Business Intelligence (BI) is a process of gathering, analyzing, and

transforming raw data into accurate, efficient, and meaningful

information which can be used to make wise business decisions and
refine business strategy.

BI gives organizations a sense of clairvoyance. Only the perception

is not fueled by extra-sensory ability but by facts.
Business Intelligence testing initiatives help companies gain deeper
and better insights so they can manage or make decisions based on
hard facts or data.

- OLTP (On-line Transaction Processing) is characterized by a large

number of short on-line transactions (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE). The main
emphasis for OLTP systems is put on very fast query processing, maintaining
data integrity in multi-access environments and an effectiveness measured by
number of transactions per second. In OLTP database there is detailed and
current data, and schema used to store transactional databases is the entity
model (usually 3NF).

Third normal form (3NF) is a normal form that is used in normalizing

a database design to reduce the duplication of data and ensure
referential integrity by ensuring that (1) the entity is in second
normal form, and (2) all the attributes in a table are determined
only by the candidate keys of that relation and not by any non-
prime attributes. 3NF was designed to improve database processing
while minimizing storage costs. 3NF data modeling was ideal for
online transaction processing (OLTP) applications with heavy order
entry type of needs.

1. Why Data Normalization?

There are two primary advantages of having a highly normalized data schema:

1.Increased consistency. Information is stored in one place and one place only, reducing the possibility of inconsistent data.
2.Easier object-to-data mapping. Highly-normalized data schemas in general are closer conceptually to object-oriented schemas because the object-oriented goals of
promoting high cohesion and loose coupling between classes results in similar solutions (at least from a data point of view).

You typically want to have highly normalized operational data stores (ODSs) and data warehouses (DWs).

The primary disadvantage of normalization is slower reporting performance. You will want to have a denormalized schema to support reporting, particularly in data marts.

2. The Steps of Data Normalization

Table 1 summarizes the three most common forms of normalization ( First normal form (1NF), Second normal form (2NF), and Third normal form (3NF)) describing how to put entity
types into a series of increasing levels of normalization. Higher levels of data normalization are beyond the scope of this article. With respect to terminology, a data schema is
considered to be at the level of normalization of its least normalized entity type. For example, if all of your entity types are at second normal form (2NF) or higher then we say that
your data schema is at 2NF.

Table 1. Data Normalization Rules.

Level Rule

First normalAn entity type is in 1NF when it

form (1NF) contains no repeating groups of data.
An entity type is in 2NF when it is in
Second 1NF and when all of its non-key
normal form attributes are fully dependent on
(2NF) its primary key.

Third An entity type is in 3NF when it is in

normal form 2NF and when all of its attributes are
(3NF) directly dependent on the primary key.

- OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing) is characterized by relatively low

volume of transactions. Queries are often very complex and involve
aggregations. For OLAP systems a response time is an effectiveness
measure. OLAP applications are widely used by Data Mining techniques. In
OLAP database there is aggregated, historical data, stored in multi-
dimensional schemas (usually star schema).

Business Intelligence tools (BI Tools) are useful to identify

customer behavior, improve visibility and efficiency of a business. It
helps to collect data from the dynamic business environment and
make effective decisions.

Top BI tools in the market.

https://www.capterra.com/business-intelligence-software/#infographic