第三代的BI

搞BI這些年來,心中一直有個疑問,究竟BI終極目標是啥?要走到什麼樣的程度才算是真正的BI?心中有太多的疑問了,因為不斷地由使用者或者vendor feedback得知,一個企業至少要導過second round的BI後才算是進到了BI的門檻.
使用者似乎永遠有無盡的資料需求,而且多半是即興的需求.以往OLTP的時代,我們用報表的觀念幫使用者設計報表,一張表的促成,往往要和使用者再三確認LAYOUT和資料運算邏輯的正確性,所以每一張新的報表需求,我們就算是一份業績似的計價,後來使用者學了聽明,開始有可以自訂報表的需求,所以REPORT DESIGNER 出來了,不管是買工具,或者是自已開發的,都能隨欲隨求的在浩瀚的資料中撈資料,當然啦,寫表的功力是一定要雄厚的啦.
不過咧,隨著,"變動"與"變態"需求愈來愈多的情況下,這種還需要廠商做表或者自已寫SQL撈表的技術就算落伍了,於是有了商業智慧(Business Intelligence)的需求.你只消用MOUSE DRAG & DROP 就可以神奇地出現表和圖,要RAW DATA時,就那麼一點(DRILL THROUGH)就把一串串的明細資料給展現出來.
不過到此,我覺得這仍是報表的運用,只是方便使用者由一群亂七八糟的資料來源中,幫他做個DATA WAREHOUSE或DATA MART,讓他單一來源的做表,看表. 所以問題就來了, 資料沒在DW或DM中的,可怎麼辦呢?? 所以這些日子來,我一直在想這個問題, 在現在的資料技術上究竟要怎麼個克服..
在Mark Whitehorn 的一篇文章Business intelligence and data warehouse trends: The challenges of third-generation BI 提到了三階段的BI趨勢,我覺得頗能符合心中的問題定義,也正好到了一直在想的問題,就是第三代的BI已經面臨了使用者既變動又變態的資料需求了,好像是WEB 2.0一樣,使用者要能自已資料的控管了.
"We would characterize BI as having three generations," he said. "The first generation was about understanding the past. The second was about analyzing why things happened and making recommendations about the future. That's better than first, but I still liken this to driving a car by looking in the rear view mirror. The new, third generation is about making information available to the people in front of the customer."
This is a truly significant shift in the way enterprises use data warehouses. First- and second-generation systems needed to support a limited number of people who ran large, complex analytical queries. The third generation must support not only more complex queries from the same analysts but also a new workload that consists of thousands of users running very different queries. These may well be complex, but each is likely to hit a relatively small set of data within the warehouse.
可惜的是,作者好像沒有將HOW-TO這事說得一分清楚明白,但文未倒是提到了MICROSOFT野心,在OFFICE 2007後,將OFFICE變成是滿足使用者一切BI需求的前端應用工具了,這對一路來都死抱著 微軟工具不放的我,也算好事一件....