In today’s result oriented environment, most companies wants the output in a short duration with lesser cost and quick turn around time.
Business Discovery is the term which the visualization tools as the data is viewed in an interactive manner. Display the data in a summarized way and slice and dice the data in a page or across the entire document enables the user to analyze the data better.
Visualization tools typically work on In Memory Database ie when the data gets loaded to the server of the visualization tool, the data gets compressed to the maximum level so that it can hold more data in the server which enables the end user to interact with data using the tools.
Qlikview, Tableau, Spotfire etc. are some of the visualization tools in the market which is in top 3 spots in this space.
Traditional Data Warehousing
Creating and enterprise Data warehousing or Data Mart for an enterprise is the way we create the DW systems. Typically this gets sponsored by the senior managers who understands the current issues (typical data is not integrated across OR reporting is difficult for the MIS department). Once we implement the DW, the companies will be able to view the data at enterprise level, can analyze the data using OLAP technologies like SAP Business Objects, Cognos and Microstrategy. OLAP enables the companies to answer why it happened (Ad hoc) kind of questions which is the biggest advantages of creating the DW. This enables the DW users to cut across any subject area provided we have metadata in the OLAP tools for analysis.
Dis Advantages of traditional Data Warehousing implementation
Time consuming to implement the traditional DW is one of disadvantage. Deciding on ETL technology / methodology, building Data Models, creating meta data models for OLAP, creating reports, understand the data of different OLTP systems, creating the common reference model which fits all the operational system etc takes its own time to make it better. If the time and resource is the problem, then companies are requesting to create the reports (pre defined) and Dashboards which is interactive with lesser cost which takes less time to implement.
To beat the disadvantage of the traditional DW implementation, now companies are preferring to implement the visualization tools to make sure the data is displayed in the format the management requires with out building the DW and putting more emphasis on outcome (result). This is where the visualization tools gets better score to implement with in the department or enterprise. This tools provides a way to analyze data by making sure the interactive in the reports / dashboards are very high.
Here in the Visualization tools, we extract data from various sources and directly populate to the documents / reports rather than storing the data in a centralized repository. This makes the development faster. We refresh the data periodically based on the changes in the source data or based on the requirement the business has. The effort required to build Dashboards and interactivity using this tools are very less.
