Business intelligence

DOREEN’S PRESENTATION.
TOPICS COVERED
Building a DataWarehouse
Dimensional modelling/Analysis
Fact/Dimensio tables
Star schema
Snowflake, fact constellatio
 Building a Data WareHouse

 A data warehouse is a single, complete and consistent store of data

obtained from a variety of different sources made available to end users in a
what they can understand and use in a business context.

 Data warehousing is a process of transforming data into information and

making it available to users in a timely enough manner to make a difference.
 Requirements for building a data
warehouse in oracle database
 Must have installed java first
 Must have oracle database 11g release 2 installed already
 Java virtual machine(jvm) & java runtime environment(jre) installed
 Should have oracle warehouse builder installed
NB: In oracle database 11g release 2, OWB is integrated and is installed in the oracle
database home.
The Oracle Warehouse Builder is a tool provided by Oracle, which can be used at
every stage of the implementation of a data warehouse, from initial design and
creation of the table structure to the ETL process and data-quality auditing.
 why data warehousing

  serve as the backbone of data storage

 improves the speed and efficiency of accessing different data sets
 makes it easier for corporate decision-makers to derive insights that will guide the
business and marketing strategies that set them apart from their competitors.
NB: The design of a data warehouse should be different from that of a
transactional database
 Transitional databases/systems are databases that record a company's daily transactions. The three
major transactional databases include CRM (customer relationship management), HRM (human resources
management), and ERP (enterprise resource planning).

The data warehouse must handle large amounts of data, and must be simple to
query and understand by the end users
 steps for building a data warehouse
Planning and Project Management

1. Key Issues
Values and Expectation
Risk Assessment
Top Down or Bottom Up
Build or Buy
Single Vendor or Best Of Breed

2. Business Requirements, not Technology

3. Top Management Support
4. Justification
Values and Expectation

 assess the value to be derived from the companys proposed data warehouse
 be sure that, given the culture and the current requirements of your company, a data
warehouse is the most viable solution.
 Some Questions to look at;
 Will your data warehouse help the executives and managers to do better planning and make
better decisions?
 Is it going to improve the bottom line?
 Is it going to increase market share? If so, by how much?
 What are the expectations?
 What does the management want to accomplish through the data warehouse?
 make a list of realistic benefits and expectations.
Risk Assessment

If the project fails, how much money will go down the drain?
Questions to consider when doing risk assesment

 What are the risks faced by the company without the benefits derivable from a data
warehouse?
 What losses are likely to be incurred?
 What opportunities are likely to be missed?
Top-down or Bottom-up approaches

 The top-down approach is to start at the enterprise- wide data warehouse, although
possibly build it iteratively.
 Then data from the overall, large enterprise-wide data warehouse flows into departmental
and subject data marts.
 first plan and define requirements at the overall corporate level.
 Do you have the large resources needed to build a corporate-wide data warehouse first and
then deploy the individual data marts?
NB: This approach is time consuming, delays.

 The bottom-up approach is to start by building individual data marts, one by one.
 The conglomerate of these data marts will make up the enterprise data warehouse.
Build or Buy.

 No one builds a data warehouse totally from scratch by in-house programming

 In a data warehouse, there is a large range of functions.
 Do you want to write more inhouse programs for data extraction and data transformation?
 Do you want to use in-house programs for loading the data warehouse storage?
 Do want to use vendor tools completely for information delivery?
 You retain control over the functions wherever you use inhouse software
On the other hand, the buy option could lead to quick implementation if managed
effectively
Single Vendor or Best-of-Breed.

 Two major options are:

(1) use the products of a single vendor,
(2) use products from more than one vendor, selecting appropriate tools.
 Advantages of single vendor solution :
High level of integration among the tools
Constant look and feel
Seamless cooperation among components
Centrally managed information exchange
Overall price negotiable
 This approach will naturally enable your data warehouse to be well integrated and function
coherently.
Best-of-Breed.

advantages of the best-of breed

 Could build an environment to fit your organization
 No need to compromise between database and support tools
 Select products best suited for the function
Disadvantages
less bargaining power with regard to individual products and may incur higher overall
expense.
compatibility among the tools from the different vendors could become a serious problem.
Business Requirements, Not
Technology
 Let business requirements drive your data warehouse, not technology
 Do not plan to build the data warehouse before understanding the
requirements
 Focus on what information is needed and not on how to provide the
information
 Do not emphasize the tools. Tools and products come and go.
 obtain general information on the following from each group of users:
 Mission and functions of each user group
 Computer systems used by the group
 Key performance indicators
 Factors affecting success of the user group
 Who the customers are and how they are classified
 Types of data tracked for the customers, individually and groups
 Products manufactured or sold
 Categorization of products and services
 Locations where business is conducted
 Levels at which profits are measured—per customer, per product, per district
 Levels of cost details and revenue
 Current queries and reports for strategic information
Top Management Support

 company’s data warehouse project must have the full support of the top management
right from day one.
 The entire organization is involved and positioned for strategic advantage.
 have a sponsor from the highest levels of management to keep the focus
Justifying Your Data Warehouse

 Calculate the current technology costs to produce the applications and reports
supporting strategic decision making
 Calculate the business value of the proposed data warehouse with the estimated dollar
values for profits, dividends, earnings growth, revenue growth, and market share
growth
 Do the full-fledged exercise
DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS

 A data warehouse is an information delivery system

 It is not about technology but solving user’s problem
 It is providing strategic information to the user.

 In the phase of finding requirements, need to concentrate on what information the users
need not on how we are going to provide the required information
DIMENSIONAL MODELLING

 names a set of techniques and concepts used in data warehouse design. It is

considered to be different from entity-relationship modeling (ER).
 A data design methodology used for designing subject-oriented analytical
databases, such as data warehouses or data marts
 Commonly, dimensional modeling is employed as a relational data modeling
technique
 In addition to using the regular relational concepts (primary keys, foreign keys,
integrity constraints, etc.) dimensional modeling distinguishes two types of tables :
 Dimensions
 Facts
 DM is a design technique for databases intended to support end-user queries
in a data warehouse
 Dimensional models are built by business process area, e.g. store sales,
inventory, claims, etc
Dimensional modeling process

 The dimensional model is built on a star-like schema, with dimensions

surrounding the fact table. To build the schema, the following design model is
used:
 Choose the business process
 Declare the grain
 Identify the dimensions
 Identify the fact
Dimensional modeling process

 Declare the grain

 Identify the dimensions
 Identify the facts
Benefits of dimensional modeling

 Understandability.
 Query performance
 Extensibility.
Dimensional Models

A denormalized relational model

Made up of tables with attributes
Relationships defined by keys and foreign keys
Organized for understandability and ease of reporting rather than update

Queried and maintained by SQL or special purpose management tools.

From relational to dimensional

Relational Model
Designed from the perspective of process efficiency
Marketing
Sales
“Normalised” data structures
Entity Relationship Model
Used for transactional, or operational systems
OLTP : OnLine Transaction Processing
Based on data that is
Current
Non Redundant
Dimensional Model
Designed from the perspective of subject
Sales
Customers
“De-normalised” data structures in blatant violation of normalisation
Used for analysis of aggregated data
OLAP : OnLine Analytical Processing
Based on data that is
Historical
May be redundant
ER vs. Dimensional Models

One table per entity

Minimize data redundancy
Optimize update

The Transaction Processing Model

One fact table for data organization
Maximize understandability
Optimized for retrieval
The data warehousing model
Strengths of the Dimensional Model

Predictable, standard framework

Respond well to changes in user reporting needs
Relatively easy to add data without reloading tables
Standard design approaches have been developed
There exist a number of products supporting the dimensional model
Dimension tables (dimensions)

 Contain descriptions of the business, organization, or enterprise to which the

subject of analysis belongs
 Columns in dimension tables contain descriptive information that is often textual
(e.g., product brand, product color, customer gender, customer education level),
but can also be numeric (e.g., product weight, customer income level)
 This information provides a basis for analysis of the subject