Business Intelligence and Analytics Flashcards

What is the primary purpose of Business Intelligence (BI) systems?

Answer: To transform raw data into actionable insights for business decisions

Business Intelligence systems collect, integrate, and analyze data to provide actionable insights that support strategic and operational decision-making.

A data warehouse differs from an operational database in that it is:

Answer: Subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and non-volatile

Bill Inmon's definition of a data warehouse describes it as subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and non-volatile — optimized for analysis rather than transactions.

What is OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)?

Answer: A technology for fast multi-dimensional analysis of large data sets

OLAP enables users to perform fast, flexible, multi-dimensional analysis on large datasets to support business reporting and analysis.

In BI, 'drill down' refers to:

Answer: Navigating from summary data to increasingly detailed levels

Drill down allows users to navigate from high-level summary data into progressively more detailed data levels, such as from annual to quarterly to monthly figures.

Which of the following is an example of a BI dashboard KPI?

Answer: Monthly revenue growth rate displayed as a gauge chart

KPIs on BI dashboards are quantifiable metrics like monthly revenue growth, displayed visually to give executives quick performance overviews.

What is ETL in the context of data warehousing?

Answer: Extract, Transform, Load — moving data from sources to the warehouse

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) is the process of extracting data from source systems, transforming it to meet warehouse standards, and loading it into the data warehouse.