Business Intelligence Final Exam Questions with Verified Answers

Definition of Business Intelligence and Analytics - Answer- Business Intelligence & Analytics are the techniques, technologies, systems, practices, methodologies and applications that analyze critical business data to help an enterprise better understand its business and market and make timely business decisions. 1. Data Management 2. Descriptive Analytics 3. Predictive Analytics 4. Prescriptive Analytics 5. Business Performance Management - Answer- 5 aspects/components of BI&A the technical staff that takes the data sources and builds the data warehouse by organizing, summarizing, and standardizing - Answer- explain the data warehouse environment of BI&A: the business users that access the date warehouse; manipulation via user interface (browser, portal, dashboard) and produce results which lead to performance and strategy from managers and executives - Answer- explain the business analytics environment of BI&A Importance of BI&A - Answer- #1 priority for CEO's - evidence based businesses generally outperform their competition, in terms of growth There are several business environmental factors: globalization, customer demand, government regulations, market conditions, competition, etc. These factors can be both pressures and opportunities, depending on how an organization responds to them: strategy, partners collaboration, real-time response, agility, increased productivity, new vendors, new business model, etc. These organization responses drive decisions and support: Analyses, Predictions, & Decisions, which makes up Business Intelligence - Answer- Describe the Business-Pressures-Reponses-Support model: 1. Structured 2. Semistructured 3. Unstructured - Answer- 3 types of decisions: 1. Operational control 2. Managerial control 3. Strategic planning - Answer- 3 types of control: Raw facts; has no meaning without its context - Example: Blue; Blue what? Car? Shirt? Eyes? - Answer- What is data? Processed data; conclusion - Example: the total sales of the week (mathematical equation) - Answer- What is information? Information in action; you can learn from the information and produce actionable insight - Example: The average salary for IT professionals is $60,000. - Answer- What is knowledge? structured decisions - Answer- routine/repetitive decisions unstructured decisions - Answer- also called "ill" decisions - There is currently not a good (template) decision; we don't know the best answer; great deal of uncertainty and judgment Examples: cost minimization, profit maximization semistructured decisions - Answer- these fall between structured and unstructured decisions, having some structured elements and some unstructured elements; trading bonds, setting marketing budgets, etc. operational control - Answer- day-to-day managerial control - Answer- acquiring decisions strategic planning - Answer- visionary - Use data (as an asset) to make decisions - Rules evolve over time - Measure the consequences of decisions - Answer- Key takeaways from the in-class Airplane rebooking scenario: Data - Answer- ________ is an extremely important asset that needs to be carefully managed database - Answer- In order to understand a _______________________, we need to understand how the data needs to be managed Data Warehouse - Answer- an integrated, subject-oriented, time-variant, nonvolatile database that provides support for decision making. Manual systems File Systems Centralized Database Systems Distributed Database Systems Client/server databases Data warehouses/Data marts - Answer- Evolution of data management: Manuel Systems - Answer- - Stone tablets (first known "data record") to record a kingdom's assets and taxes - Punch card systems, great for counting and tabulating; IBM had influence in creating this File Systems - Answer- - electronic storage medium in vented in the 1950's - high level programming languages - Cobol, Python, Access, ERWIN, C, VB - batch processing (nightly runs of data) - many other applications - Accounting, Finance, Operations, HR RAMAC - Answer- IBM's Random Access Method of Accounting & Control Centralized systems - Answer- - the need for current data - 1 super computer, several "dumb" terminals - physical and logical data independence physical data independence - Answer- capability to change the physical storage structure or access methods (e.g., index), i.e., internal schema, without having to change conceptual schemas logical data indendence - Answer- The capability to change (e.g., "add to") the conceptual schema (logical model of data) without having to change external schemas. Three Schema Architecture - Answer- - External Level (individual user views) - Conceptual Level (community user view) - Internal Level (storage view) Distrbuted Systems - Answer- - Database is not just in one physical location; network connections - Data accessibility and reliability - Can work at the local level and still be able to access and share data with other sites in a network - Improved performance - Easier expansion (scalability) Data replication - Answer- refers to the storage of data copies at multiple sites served by a computer network Data fragmentation (partitioning) - Answer- allows us to break a single object into two or more fragments - Horizontal fragmentation - Vertical fragmentation - Mixed fragmentation - Answer- Three Types of Fragmentation Strategies: Client-Server Database - Answer- - servers handle the majority of processing work - Client sends requests to server; iPad (presentation layer) --> web application server --> database server --> web server -> Content displayed on iPad Relational Models - Answer- - Low redundancy; data doesn't need to be stored in multiple places (more storage = very expensive) - Mathematically- it makes sense o Relational calculus o Relational algebra - Improved GUI - Parallel processing - Introduced by Peter Chen Transaction - Answer- A logical unit of data processing that includes one or more database access/update operations - Atomic unit of work that is co