Re: B.I. Tools

From: Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:39:13 -0800
Message-ID: <1071074386.680586@yasure>

Peter Morris wrote:
> "Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message
> news:1071006133.542458_at_yasure...
>
>

>>>What is Business Intelligence, then? What do B.I. tools do, exactly?
>>>
>>>Do you know?
>>
>>It is a fancy name for "Report Writer" and nothing more.
>>
>>Now theoretically it means data mining tools and such but the reality is
>>Crystal Reports, Cognos, Brio, Discoverer, Business Objects, etc. etc.

>
> etc.
>
>
> Thanks, now we're getting somewhere.
>
> I've done some work writing reports, for example analysis of traffic on a
> website, analysis of the database revealed that 21% of visitors to this
> page
> on the website gave their salary as £25K-£35K and stayed for an average
> 3 min 32 secs, and so on. L:ots of other information, total this and average
> that, etcetera. The execs could use this information to analyse which are
> the
> most successful pages on the site,and sell advertising space, etc.
>
> This was implemented through stored procedures and SQL.
>
> Do B.I. tools do any more than this? (I presume there must be more
> to it)

A lot more. The presume you understand things like crosstabs and a lot of the functionality contained in Oracle's Analytic Functions. I'd go to tahiti.oracle.com and lookup RANK, ROLLUP, CUBE, OVER, etc.

It is not something you can fake. So I'd suggest spending a lot of time learning the concepts, and if possible, at least one or two of the products.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)

Received on Wed Dec 10 2003 - 10:39:13 CST