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Business Intelligence vs Data Warehousing |
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It is very common mistake we find while talking about business intelligence. People often use the terms 'Business Intelligenc' and 'Data Warehousing' interchangeably. But only those who have some idea about BI and DW know that they mean two different things though they are very much related. Let me discuss this in brief:
What are the main differences between Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing?
| Data warehousing |
Business Intelligence |
| Data warehouse is a way of storing data and creating information through leveraging data marts. DM's are segments or categories of information and/or data that are grouped together to provide 'information' into that segment or category. DW does not require BI to work. Reporting tools can generate reports from the DW |
Business intelligence is the leveraging of DW to help make business decisions and recommendations. Information and data rules engines are leveraged here to help make these decisions along with statistical analysis tools and data mining tools. |
We can say that BI is much like ERP in that it can be extremely expensive and invasive to your firm and there is a wide range between the offerings - low end to high end - which facilitates the pricing. There is a long list of tools to select from. There are also services that provide this as an outsource. Some of these services will allow you to eventually 'own' the solution and in-source it at a future date. Like anything else, this comes at a price.
This scenario works well for those who do not have a high caliber IT staff and would like to get results with a short ramp up time, basically because the system is already built. Your rules and reports just have to be generated. That is a bit oversimplified, but you get the picture. |
