Chapter 2. Aligning BI Solutions with Business Demands

In the previous chapter, we learned what BI is and how it can enhance the decision-making process in our organization. Now, let's discuss a business case. In this chapter, we will find how BI will help an example company, Northwind, to track their sales, orders, and inventories. We will go through a complete simulation on how Northwind will start adopting BI. Then, we will download the Northwind Microsoft Access database from the Microsoft site. After that, we will get to know their data model and business processes. At the end, we will set up the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) connection, which will be used in the next chapter to build our first Universe.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• A business process and how it applies to the Northwind's example
• The BI Maturity Model
• How to download the Northwind Microsoft Access database, and how to set up and configure the ODBC connection linked to this database
• Some important database terminologies by explaining the differences between dimensions, measures, and attributes
• The differences between facts, dimensions, and mapping tables
• The data model used by Northwind

Tip

Understanding a business process is the key to building a relevant Universe.