Business Intelligence: Pronunciation: 'biz-n&s in-'te-l&-j&n(t)s

a.k.a. BI. A generic term to describe leveraging the

organization’s internal and external information assets for
making better business decisions.
 Online Analytical Processing

• Contrast to OLTP

• An intuitive multidimensional data model makes it easy to select,

navigate, and explore the data.

• An analytical query language provides power to explore complex

business data relationships.

• Pre-calculation of frequently queried data enables very fast response

time to ad hoc queries.

• Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services is a robust OLAP

tool
• Provides data for Business Analysis Process

• Integrates data from heterogeneous source systems

• Organizes data into subject-specific groups

• Optimized for extraction and querying

• A logical and physical subset of the data warehouse’s presentation area

• A flexible set of data, based on the most atomic data possible

• Data Marts can be tied together using drill-across techniques

• Data Marts can be connected to the data warehouse bus

• The bus refers to the standard interface that allows separate Data Marts to
coexist usefully

• A Data Mart can be a standalone stovepipe application

• Extract, Transform and Load

• Prepares source data for the data warehouse

• Transforms data from relational form to a dimensional

• Provides data quality assurance

• Publishes data to the appropriate fact or dimension structures

• Dimensional Data Modeling

• De-normalized relational data modeling

• Characterized by having one central fact table

• Many surrounding dimension tables that de-

normalize the descriptions of the fact table

• One or more Star Schema’s to represent a

subject-area within a data warehouse or data mart
Example
• Defines hierarchs by using multiple dimension tables

• More normalized than a single dimension table

• Supported by MS Analysis Services

 &

• The fact table is the heart of the star schema

• Typically holds 95% of the space used by the star schema

• Designed for growth

• Fact tables are never updated, only appended to

• Two types of fields, Keys and Measures

• Fully additive, semi additive and non-additive measures

 &
Example
• The fundamental unit for data storage and retrieval in an OLAP system

• Cubes are made up of Dimensions and Measures

• MS OLAP cube can have up to 64 dimensions

• Column, Rows, Pages, Sections & Chapters vs. Column & Rows

• The source data of the cube is a star schema

• Virtual cubes are very similar to a view in SQL Server

• ROLAP, MOLAP and HOLAP are the storage behaviors for cubes
• Multi-Dimensional Expression Language

• Used to query OLAP cubes

• Can be used to develop custom Business Intelligence applications