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What is the difference between the terms "business intelligence" and "data warehousing?" People seem to be using these terms on an interchangeable basis. |
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Larissa Moss’ Answer: Business intelligence refers to the capability of providing a 360° view of the business. Majid Abai from Seena Technologies calls it "information plumbing" and "a platform that enables decision-makers within an enterprise to have the latest competitive internal and external information at their finger tips in a clean, consistent and easy- to-use manner." My own definition of business intelligence is very similar: a framework of cross-organizational disciplines and an enterprise architecture for the construction and management of an integrated pool of operational as well as decision support applications and databases that provides the business community easy access to their business data and allows them to make accurate business decisions. One vehicle to deliver business intelligence is data warehousing; another vehicle is CRM and so on. In other words, data warehousing is a subcomponent of and a vehicle for delivering business intelligence. Adrienne Tannenbaum’s Answer: Business intelligence refers to the use of existing data/information/knowledge within an enterprise. In general, most data is currently diverse and sporadically integrated (such as with a single data warehouse). In a BI framework, all of this is looked at as part of a bigger whole and becomes available via one search. Documentation, business rules, search criteria and existing reports are examples of things that are accessible from one place, typically via organized and related search terms. Scott Howard’s Answer: Business intelligence refers to systems and technologies that provide the business with the means for decision-makers to extract personalized meaningful information about their business and industry, not typically available from internal systems alone. This includes advanced decision support tools and back-room systems and databases to support those tools. The data warehouse is that back-room database. Combine that with the support tools required to build and maintain the data warehouse, such as data cleansing and extract, transform and load tools and you have what many call data warehousing. Think of the data warehouse as the back office and business intelligence as the entire business including the back office. The business needs the back office on which to function, but the back office without a business to support, makes no sense. Chuck Kelley’s Answer: My 30,000-foot level answer – I think that you build a data warehouse to put a tool on top of it to do business intelligence. So data warehousing is the foundation that business intelligence is built upon. Clay Rehm’s Answer: People were performing data warehousing (DW) before it had a name. The term "data warehousing" stemmed from the terms "decision support" and "management reporting" many years ago. Business intelligence (BI) sought to encapsulate more processes that included data warehousing. If you notice, many vendors use the term BI to describe their services; to show that they provide more services than just data warehousing. |
Larissa Moss is founder and president of Method Focus Inc., a company specializing in improving the quality of business information systems. She has more than 20 years of IT experience with information asset management. Moss is coauthor of three books: Data Warehouse Project Management (Addison-Wesley, 2000), Impossible Data Warehouse Situations (Addison-Wesley, 2002) and Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision- Support Applications (Addison-Wesley, 2003). Moss can be reached at methodfocus@earthlink.net.
Chuck Kelley is an internationally known expert in database and data warehousing technology. He has 30 years of experience in designing and implementing operational/production systems and data warehouses. Kelley has worked in some facet of the design and implementation phase of more than 50 data warehouses and data marts. He also teaches seminars, co-authored four books on data warehousing and has been published in many trade magazines on database technology, data warehousing and enterprise data strategies. He can be contacted at chuckkelley@usa.net.
Clay Rehm, CCP, PMP, is president of Rehm Technology (www.rehmtech.com), a consulting firm specializing in data integration solutions. Rehm provides hands-on expertise in project management, assessments, methodologies, data modeling, database design, metadata and systems analysis, design and development. He has worked in multiple platforms and his experience spans operational and data warehouse environments. Rehm is a technical book editor and is a co-author of the book, Impossible Data Warehouse Situations with Solutions from the Experts. In addition, he is a Certified Computing Professional (CCP), a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Science and a Masters Degree in Software Engineering from Carroll College. He can be reached at clay.rehm@rehmtech.com.
Scott Howard has been with IBM for more than 22 years. Howard’s experience includes staff and management assignments ranging from microapplications programming to mainframe and systems programming. He is an internationally recognized expert on business intelligence, data warehousing, DRDA, distributed databases and multivendor database integration, and an author and contributor to many publications. Scott is an IBM certified Advanced Technical Expert for DB2 UDB, an IBM Certified Business Intelligence Specialist and Certified Technical Trainer. Howard is currently with Learning Services, IBM Global Services and is its business intelligence and data integration curricula worldwide leader. He has worked with IBM’s Silicon Valley, Toronto, Rochester and Austin development labs for the past twelve years, developing client/server database and data warehousing courses.
Adrienne Tannenbaum is president of Database Design Solutions, Inc. (www.dbdsolutions.com), a New Jersey-based consulting firm specializing in the revitalization of corporate data. The firm focuses on data issues within large organizations and supports all data reconstruction efforts with a solid meta data backbone. Tannenbaum is the author of two popular meta data-focused books: Metadata Solutions: Using Metamodels, Repositories, XML, and Enterprise Portals to Generate Information on Demand (2001, Addison Wesley) and Implementing a Corporate Repository (1994, Wiley).
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