Section 6.3: Bullet Text Study Guide
Chapter Contents

Using Databases to Improve Business Performance and Decision-Making

Businesses use their databases to:

  • Keep track of basic transactions

  • Provide information that will help the company run the business more efficiently

  • Help managers and employees make better decisions

In a large company, special capabilities and tools are required for analyzing vast quantities of data and for accessing data from multiple systems, such as:
  • Data warehouse: a database that stores current and historical data from core operational transactional systems for use in management analysis, but this data cannot be altered.

  • Data mart: A subset of a data warehouse in which a summarized or highly focused portion of the organization's data is placed in a separate database for a specific population of users.

  • Business intelligence (BI) tools: Data analysis tools used for consolidating, analyzing, and accessing vast stores of data to help in decision making, such as software for database query and reporting, tools for multidimensional data analysis (online analytical processing), and data mining.
Figure 6-13, Figure 6-14


FIGURE 6-13 COMPONENTS OF A DATA WAREHOUSE
The data warehouse extracts current and historical data from multiple operational systems inside the organization. These data are combined with data from external sources and reorganized into a central database designed for management reporting and analysis. The information directory provides users with information about the data available in the warehouse.


FIGURE 6-14 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
A series of analytical tools works with data stored in databases to find patterns and insights for helping managers and employees make better decisions to improve organizational performance.

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) supports multidimensional data analysis, enabling users to view the same data in different ways using multiple dimensions, for example: How many dishwashers were sold in the East in June.

Figure 6-15


FIGURE 6-15 MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATA MODEL
The view that is showing is product versus region. If you rotate the cube 90 degrees, the face that will show is product versus actual and projected sales. If you rotate the cube 90 degrees again, you will see region versus actual and projected sales. Other views are possible.

Data mining finds hidden patterns and relationships and infers rules from these to predict future behavior. The types of information obtainable from data mining include
  • Associations
  • Sequences
  • Classifications
  • Clustering
  • Forecasting

Predictive analysis uses data mining techniques, historical data, and assumptions about future conditions to predict outcomes of events, such as the probability a customer will respond to an offer or purchase a specific product.

Databases can be linked to the Web by using middleware software products, allowing users or clients to access corporate data through a Web browser interface. Such software might consist of an application server, a custom software program, or CGI (common gateway interface) scripts. In a client/server environment, the DBMS might reside on a special dedicated computer called a database server. Web interfaces are easy to use and require few or no changes to the internal database.

Figure 6-16


FIGURE 6-16 LINKING INTERNAL DATABASES TO THE WEB
Users access an organization’s internal database through the Web using their desktop PCs and Web browser software.

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