The Business Intelligence Tutorial
1 Table of Contents
2 Preface
2.1 About the author
2.2 Intended audience
3 What is business intelligence?
3.1 Why is business intelligence needed?
3.2 Who needs business intelligence?
3.3 What are the benefits of business intelligence?
3.4 Definition of business intelligence
4 LEAN Business Intelligence
4.1 Definition of Lean BI
4.2 The case for Lean BI
5 Comparison of BI architectures
6 A business intelligence system diagram
7 Acinta Intelligence Suite
7.1 The three data transmission layers
7.2 The applications
7.3 Acinta System Infra-structure
8 BI system design
8.1 BI development model
8.2 Data modelling and business intelligence
8.3 Multi-dimensional modeling
8.4 Dimensions
8.5 Facts
8.6 Designing the MDDM
8.7 Metric design
9 Business analysis
9.1 Gathering requirements and specifications
9.2 Designing the MDDM
9.3 BI application design
10 Building and deploying Acinta Intelligence Suite projects
10.1 Installation of software
10.2 Acinta Modeller – application overview
10.3 Attaching the data source
10.4 Designing dimensions
10.5 Designing facts
10.6 Transformations
10.7 Mapping the model
10.8 Create a parent-child relation mapping
10.9 Validation of the model
10.10 Other settings and configurations of the project
10.11 metrics
10.12 reports
10.13 settings and options
11 Designing the user system
11.1 Reports
11.2 Rules
11.3 User profiles
12 Using the BI system
13 Annex A - relational Versus multi-dimensional data models
13.1 Domains versus dimensions
13.2 “Use”-oriented design versus “Relation”-oriented design
14 Annex B - Trouble-shooting
14.1 Common errors
14.2 Tools for trouble-shooting
15 Naming conventions
16 Design patterns for common modeling problems
16.1 Recursive parent-child relations
16.2 Time and Date dimensions
16.3 From-to date intervals
17 Advanced metric design
18 Advanced report design
18.1 Workbook features
18.2 Grids
18.3 Graphs
18.4 Gauges
18.5 Direct filters
18.6 Text boxes
19 Performance tuning
19.1 General performance considerations
19.2 Performance analysis
19.3 Performance tuning
20 Exercises
21 Demos
22 Modeller validation messages
23 Selling the project
24 Index
