The four core business intelligence(BI) components: Data Feeds , Extract-Transform-Load Process , Data Warehouse and Presentation Layer come together and form a complete BI solution. Each tier plays an important role in keeping the system current and running. As you can probably guess, implementing and maintaining a system like this is not easy and...
The BI Presentation Layer (Presentation of Knowledge)
The presentation layer is a logical tier in the architecture where business intelligence client software is used by the business users. The responsibility of these visual tools is to surface the data cleanly from a data warehouse or data mart to the user. This tier is sometimes referred to as the presentation of knowledge, as it is responsible for presenting not just data but insight in an easy-to-consume format.
In a typical BI implementation, usually there isn’t just one type of presentation software used. BI client software includes specific tools for different audiences. For example, a company executive may...
The Data Warehouse
The data warehouse is a storage repository for data that is used in business intelligence(BI) software. The end result of the ETL process is a data repository that is highly optimized for analysis and querying. Data warehouses tend to hold a great deal of historical information and tend to have large storage requirements. Therefore, they are usually stored in enterprise database software (such as Microsoft SQL Server) that allows for optimal use of the server hardware.
The data warehouse can be the primary repository that communicates with BI tools in the
presentation layer or it can be used as a staging area for...
Extract-Transform-Load Process
Business Intelligence Architecture
Now that we have isolated the data we want to expose in our BI system, we need a process to move it into our BI platform. This process can be implemented using a multitude of different methodologies. I will focus on a couple of them. The three data feeds make up our global source in this example. We need a process to transform the data and a destination...
Data Feeds
Business Intelligence Architecture
A business intelligence(BI) system is nothing without a valid data source. When designing a BI system, we first need to determine what data we want to consume for analysis. Most organizations have various information systems that aid them in their day-to-day operations. Internal data from a system that aids in everyday operations of an organization...