This section is meant to clarify the way in which we at EA Consulting & Software define and understand different Business Intelligence concepts. This means that some of the definitions hereby presented, may or may not differ from those found in text books and/or elsewhere at competing Business Intelligence providers.

Business Intelligence (BI): This is the all inclusive term for technologies and solutions utilised to combine, consolidate, analyse and report business data throughout an organisation. Software and solutions covering Business Intelligence includes Data Warehouse Systems, Data Marts systems, Executive Information Systems, Decisions Support Systems (DSS), Reporting Systems as Multidimensional Analysis Systems (OLAP) and Simple Reporting Systems (List Reports) and Data Mining.

Business Intelligence Platform: This is the collection of components utilised to implement a given Business Intelligence solution. Typically, a Business Intelligence Platform consists of several integrated components. At the bottom there are the components reponsible of ensuring that all the data within an organisation is available for analysis and reporting. This implies Data Extraction from any ERP-system or data source, Data Transformation within a Data Warehouse and Data Loading into reports. This process is known as ETL. These ETL-tasks are carried out by specialised ETL-tools through which organisations can manage data from a Meta Data level. The next level is the reporting and analysis layer constituted by Ad-hoc reporting, OLAP-analyses, Data Visualisation and Data Mining. Reporting and analysis tools are aimed at facilitating the understanding of business data and at supporting decision making. See also Business Intelligence Tool and Business Intelligence Software.

Business Intelligence Software: Business Intelligence Software is the same as Business Intelligence Tool.

Business Intelligence Solution: This is the conceptual blue-print that defines how the informatinal needs of an organisation are to be met. Some of the aspects that should be covered by a Business Intelligence Solution are (listed in no particular order):

• Identification of the required data sources.
• Definition of the extraction methodology.
• Definition of the business logic to be applied to the extracted data.
• Identification of the business processes to be supported by the transformed data.
• Identification of the end-users for whom the generated data is intended.
• Definition of the apporach for data delivery and data visualisation (e.g. OLAP, Lists, Charts).
• Data security and distribution.

Business Intelligence Tool: This is a physical component or software that can form part of a given Business Intelligence Platform. Depending on the capabilities of the given Business Intelligence Tool, it may cover one, several or all the functionalities needed by the Business Intelligence Platform to implement the Business Intelligence Solution it represents. Note also that Business Intelligence Tool is the same as Business Intelligence Software. See also Business Intelligence Platform and Business Intelligence Solution.

Business Reporting: The totality of methods and techniques utilised for delivering and distributing data througout an organisation with the aim of supporting business processes and decision making. Business reporting is typically based on the data stored in and managed by an existing data warehouse.

Business Reporting Software: Business Reporting Software is the same as Business Reporting Tool.

Business Reporting Tool: This is a physical component or software created to support Business Reporting. OLAP, List Reports and Charting are some of the functionality that may be included in a Business Reporting Tool.

Data Warehouse: It is a repository or database system that collets, integrates and stores transactional business data with the aim of making this data available to support data analysis and business reporting (OLAP and List Reports) within an organisation. Data Warehouse systems are typically based on relational database systems.

Data Warehouse Management: The process of continiously supervising a Data Warehouse so that to ensure the quality of its output.

Decision Support System (DSS): This is equivalent to Business Intelligence or BI which are the modern terms of the same concept.

ETL (Extraction, Transformation, Loading): A methodolgy to create a Data Warehouse based on three main steps.

• Extraction: Data is extracted from different and heterogenous Data Sources regardless of their location and/or formats.
• Transformation: Data is transformed or adapted according to specific data requirements defined by the informational need of the organisation.
• Loading: Data is loaded into a new form that makes the data available so that an organisation can make direct use of it. This typically means the creation of OLAP-reports, List Reports or any other form of report.

ETL Software: ETL-software is the same as ETL-tool.

ETL Tool: This is a physical component or software that supports the creation of a Data Warehouse by implementing the ETL-process. Note also that ETL-tool is the same as ETL-software. See also Business Intelligence Tool.

HOLAP (Hybrid OLAP): An implemetation of the OLAP-concept based on the combination of MOLAP and ROLAP. In HOLAP all the available data is stored in a relational database. At the same time, multidimensional databases or cubes are created for the information that is most often needed. In this sense MOLAP is used for those analyses that are carried out often and that require short responce time. The slower ROLAP is utilised for less time critical analyses.

MOLAP (Multidimensional OLAP): An implemetation of the OLAP-concept based on a Multidimensional query language that largely surpasses the clasical SQL-language when it comes to ad-hoc data analysis. One of the main advantages of MOLAP is its impressive performance. This performance is among other things consequence of issuing queries to a data warehouse (storing aggregated data) particularly designed for the task rather than directly to the relational database where transactional data is stored.

OLAP (On Line Analytical Processing): It is a methodology to rapidly provide answers to business questions that are multidimensional in nature. As already mentioned, it forms part of a much wider concept; namely Business Intelligence (BI). OLAP is typically applied in the business world for reporting and analysis of, for instance, sales, marketing, budgeting, business perfromance and the like. Note also that OLAP is the same as OLAP Business Intelligence.

OLAP Business Intelligence: OLAP Business Intelligence is the same as OLAP.

OLAP Cube or Cube: An OLAP-cube is a multidimensional structure that stores data in such a way that makes OLAP-analysis possible with impressive performance and flexibility. See also OLAP-Tool.

OLAP Software: OLAP-software is the same as OLAP-tool.

OLAP Tool: This is a physical component or software capable of structuring and automating multidimensional analyses based on multidimensional structures called OLAP-cubes. The main advantage of OLAP-tools is that they make possible to create reports by "request" and "on-the-fly" according to the informational needs of the moment. Note also that OLAP-tool is the same as OLAP-software. See also OLAP-Cube.

ROLAP (Relational OLAP): An implemetation of the OLAP-concept based on the clasical SQL-language. ROLAP solutions make use of a graphical user-interface to issue SQL-queries directly to a relational database storing data in a non-aggregated form. This fact makes ROLAP solutions inferior to MOLAP in terms of performance.

See also:

• Quella Business Intelligence Solution