SQL Server Reference Guide

Mar 28, 2003

␡

⎙ Print

< Back Page 320 of 365 Next >

When most technical professionals think of Business Intelligence, they think of OLAP, or On-Line Analytical Processing. While that technology is often a component of Business Intelligence, it's only that – a component.

True business intelligence attempts to take the data available to the organization, compile it into information, and then use that information as knowledge. Each of these steps involves culling the data, combining and transforming it into some meaningful form, and then strategically applying that information to the decisions the organizations face.

Another way of looking at Business Intelligence is to make the distinction between goals, strategies and tactics.

A goal is a target that you want to hit. For instance, your goal might be to make more income. Put more correctly, you should define precisely what that means. "More income" is far too broad. You should put a number on what that means, and a date that you want to reach it.

A strategy is the long-term plan for how you are going to meet the goal. One strategy for making more money might be to get a higher-paying job; another might be to get an additional job. It's interesting that a true strategy might also be turned into a goal itself.

Tactics, then, are the steps you take to satisfy a strategy. Regularly reading this guide on databases is a tactic to help you learn more about SQL Server, thereby enabling you to get a better job, or even and additional one. Tactics are discernable because they often don't serve a particular function within themselves. While reading this guide is a very commendable step, if you're a seamstress and have no interest in technology whatsoever, it doesn't serve you well to spend your time learning SQL.

Business Intelligence is like that. Once the business clearly defines a goal, the proper knowledge can help them put the right strategies into place to form a plan of action to get there. Business Intelligence provides the data manipulation to get that plan started.

Any organization can use Business Intelligence. While the name tends to indicate more of a profit-motive, science endeavors, educational institutions, even not-for-profit systems have goals, strategies and tactics. The Business Intelligence processes and procedures I'll cover here will help any organization type to reach its goals.

And that is usually the crux of the matter. I've been a part of several BI initiatives, and the ones that have had the greatest difficulty by far are the ones that have the most nebulous goals. Many companies want BI systems because they think they need them, or worse, because some competitor has one. They think that BI systems will help them in some generic way. The point is that you must have a clear goal defined before you implement a BI system. It's not that the effort involved is too great on the part of IT to make it worthwhile, it's that the IT staff cannot create the need for the BI system.

Let me clarify that a bit. The process for creating an effective BI system begins far before you start the BI project. First, the organization needs to have a coherent data strategy.

A data strategy answers questions such as "what data do we want to gather?", "Why?", "Where and how do we store it?" and "How long do we keep it?", in addition to "How do we secure it?" If you don't have these questions answered first, stop and fix those issues. You can't make a defendable decision if the base data is incoherent, incomplete, or unavailable.

Next, get your reporting strategy in order. This step builds on the previous one. This strategy answers the questions of "what do we report on?", "How often do those reports run?", "Are we duplicating reports?", "What is the meaning of each field on the reports?" and so forth. I've seen vendors get the same report data from a single supplier with different numbers on them, simply because the reports were developed by two different groups at the supplier. Which to believe?

With reliable data and reports, now you can begin to plan your Business Intelligence layout.

Business Intelligence is a series of processes and technologies to help you get at the answers you need found in the data you have. To begin arranging your strategy, call a series of meetings with the functional area managers in both operations and management. You'll need input from all regions you operate in because your first big challenge is to decide what the data in each region means. What you're after here is to define the levels for each data set.

The levels specify the range for the data. Let's take a concrete example. Assuming that you're a manufacturing organization, you probably have plants in several locations. Depending on how they are managed (central or franchise models) you'll have different data needs at the plant than the region and at headquarters. For instance, the plant manager wants to know machine utilization and line speed, while the region management might want to know about inventory turns and quality information. Headquarters, in turn, might want to know about vendor performance by region and plant. All of these "buckets" of data will have to be worked out by the business, since the technology group won't know what the business is looking for.

Once you've defined the levels the data live in, you can tell which data elements will need to be rolled up. If the data is staying local, analytical reports might satisfy the needs the organization has with simple aggregations and analysis.

If you need the data regionalized, you'll have to consider language constraints and meaning differences. What happens when you need to combine Japanese and Mandarin Chinese data when the Japanese plants consider "excess" inventory as what's paid for but still on the shelf, and the Chinese plants consider excess as items that are on the shelf and not slated for an assembly, paid for or not? Again, the business staff will need to tell you how to get a regional answer to "what is our excess position?"

With all of that sorted out, now you can begin to consider the three basic technologies that will help the business get the numbers. The first is analytical reports, the second is Online Analytical Processing, and the third is Data Mining. There are lots of ways to implement these, but they comprise the current categories of analyzing data.

In the next series of articles, I'll explain when you use each of these methods, and how you can use SQL Server to handle them.

Online Resources

Some of the best resources for Business Intelligence is on various vendors' sites, but make sure you investigate several. They will always slant the whitepapers and information based on the capabilities of their software. Cherry Tree has a good overall description here.

Informit Articles and Sample Chapters

In the bookstore you'll find an excellent reference book by Jill Dyché called e-Data: Turning Data Into Information With Data Warehousing.

< Back Page 320 of 365 Next >

🔖 Save To Your Account

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Privacy Notice

Overview

Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information

To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information

Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security

Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children

This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing

Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information

If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out

Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information

Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents

California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure

Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

As required by law.
With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact

Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020

Email Address