chapter 7 & 8 Data warehouses and impacts

Business Intelligence (BI)

Applications and technologies used to gather, store, analyze, and provide access to data to support managerial decision-making.

Data rich but information poor

Organizations collect lots of data but lack the tools or systems to turn it into useful information for decisions.

Data warehouse

A logical collection of information from internal and external databases to support business analysis and decision-making.

Primary purpose of a data warehouse

To aggregate data throughout an organization into a single repository for decision-making.

Why business analysis is difficult with operational systems

Inconsistent data definitions, lack of standards, poor data quality, inadequate usefulness, and ineffective direct data access.

ETL

Extraction, Transformation, and Loading.

ETL process

Extracts data from sources, transforms it using common definitions, and loads it into the warehouse.

Data mart

A subset of data warehouse information.

Data cube

A representation of multidimensional data for analysis.

Data lake

A storage repository holding vast amounts of raw data in its original format until needed.

Dirty data

Data that is erroneous, flawed, duplicate, incorrect, inaccurate, non-formatted, or violates business rules.

Data cleansing or scrubbing

The process of fixing or discarding inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete data.

Data storytelling

Combining visuals and narrative to communicate data insights effectively.

Data visualization

Technologies that allow users to see data patterns, relationships, and trends in a business perspective.

Data visualization tools

Tools that go beyond simple graphs and charts to include maps, time-series graphs, dashboards, and interactive controls.

BI dashboards

Track corporate metrics like CSFs and KPIs, with interactive controls to manipulate data for analysis.

Distributed computing

Processing and managing algorithms across many machines in a computing environment.

Ledger

A record that classifies and summarizes transactional data.

Blockchain

A distributed ledger made of data blocks that maintain a permanent and tamper-proof record of transactions.

Proof-of-work (PoW)

A mining process to verify transactions and prevent double-spending while creating new digital currencies.

Goals of proof-of-work

Verify transaction legitimacy and create new digital currencies by rewarding miners.

Block (in blockchain)

Contains a hash, previous hash, and data.

Genesis block

The first block created in a blockchain.

Hash

A function that converts input into a fixed-length encrypted output.

Proof-of-stake (PoS)

A way to validate transactions and achieve distributed consensus without mining.

Advantages of blockchain

Immutability, digital trust, and Internet-of-Things integration.