intelligence

Structure

15.1 Introduction

Objectives

15.2 Business Intelligence Platform

15.3 Business Intelligence Platform Capability Matrix

15.4 BI Target Database

15.5 Data Mart

15.6 BI Products and Vendor

The Big Four Business Intelligence vendors

15.7 Summary

15.8 Terminal Question

15.9 Answers

15.10 Case Study

15.11 Glossary

15.1 Introduction

By now you must be familiar with the strategies followed for building a

successful BI application. In this unit, you will read about various aspects

governing the choice the right platform for any BI. We will discuss about BI

products and vendors. The Business Intelligence platform permits to rapidly

obtain information from the corporate systems and databases.

The BI solutions also protect the business users from the complexities of the

database and also its underlying technologies. The BI platform presents the

data in the context of common business terms that are intuitive, as well as

shared across the enterprise. A BI platform only gives value if the people

use it.

The BI Capability matrix serves as a high-level guide to understand the

technical capabilities of each vendor's shipping products. Data mart is a

database which has the same characteristics as that of a data warehouse,

and is usually smaller and is focused on the data for one division or one

workgroup within an enterprise. The BI platforms to work well with the

relevant enterprise and information management applications. The

integrated approach along with the fact that many enterprises already have
http://www.sdgcomputing.com/glossary.htm#DataWarehousehttp://www.sdgcomputing.com/glossary.htm#DataWarehouse

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

2/29



the vendors ERP and the information management applications in place is

influencing the customers to standardise on one of the BI platforms.Learning Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:

Explain the factors affecting a platform choice for BI.

Identify the factors for choosing specific database.

Describe about the data mart and its significance.

Identify the BI products and vendors.

15.2 Business Intelligence Platform

The requirement for Business Intelligence (BI) has never been bigger as the

gap between the amount of data available and the ability to analyse and

understand it is broadening. The organisations relationships often go

beyond the enterprise to include the suppliers, customers and investors.

Today, it is becoming even more important that the decision makers from

those on the shop floors to those in the executive boardrooms to obtain the

information they need at the right time and right format. With an easy-to -

use secure, scalable and extensible BI solution, both the internal and

external users can just obtain it.

The Business Intelligence platform permits to rapidly obtain information from

the corporate systems and databases. It even allows querying, reporting,analysing and sharing within and beyond the enterprise for more useful

tracking, understanding and management of business operations.

BI platform change the dissimilar, granular information scattered across the

multiple systems into a meaningful, reusable business definitions to make

the analytical insight across the organisation. For example, a reusable

reporting dimension can be defined around how the sales territories are

organised, making the other employees to create reports and analyses

using the common definitions. As business requirements evolve, the end

users can develop new reports and also refine their own analyses, while

making sure one version of the truth through the common definitions ofbusiness entities, for example the products, markets, the profit margins, and

more.

If the employees throughout the organisation are going to rely on the

Business Intelligence, then it is important to deliver a system that is easy

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

3/29



and intuitive to use. If the users find the tools difficult to use, or if they

require advanced technical knowledge to be successful, then the value ofthe system gets reduced. Enterprise 6 allows the users to easily generate

reports, analyse the data for themselves, and also share the insights

regarding the same. The use of the common business terms in combination

with the simple drag-and-drop report creation will please the employees at

all the skill levels. The integration of querying, reporting, and analysing into

a single interface will remove the need to learn many products. Additionally,

a personalised BI portal allows the users to save the reports in a custom

document hierarchy and also to easily search for the documents using the

keywords and other attributes.

BI should also allow all the users to get the answers for the specific dataneeds or the organisational problems. The decision makers require self-

sufficiency and independence to generate reports as and when they are

needed. This needs the end users to be able to formulate the business

questions and also conduct queries and analysis in support of the decision-

making process. Compared to other BI platforms that need IT to generate

reports or custom build Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) cubes, the

Business Objects allows the business users to access and analyse the data

themselves. This ad hoc analysis will result in better understanding of the

business issues and also give the organisation the capacity to make

decisions quickly and effectively.

The BI solutions also protect the business users from the complexities of the

database and also its underlying technologies. The BI platform presents the

data in the context of common business terms that are intuitive, as well as

shared across the enterprise. The end result is that the users can spend

less time in gathering the information and more time in analysing it to make

more effective decisions.

An original semantic layer insulates the business users from the underlying

data complexity. The Business Objects users can get immediate insight into

the data with the on-report analysis. The powerful analytic functions willpermit quick drill down into the data, for example, from the region to state to

city, or slice and dice to get different views of the data, for example, the

sales by product or the sales by region.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

4/29



The other one-click functions such as the table pivot, the monthly variance,

the ranking, the alerts, and the filters can help in understanding theinformation. These types of calculations give important analytical value-add

on top of the raw data from the source systems.

Best-in-class web-based reporting and analysis

Usually, accessing the analytic information through a web browser restricted

the users to simplistic reports, and little if any interactive analysis. The Web

Intelligence gives the power of the web to reach the broadest audience of

internal and external users at the lowest possible cost, delivering intuitive

and rich analysis to the thin-client users. Web users can access and also

create new reports, sort and filter data, add calculations and advanced

formatting, drill down to explore the information in greater detail, or drill itthrough to other related reports.

Leveraging the information assets

Important data is often spread across a wide range of sources and systems.

The report needs information that is in the Enterprise Resource Planning

(ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and other application

systems, as well as spreadsheets, OLAP databases, or data warehouses.

The BI platform can access and leverage all these data sources, bringing

together the right information to make sure that a complete picture of the

enterprise is available to drive the important business decisions.For example, within a single report user can combine data from a data mart

with the data from a spreadsheet, plus additional data from an OLAP cube

or a CRM system. The semantic layer within the BI platform insulates the

users from the particular data constructs and complexities of all of the

underlying sources.

Serving the needs of every user

The platform querying, reporting, and analysing products will deliver

easy-to-use analysis to all kinds of users. Whether accessing information in

a thin-client environment with Web Intelligence, Creating reports in

Windows, or analysing data in Microsoft Excel, the BI platform makes sure

that all the employees leverage the same common business definitions and

information to give a consistent basis for decision making across the

enterprise.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

5/29



People at all levels of an organisation are responsible for making decisions

which can affect the enterprise performance. And in todays extremelycompetitive business environment, good decision making needs access to

accurate and timely information throughout the organisation, along with the

ability to share knowledge with the partners and the customers.

With Enterprise 6, delivery of the precise and significant information to the

mass audience through the report broadcasting can be obtained. The

Enterprise 6 serves the needs of the organisation, the partners, and all the

business users by giving Business Objects Info View, a business

intelligence portal, and Business Objects Broadcast Agent, a mechanism for

distributing information in different formats including the Business Object

reports, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), Excel, and Adobe Acrobat.The users can schedule or send reports based on the alert criteria to make

sure the timely information delivery.

Comprehensive delivery options

While delivering the information to the mass audience, it is vital to give an

interface that serves all the users, irrespective of the analytic or the

technical skills. Thus, the information delivery process will have to be both

intuitive and easy to follow. Moreover, it has to support the popular formats

and the tools that the users can expect.

The Enterprise 6 will provide the information in the format designed tosupport all the required skill levels. Users can access the information and

the reports through the portal or the dashboard, through email, or through

generally used desktop applications like the Microsoft Excel and the Adobe

Acrobat.

Whatever may be the information delivery preference, all the users will have

to get the value from the BI Information in the right format and at the right

time, whether accessed by the employee over the intranet, or by the

customer or partner through the extranet.

The Information Delivery options will support the popular formats such as

the HTML, Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Excel.

Performance and scalability

Getting the most out of the BI solution requires the enterprise-class

performance and the scalability. The users will expect fast response times

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

6/29



as they navigate and analyse the data irrespective of whether the system is

deployed to a few users in the department or to thousands of users acrossthe enterprise. The BI platform gives fast response times to the interactive

users in the small or the large deployments. The Comprehensive auditing

will allow continuous refinement and tuning of the information resources.

Centralised administration and security

The users information requirements can differ based on the job role, the

department, the specific projects, and factors. However, some information

may be sensitive, so that only certain users or groups will be allowed to

access it. The BI platform gives a robust security model that integrates with

the existing security and the authentication systems, making sure that the

users can only access the reports and the information planned for them.

Information is the organisations most valuable asset, and will have to

control who can have access to it. To extend the business intelligence

solution to the suppliers, the partners, or the customers, it can become even

more significant to make sure a secure environment that can give both the

control and the flexibility, from anywhere and at any time.

Continuous refinement of the information resources

A BI platform only gives value if the people use it. Reports have to answer

the end users most important business questions. Further, the information

overload can result in the wake of not used or unwanted reports.

The BI platform is the only BI solution which gives report auditing

capabilities to help the organisation in understanding the reports which can

be used by the largest number of users, and the reports which are of no

value to the end users. This information can be used to improve the target

and to tune the available reports to make sure that the users obtain

maximum value from the available reports.

The most valuable BI platform on the market

The BI platform is lessening the gap between the availability of the

information and the capability to analyse and understand it. This is because

it is easy to use, secure, scalable, and extend, so both the business and the

technical users can quickly extract the information from the corporate

systems and the databases. They can query, report, analyse, and share

within and beyond the enterprise for the more effective tracking,

understanding, and management of the business operations.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

7/29



15.3 Business Intelligence Platform Capability Matrix

The Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Capability Matrix sets the technicaldetails of the BI Platform Capabilities and also valuates the leading BI

platform products based on the technical capabilities. The matrix serves as

a high-level guide to understand the technical capabilities of each vendor's

shipping products. Beyond the vendor selection, the capability matrix should

basically be used as an architectural guide to what should be included in a

comprehensive and well-balanced BI platform. Organisations should decide

the capabilities that are required based on the requirements.

The Key Findings are as follows:

While the core functionality of the offerings such as reporting, ad hoc

query and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) in the market isreaching similarity, there exists some major differences in each vendors

strategy in optimising the query performance. There are three dominant

approaches, the conventional pre-calculated Multidimensional OLAP

(MOLAP) architecture which loads detailed data into memory, and

optimises the relational queries with the aggregate tables, and also

caches and multipasses Structured Query Language (SQL).

Vendors who have built their technology have better integrated

infrastructure than those who have grown through acquisition. However,

most of the vendors have done a reasonably good job of integrating

dissimilar products by leveraging the same security and metadatainfrastructure.

Scorecards are difficult to differentiate. Most of the vendors with a

scorecard product are able to meet all the requirements requested

where the technology is the easy part. The difficult part of deploying a

scorecard is defining the key performance indicators, aligning the

metrics and then applying it to a performance management

methodology.

There are 12 capabilities in BI platform and can be divided into integration,

information delivery and analysis. Figure 15.1 shows the BI platform

capabilities.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

8/29



Business Intelligence Platform

Information

Delivery

Reporting

Dashboards

Ad Hoc Query

Microsoft Office

integration

Integration

BI Infrastructure

MetadataManagement

Development

Environment

Workflow and

Collaboartion

Analysis

OLAP

Visualisation

Predictive

Modelling and

Data Mining

Scorecarding

Figure 15.1: BI Platform Capabilities

Presently, in BI platform more concentration is on information delivery but

the analysis and integration which are the two categories also play an

important role in BI deployments. Organisations must boost their analysis

capabilities to discover new insights which will lead to competitive

differentiation and performance improvement. The BI platforms should

improve their analysis capabilities to find out new insights that can lead to

competitive differentiation and performance improvement. It should also

improve its integration capabilities to put together the analytical insights

back into the business at both the strategic and process level. The

Information delivery capabilities will always be required to inform the

stakeholders to allow them to constantly monitor the performance of the

business and also take corrective action when the actual values are different

from the projected goals. Only the combination of all the three capabilitycategories (integration, information delivery and analysis) can build a

platform which can deliver BI pervasively to the business.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

9/29



1. Information Delivery

There are four BI platform capabilities in the information delivery categorywhich are reports, dashboards, ad hoc query and Microsoft Office

Integration. User organisations are investing heavily in all of these four

capabilities which are pulling many vendors including the nontraditional BI

vendors into the space. The relative similarity across most of the vendors'

information delivery offerings will force most of the organisations to

validate the vendor spend in this area. More costly BI platform vendors

will have to distinguish themselves in the analysis and the integration

categories to maintain the higher prices.

a. Reports: This capability allows the creation of formatted and

interactive reports with extremely scalable distribution and schedulingcapabilities. Interactive reporting allows the users to create, display

and save the prompts that will filter the data and the layout of the

report. The BI platform vendors should also handle a broad array of

reporting styles for example, financial, operational or performance

dashboards with data from both the operational and the analytical

sources. The reports should allow the cascading parameters. For

example, when a user drills down from an annual sales report to a

monthly view, this monthly view has to be maintained while going to

another report. Finally, this capability should help in easy to search

and also navigate the information in the report, as well as therepository of reports.

b. Dashboards: This capability is a subset of reports which consists of

the ability to publish key performance metrics to a Web-based

interface with the display of information, which includes dials, gauges

and traffic lights. Dashboards should give a positive or negative trend

indicator and a colour-coded summary which shows the state of each

metric compared to an established aim or threshold. The end users

should be able to create their own performance metrics. Real-time

update of the dashboards to reflect the events or the scheduled

updates to the metrics is vital for the BI applications to focus on theoperational tasks. Finally, the dashboards should allow the difficult

alerts and notifications based not just on one metric but on groups of

related metrics.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

10/29



c. Ad Hoc Query: This capability allows the end users to build their own

reports by asking for ad hoc queries. A business-friendly semantic

layer which hides the difficulty of the underlying data sources is a

main ingredient. Conventionally, the ad hoc query capability has been

limited to just the data warehouse but, increasingly, ad hoc queries

will be aimed at a broader set of sources. Performance is a main

issue for the users performing ad hoc queries. Hence, the BI platforms

that give this capability should fulfill many requirements to improve the

query performance which includes aggregate awareness, caching,

multi-pass SQL, query governance, performance auditing and native

SQL commands. Another issue is the capability to harness the ad hoc

queries created by the end users so that they can be easily turned

into standard reports and publishing systems.

d. Microsoft Office Integration: In many deployments, the BI platform

is used at the middle tier to manage, secure and also execute the BI

tasks; while the Microsoft Office, particularly Excel, will act as the BI

client. At a minimum, the BI platforms must be able to give the reports

in the Excel while keeping the report format and allowing the Excel

users to easily refresh the data. Increasingly, the BI platforms are able

to deploy all the conventional functionality such as parameterised

reporting, dashboards, scorecards and OLAP in an Excel client. Some

of the BI platforms extend the functionality beyond the Excel to

include other Office applications, such as the Word and the

PowerPoint. The advanced functionality includes the ability to authornew reports in Microsoft Office which can be saved back to the middle

tier BI server, and the ability to centrally control and secure the BI

documents in Office.

2. Integration

There are four BI platform capabilities in the integration category. They

are infrastructure, metadata, development, and workflow and

collaboration. Of all the BI platform capability categories, this is the least

mature. Most of the BI platform vendors do a reasonable job of giving an

integrated infrastructure, including the security, metadata and

administration tools, but some vendors with an aggressive acquisitionstrategy will find it difficult to maintain. Most of the BI metadata is used as

a semantic layer for self-service reporting. BI metadata must play a bigger

role in standardising the dimensions, hierarchies, measures and

performance metrics across the organisation. However, the BI metadata

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

11/29



must talk to more applications than just that same vendor's reporting

tools. The development environment must go beyond the programmaticSoftware Development Kits (SDKs) to include more visual development

functionality and more dependence on Web services. Finally, as the BI

becomes more process driven, the BI platforms will require better

integration with workflow and collaboration offerings.

a. Infrastructure: To assess this category, each BI platform has to be

integrated, including the common security, metadata, administration,

portal integration, object model, query engine and also shared look-

and-feel. The real litmus test for the tightly integrated infrastructure is

the capability to deploy all the BI functionality with a single

installation. Analysts have examined other infrastructure attributes,including the support for workload balance, zero footprint clients, 64-

bit computing, Ajax, Unicode along with the ability to run on multiple

operating systems or databases.

b. Metadata: Strong metadata is the vital capability of a BI platform.

Not only should all the tools leverage the same metadata, but the

offering should also give a strong way to capture, store, re use and

publish the metadata objects. To assess a BI platform's capability in

this area, analysts look for a single repository for different types of BI

metadata, which includes the dimensions, hierarchies, measures,

performance metrics and report design objects. The BI platformvendors were asked if multiple and simplified views of the metadata

based on subject area domain could be supported. The data lineage

and the impact analysis were also vital requirements. The BI

platforms were also assessed on a range of other features,

including: the ability to understand the metadata; search ability and

openness of the metadata along with the ability to promote and

reuse the metadata across various users, developers and application

types.

c. Development: The BI platform should give a set of programmatic

development tools, along with a Software Developer's Kit, to buildthe BI applications and also integrate them into a business process

and put them in another application. In addition, the BI platform

should allow the developers to build the BI applications without

coding by using wizards and drag-and-drop tools for a graphical

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

12/29



assembly process. The development environment should also

support the Web services to do common tasks such as scheduling,delivery, administration and management.

d. Workflow and Collaboration: This capability allow the BI users to

both share and discuss the information through the public folders or

the discussion threads, and also integrate the BI results within the

context of a particular business process. With the help of this

capability, the BI application can assign and track events or tasks

given to particular users. Often, this capability is provided by

integration with a separate portal or workflow tool. The analysts

evaluate each BI platform's ability to activate a task-specific to the

workflow based on the outcome of the BI-generated data. The easewith which the users can build and edit the business rules to

automate the workflow was a major requirement.

3. Analysis: There are four BI platform capabilities present in the analysis

category. They are OLAP, predictive modeling, scorecards and

visualisation. To date, the enormous majority of the organisations focus

on just the OLAP capability. But with the increasing interest in the

process- and strategy-driven BI, the need for predictive modelling and

scorecards will also increase. Predictive modelling is required to

determine in before hand the outcome of different business events. This

information when used rightly can promote better planning and optimise

the business processes. The Scorecards can be used to bring association

to the business by making performance metrics and the cause-and-effect

relationships which will be visible to the entire organisation. Finally, the

visualisation, which uses the best practices to display the data in an

efficient manner can be increasingly adopted by the BI platform vendors

to make the solutions easier to consume by a wider set of users.

a. OLAP: This capability allows the end users to analyse the data with

extremely fast query and calculation, performance, allowing a style of

analysis known as "slice and dice." This capability can span a range

of storage architectures for example, relational, multidimensional and

in-memory. The analysts look for the capability of the users to easily

define the functions and add or edit the dimension members. The BI

platforms also checked the capability to execute sophisticated sorting

or ranking, alternate hierarchies, inter-row calculations, asymmetric

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

13/29



hierarchies and drilling down on measures. Performance attributes,

such as the capability to perform Relational OLAP (ROLAP)calculations, where the in-memory aggregations and trickle feed cube

loading are also examined.

b. Visualisation: This capability allows the different aspects of the data

to be displayed more efficiently by using interactive pictures and

charts instead of the rows and columns. BI platforms were assessed

on the ability to project multidimensional data in a two-dimensional

screen with the help of the size, shape and colour of objects to show

dimensionality. The capability to project data onto any physical design

surface such as a physical store, airplane or stadium can also be

examined. Finally, the analysts look for BI platforms that give a widerange of chart types beyond the basic bar and pie charts, to include

the chart types such as the heat maps and the geographic maps.

Credit can be given to the BI platforms that allowed easy interactivity

with the charts.

c. Predictive Modelling and Data Mining: This capability allows the

organisations to separate the categorical variables and also estimate

the continuous variables using the advanced mathematical

techniques. Most of the BI platforms can give basic comparative

statistics. The analysts assessed the BI platforms on the capability to

build predictive models based on the more sophisticated algorithmsperforming the analysis such as:

o Forecasting

o Classification

o Attribute importance

o Clustering

o Affinity analysis

o Optimisation

The BI platforms were assessed on the capability to handle a

predictive modelling Environment which includes:

o Experimental designo Data transformations

o Model management

o Model assessment

o Real-time/batch scoring.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

14/29



d. Scorecards: This capability takes the metrics displayed in the

dashboard a step further by applying them to the strategy map whichaligns the key performance metrics with the success of the strategic

objectives. However, the scorecard involves the use of a performance

management methodology such as the "balanced scorecard"

framework or the Six Sigma. The analysts assessed the BI platforms

on the capability to design the strategy maps, support the common

scorecard methods, apply the performance management

methodologies, encourage the association about the performance

metrics, and summarise, display, and group the performance metrics.

Most of the vendors with a scorecard product were able to meet all

the demands requested. Some of the vendors without a formally

designated scorecard product were able to show some scorecard

functionality with the reporting and dashboard products.

Activity 1:

CVD is Manufacturing Company which is using the BI tool to help its

business activities including the sales department and the finance

department. List the benefits that the Company has got by using a BI tool.

Self Assessment Questions

1. MOLAP stands for __________________.

2. The ___________ users can get immediate insight into the data with the

on-report analysis.

3. Strong ____________ is the vital capability of a BI platform.

4. ___________ is a main issue for the users performing ad hoc queries.

5. There are 13 capabilities in BI platform. (True/False)

15.4 BI Target Database

Converse to the data-in philosophy that is the data entry of the operational

systems, the data-out philosophy that is the reporting and querying of the BI

applications consists of the following design considerations: The BI target databases are designed for the simplified, high-

performance data retrieval, and not for the efficiency of the data storage

and maintenance which is vital design considerations for the operational

databases.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

15/29



The data redundancy elimination or minimisation of the data redundancy

is not a goal in designing the BI target databases. If a choice has to bemade, then the data redundancy is chosen over the complexity, but the

redundancy will have to be controlled. The redundant data will have to

be consistent and reconcilable.

The essential presumptions for designing the BI target databases are:

The data is stored in a way that it is easily accessible in ways that are of

interest to the business people.

The design is driven by the access and the usage.

The normalised design is not essentially instinctive for a business

person and can therefore become quite complex.

The BI data cannot be invented. All the data in the BI target databases

should be present in or be derivable from the current internal or the

external operational data sources.

A main decision for all the BI applications is at what level, and whether or

not, to store the summarised data in the BI target databases. The database

administrator and the lead developer will have to choose to store both the

detailed and summarised data, either together in the same BI target

database or in the different BI target databases. This database design

decision should be based on the access and the usage requirements.

Logical Database DesignAs there are differences in the goal and purpose between the operational

systems and the BI applications, various database design techniques have

been prepared for the BI target databases. The highly denormalised designs

store the aggregated and the summarised data in a multidimensional

fashion. The logical database designs are documented as the physical data

models along with the technical metadata.

The aggregation and summarisation are possibly the most important

contributors to the good BI application performance. If most of the business

analysts have to see the data summarised, these totals have to be pre-

calculated and stored for the fast retrieval. It is necessary to discuss the

level of granularity with the business representative, along with the other

business analysts who can use the BI target databases as they will

anticipate the database design to let them to drill down to some level of

detail.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

16/29



The multidimensional database designs support the fast retrieval of a broad

range of data. There are two popular multidimensional design techniquesand they are the star schema and snowflake schema.

The Star Schema

Star schema1, is the simplest of dimensional modelling. It consists of few

fact tables (or just one) referencing few other dimension tables. The

resulting schema resembles a starburst with the central fact table and

surrounding dimensional table in radial pattern.

In the data is represented as an array of pre-calculated values, called facts,

around which the analysis is performed. These pre-calculated facts

represent the atomic operational data values which have been pre-

summarised by certain dimensions, such as the customer, the product, andthe time. A dimension in the star schema is similar to the entity in a logical

data model; it is a business object about the data which is collected for the

business process.

The star schema reflects the view of the business query. As the name

indicates, the star schema has a single object in the middle, called the fact

table, which is linked in a radial fashion to many objects, called the

dimension tables. The following figure 15.2 gives an example of a star

schema which is for a store.

TIME

STORE

PRODUCT

CUSTOMER

FACT

TIME ID

DAY OF WEEK

WEEK OF MONTH

MONTH

YEAR

CENTUARY

SEASON NAME

STORE ID

STORE ADDRESS

SQUARE FEET

DISTRICT NAME

DISTRICTLOCATION

REGION CODE

REGION MANAGER

PRODUCT ID

PRODUCT NAME

PRODUCT

CATEGORY

PRODUCT PRICE

PRODUCT SIZE

PRODUCT COLOUR

CUSTOMER ID

CUSTOMER NAME

CUSTOMER PHONE

CUSTOMER

INCOME

CUSTOMER AGE

CUSTOMERGENDER

TIME ID

STORE ID

PRODUCT ID

CUSTOMER ID

DOLLAR SALES

UNIT SALES

PAYMENT TYPE

Figure 15.1: Star schema

1A schema is a collection of database objects. A schema is owned by a database user and has the

same name as that user.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

17/29



A star schema has only two levels:

A Fact table A series of single-level dimension tables

The Fact tables possess many characteristics. It

Shows an important business event that is a business activity or

transaction, such as s sale or a claim.

Is the quantifiable part of the business event and are the columns in the

fact table.

Relates to the related dimension tables that is the business objects,

such as the customer or the product.

Will have a long composite key consisting of the primary keys of the

related dimension tables that are the foreign keys in the fact table.

The number of extremely redundant fact tables will exist for a given subject

area. Each of the fact table can contain various aggregation levels of the

same data.

The Dimension tables have various characteristics. Dimension tables:

Are the business objects, which can represent the various views from

which the facts in a fact table can be viewed and analysed.

Basically have a one-attribute primary key.

Are denormalised2 that is the data belonging together from a particular

business perspective, such as the roll-up hierarchy, is put together into

one table. This will produce some redundant data values, which is

acceptable in the design schema.

Are short and wide; the tables have reasonably few rows which can be

short, but there are many columns in the tables which can be wide.

Whenever possible, will have to be shared by the fact tables that is

conformed dimensions.

Of the time is one dimension with the attributes describing the

timestamp, such as the calendar year, the quarter season, the fiscal

period, or the accounting period. Some other examples of the commondimension tables are the customers, product, policy, sales

representative, region, and store.

2Denormalisation is basically applied in the case the database is over-normalised and no. of joins

required to fetch the data are too much. It is a purposeful redundancy of some of the data to avoid theoverhead of joins.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

18/29



Most of the multidimensional DBMSs successfully deal with the optimisation

of a large multi-table JOINs.One method for finding whether the DBMS is resolving the query

successfully is to look at the optimised plan for the query. For example:

If the fact table is the last table JOINed, this is to show optimisation. If

the fact table is somewhere in the middle, or even somewhere in the

beginning, the DBMS might not resolve the JOIN optimally unless it uses

more sophisticated JOIN algorithms.

If the DBMS does not use the Cartesian product JOINs, then the DBMS

might take the qualifying row keys and relate them to a composite fact

table index, or it might apply them through an index intersection against

the multiple fact table single- column indices.

In either case, check that the DBMS is executing the multidimensional

queries in the most useful manner since the performance depends on it.

The star schema is the most accepted database design schema for the BI

applications for many reasons and they are:

Yielding the best performance for the trend analysis, queries and reports

which will include the years of historical data.

Providing maximum flexibility for the multidimensional data analysis.

Supporting most of the relational DBMS vendors with the changes to the

DBMS optimiser. Simplifying makes the complex data analysis much less complicated

than with a standard normalised design.

It is easier to ask the questions such as the following:

o Which insurance broker is providing the most or the least lucrative

business?

o What are the most regularly occurring types of claims from the

insurance broker?

o When are the claims occurring?

Selecting the address and searching the schemes which require fewseeks, are rather only one per retrieval

Running many operations in parallel.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

19/29



Partitioning

Make sure that the tables are partitioned well across the multiple disks. Thisis mainly important for the Very Large Data Bases (VLDB) where the fact

tables can reach many hundred gigabytes. Partitioning allows the data of

one logical table to be distributed across many physical datasets. The

physical data distribution is based on a partitioning column, which is mostly

date. Since, partitioning the column must be part of the table's primary key,

partitioning the column cannot be a derived column, and also it cannot

contain NULL values. Partitioning allows to keep a back up and to restore a

portion of the table without affecting the availability of other portions of the

same table which are not being backed up or restored.

ClusteringThe cluster table requirement should be defined, and physically co-locate to

the related tables on the disk drive. Clustering is a very helpful technique for

the sequential access of huge amounts of data. Clustering is achieved

through the clustering indices that decide in which sequential order the rows

in the tables have to be physically stored in the datasets. Clustering the

primary keys of each of the table has to be done to avoid page splits, that is,

to ensure that the new rows inserted into the tables will be kept sequentially

on the disk according to the columns in the clustering index. This technique

can be used to significantly enhance the performance because the

sequential access of the data is the norm in the BI applications. When therows of a table are no longer kept in the same order as it in the clustering

index that is data fragmentation then the performance will suffer and the

table will have to be reorganised.

Indexing

Two extreme indexing strategies are to index everything and the other is to

index nothing neither of the two is advisable. Instead of curving to these

extremes, index the columns which are regularly searched and have a high

distribution in values, such as Account Open Date. Do not index the

columns that have a low distribution in values, such as Gender Code.

Once which columns to index has been decided, decide the index strategy

that have to be used. Most of the DBMSs give various access methods to

select from, either a sequential access or a direct access using any of the

following well-known indexing algorithms:

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

20/29



B-tree

Hash Binary

Sparse

Reorganisations

Rarely there will need to reorganise the databases because the incremental

loads will have to fragment the datasets over time, and the inserted rows will

no longer be kept in a logical sequence. The fragmentation might result in

long data retrieval chains and the performance can drop off importantly.

Most DBMSs give the reorganisation routines to rearrange the fragmented

database in order to get back the space occupied by the deleted data or to

move the records from the overflow areas into a free space in the primedata areas.

The basic activities involved in reorganising a database are to copy the old

database onto another device, re block the rows, and to reload them. This is

not a small effort for the BI target databases. The good news is that all the

DBMSs can carry out a partial reorganisation routine on the database

partitions, which is why the database administrator partitions the BI target

databases.

Backup and recovery

Since the software and the hardware may fail. It is important to set up the

backup and the recovery procedures. The DBMSs give utilities to take the

full backups along with the incremental backups. Many organisations are

under the mistaken impression that the BI target databases can be

recreated from the original source data. They forget to realise that it might

take a very long time to reestablish the BI target databases if they have to

rerun all the early and the historical Extract/Transform/Load (ETL)

programs-taking the original source files that are available.

Disaster recovery is an issue for the BI applications. If the back tapes or

cartridges are damaged during a disaster, it can be hard to recreate the BI

target databases, and can take a very long time. From the same reason,many companies prefer to store their database backups in remote locations.

Snowflake Schema: In snowflake schema, few dimension tables are

normalised and hence the data are further broken into additional tables. The

resulting schema resembles a snowflake.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

21/29



(For additional information on star schema and snowflake schema, refer to

Introduction to Data Warehousing)

15.5 Data Mart

Data mart is a database which has the same characteristics as that of a

data warehouse, and is usually smaller and is focused on the data for one

division or one workgroup within an enterprise.

There are three different views of the place of the data mart in the world of

data warehousing.

Specialised data marts are created with a subset of the information in

the data warehouse. These are easier to use because they only have

the specific information that the specific user group will require. The use

of many data marts allows the querying load to be spread among the

various computers. This can minimise the network traffic.

Free-standing data marts are developed, independent from the data

warehouse. The information for the data mart might come from just one

legacy system and is faster and cheaper to develop a different data mart

instead of building an enterprise-wide data warehouse with the data

marts got from it. The drawback of the solution is that the company's

data will not be integrated and thus violates one of the Bill Inmon's

original defining features of the data warehouse. If various separate data

marts are built using the strategy, then it will usually contain data that is

duplicated and inconsistent.

The data mart is the prototype or the first step in the data warehousing

process. An enterprise picks the division or the group that would benefit

most from the data-based knowledge. A data mart is built with the

group's data. The additional type of information is added to the data mart

as the time goes on until it is turned into the data warehouse.

Data mart possibly has a marketing advantage over data warehouse. The

entire data warehousing process is about creating data-based knowledge

and bring that knowledge to people. A warehouse is a place where thingsare kept away. A mart is a suitable place to buy something. Most of the data

warehousing professionals include quick access to the information as a

defining feature of the term 'data warehouse'. There are three keys to

implement faster and are as follows:
http://www.sdgcomputing.com/glossary.htm#DataWarehousehttp://www.sdgcomputing.com/glossary.htm#DataWarehouse

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

22/29



Follow an iterative, phased methodology: Most of the time can be

spent on the project focusing on the particular business value the enduser wants and the over several iterations build the solution into the

vision

Hold to a fixed time for each phase: If two weeks are kept aside for

the scope for example stick to the window. Do not extend any phase

especially the early ones unless the project is doomed to failure.

Avoid scope creep at all costs: Though costly and dangerous in any

project like the data warehousing or otherwise, scope creep like while

adding feature requests keep creeping in the long past the cutoff point

can destroy a data mart effort. By adding the last-minute features and

probably add complexity to the data mart with only slight incremental

business value if any so the little can put the project at risk.

15.6 BI Products and Vendor

There are different BI products and vendors which are available in the

market. According to the use, the BI products can be categorised as Data

storage and management, information delivery, query, reporting and

analysis and performance management which are described as follows:

Data Storage and Management

A good scalable data storage and management solution is the core of betterbusiness intelligence. To keep up with the growing volumes of data, there is

need for flexibility and trustworthy options to help store, manage, and secure

it. The data storage and management platform can help to deliver accurate,

timely information which contains the details the organisation requires to

move the business forward.

Data Warehousing

OLAP

Data Quality

Data MiningInformation Delivery

Even the best, most appropriate BI information will go unused if it can not be

accessed in a timely and a convenient manner. The BI solutions make the

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

23/29



information to be easily accessed and understood across all levels of the

business. Dashboards

Portals

Managed Reporting

Visualisation

Query, Reporting and Analysis

BI solutions help to empower the users by providing them quick access to

the significant structured and non-structured BI information found in systems

across the organisation.

Ad Hoc Reporting

Production Reporting

OLAP Analysis

Performance Management

A total performance management cycle should be included deep and up-to-

the-minute monitoring and analytics. This challenge is answered by the

performance management by giving flexible, easy-to-use tools which can

help everyone across the organisation to make informed decisions that align

with the companywide objectives and strategy which are:

Scorecarding

Dashboarding

Analysing

15.6.1 The Big Four Business Intelligence vendors

Though they are not pure-play business intelligence vendors the IBM,

Microsoft, Oracle Corp. and SAP AG own two-thirds of the BI market

because they have optimised their BI platforms to work well with the

relevant enterprise and information management applications. The

integrated approach along with the fact that many enterprises already have

the vendors ERP and the information management applications in place is

influencing the customers to standardise on one of the BI platforms.

The Pure-play and the niche vendors are introducing interfaces that is more

interesting to the masses, along with the technology such as the interactive

visualisation tools, scenario modelling and data mashups, which can change

the way the information, is collected and analysed.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

24/29



Another factor helping the niche and the pure-play vendors that push into

the enterprise is the propensity of the customers to introduce more than oneBI platform to meet the different business needs. As of yet, these trends are

not lessening the Big Four's domination, as is showed by the BI strategy

plans of the many conference attendees.

At home, the auto and the life insurance company based in Canada, funding

is dropping for BI efforts, forcing the BI team to prove the Return On

Investment of its software, said Mark Liu, the company's BI architect. "We've

spent tens of millions on BI and need to consolidate down to one system,"

he said, adding that the choice most likely would come down to one of the

major vendors.

BI platform integration across the enterprise is not an easy task but the

rating of the Big Four vendors BI features and strategy gives the

organisations a few points to consider. Here's the rundown of how the

vendors stack up:

IBM:There is a reason why IBM is still called Big Blue. Its revenue in

2009 was 950 crores, and IBM has no gaps to fill in its BI platform.

However, there are few pros and cons and they are:

Pros: IBM has ample money to invest in the acquisitions and also in

launching new services: One is the Business Analytics and Optimisation

Services Group, which was introduced this year. This group was started with4,000 consultants and is investing extensively in BI and has the ability to

have a grip in the space that achieves into Corporate Performance

Management (CPM). In addition, IBM also invested in predictive modeling

and data mining with the acquisition of SPSS Inc, increasing the stake for

the ability to give more forward-looking BI. IBM is the hands-down leader as

far as the business process management and data quality and integration,

as compared to the other BI vendors.

Cons: IBM does not make the ERP applications which may put it at a

disadvantage in the organisations which have other vendors enterprise

applications in place. This leads to questions of how the IBM is being

evaluated in the SAP or Oracle shops. Still, IBM tells that it is doing well in

these environments over the last year and it is not affecting the BI growth.

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

25/29



Oracle: The vendor's Siebel and Hyperion products are put together

strongly, and the platform is called the Oracle Business IntelligenceEnterprise Edition suite. Integration is strong between this platform and

the vendor's enterprise applications and the middleware stack. Most of

the conference attendees also use the Oracle's Database Management

System (DBMS). Oracle has one of the most complete stacks which

integrate well from the applications.

Pros: The vendor has a stronghold on the DBMS market which continues to

fill out the data warehouse offerings and the latest of this is the Exadata V2.

Oracle clearly has a long history with very big data warehouses with solid

mixed workloads. Exadata has made a big difference over the last one and

a half years to put them in the leadership position. Oracle is also addressingthe data quality and the integration gaps in the BI platform with the purchase

of the Silver Creek Systems Inc.

Cons: Inspite of being late to the data-quality and the data-integration game

Oracle has made a minor data integration tool acquisition over the years

which include Sunopsis SA where the acquisition of the Sun Microsystems

remains a huge undertaking. Right now the big issue is the integration of the

Sun into the company which is going to be a major effort for Oracle.

Microsoft: The software vendor is taking a very common approach to

the customer penetration with its BI platform: low-cost bundling. The BIabilities are being built into and across many of the product lines

including the SQL Server, SharePoint and Office.

Pros: The SQL Server comprises of reporting, Extract, Transform, and Load

(ETL) and Online Analytical Processing data mining. The dashboards,

scorecards and social software enterprise search if the abilities are being

included to the SharePoint 2010. The Office Excel now has higher ad hoc

analysis, along with the PowerPivot, which gives the users the power to

collect data to the desktop from various sources. The Microsoft's BI platform

is especially strong for the production reporting for the organisations with a

Microsoft-centric infrastructure.

Cons: Microsoft is leaving the budgeting and the planning up to the partners

since it dropped those capabilities from PerformancePoint Server which is

not necessarily a drawback. As far as the availability of the data quality

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

26/29



tools, the vendor is missing in action inspite of the acquisition of the Zoomix

a few years ago. The low-cost data warehouse offerings have catapulted theMicrosoft into a leadership position, but not at the high end of the market

more than 5 terabytes to 10 terabytes, she said. Microsoft is planning to

begin the SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel to the Data Warehouse with huge

parallel processing, as a result of the acquisition of the DATAllegro Inc.

SAP: The vendor has a desirable customer base which is running the

huge workloads on its BI and CPM platforms, said Gartner analyst Bill

Hostmann. It is the customer base which is posing some problems for

the SAP. Many customers buy the products from SAP because the

integration across its product lines is easy. But is not the same for the

existing customers of the SAP's BusinessObjects BI platform and theOutlooksoft CPM offering. BusinessObjects and Outlooksoft customers

tend to buy the best of breed and not an integrated stack. This

seperated sales strategy is a challenge for them.

Pros: SAP is creating the next-generation semantic layer into

BusinessObjects, and is also exploring the in-memory database technology

with its NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator. SAP is actually

bringing down some of the query performance on the business warehouse

product to very good levels and to have to balance the innovations against

the multiple product segments."

Cons: Since SAP has multiple product lines the customer support is still a

problem. They have been at the low end in terms of the customer support

and are putting a lot of focus on the customer support program to manage

and regain the customer credibility and confidence in terms of support.

Activity 2:

ZXC Retail Company is planning to opt for the Microsoft BI tool to help in

the business operations. What are the Pros and Cons of using this tool?

Self Assessment Questions

6. The ________ reflects the view of the business query.7. Dimension tables ill have to be shared by the _________.

8. CPM stands for ____________________.

9. A __________ is a place where things are kept away

10. A star schema has only two levels. (True/False)

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

27/29



15.7 Summary

The Business Intelligence platform permits to rapidly obtain information fromthe corporate systems and databases. BI platform change the dissimilar,

granular information scattered across the multiple systems into a

meaningful, reusable business definitions to make the analytical insight

across the organisation. The BI solutions also protect the business users

from the complexities of the database and also its underlying technologies.

The BI platform presents the data in the context of common business terms

that are intuitive, as well as shared across the enterprise. The Business

Intelligence (BI) Platform Capability Matrix sets the technical details of the BI

Platform Capabilities and also valuates the leading BI platform products

based on the technical capabilities. Data mart possibly has a marketingadvantage over data warehouse. The entire data warehousing process is

about creating data-based knowledge and bring that knowledge to people.

15.8 Terminal Questions

1. Explain Business Intelligence Platform.

2. Explain Business Intelligence Platform Capability Matrix

3. What are BI target databases?

4. How do to implement data mart?

5. Name the Big four BI vendors.

15.9 Answers

Answers to Self-Assessment Questions

1. Multi-Dimensional Online Analytical Processing

2. Business Objects

3. Metadata

4. Performance

5. False

6. Star Schema

7. Fact Tables

8. Corporate Performance Management9. Warehouse

10. True

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

28/29



Answers to Terminal Questions

1. Refer Section 15.22. Refer Section 15.3

3. Refer Section 15.4



15.10 Case Study

GSF Juice is a leading provider of healthy, on-the go food and

beverages in India. It has around 60 stores all over India. The economic

downturn caused hindered the companys growth which made them to

reconsider their processes and also look for efficiencies. The companydecision makers wanted to start using new technology across its juice

stores as a way to support the increased productivity and the profit

ultimately. The store managers in the past have had trouble in finding

the information that was required to run the stores effectively. The

company used to keep a folder on the company wide shared network

drive. This folder used to contain more than 1500 documents that the

store mangers had to access in order to manage the business ranging

from the equipment manuals and store directories to tax information

forms and marketing guides which could be found in the original folder.

The store mangers found it difficult to manage the time to manuallyupdate the stores profit and loss and other main information that the

district and the regional manger required. The employees were not sure

about the integrity of the data collected because of the conflicting set of

metrics between the stores and the corporate resources. So, the

company decided to invest in the integrated technology tools that would

help the stores to run more efficiently and streamline the communication.

So, the best option for this was to use a BI tool available in the market.

This helped the store to identify the individual, the store and also the

district achievements. It also helped to share the customer feedback and

also identify the best store practices.

Questions

1. What were the difficulties faced by the stores?

2. How did the usage of the BI tool help in overcoming the difficulty?

7/28/2019 MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

29/29



15.11 Glossary

Term Description

Unicode It is a set of standard coding schemes planned to

replace the multiple coding schemes currently used,

worldwide. It is an international character set that

was built to represent all the characters using a

2-byte (16-bit) format.

Redundancy It is an intentional or unintentional repetition of the

computer data. The Data files has to be

compressed by removing the redundancy and

expressing the same data more concisely, whereasthe reliability of the data transmission can be

increased by sending the same data twice

Six Sigma At many organisations it simply means a measure

of the quality that strives for near perfection. It is a

disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology

for removing defects driving.

References

1. Business Intelligence Competency Centers by Gloria J. Miller.

2. Business Intelligence Implementation: Issues and Perspectives(Paperback) by B. Sujatha.

3. Business Intelligence By Elizabeth Vitt, Michael Luckevich, Stacia

Misner.

4. Design and Implementation of Data Mining Tools Page 239.

Date post:	03-Apr-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	jerryjed
View:	214 times
Download:	0 times

MI0036-SLM-Unit-15

Documents