MIS 101, Chapter 9

BI Server

A Web server application that is purpose-built for the publishing of business intelligence (369).

Reporting Application

A business intelligence application that inputs data from one or more sources and applies reporting operations to that data to produce business intelligence (352).

Dimension

A characteristic of an OLAP measure. Purchase data, customer type, customer location, and sales region are examples of dimensions (353).

Third-party Cookie

A cookie created by a site other than the one visited (379).

Data Mart

A data collection, smaller than a data warehouse, that addresses the needs of a particular department or functional area of a business (349).

Market-basket Analysis

A data mining technique for determining sales patterns. A market-basket analysis shows the products that customers tend to buy together (357).

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

A dynamic type of reporting system that provides the ability to sum, count, average, and perform other simple arithmetic operations on groups of data. Such reports are dynamic because users can change the format of the reports while viewing them (353).

Data Warehouse

A facility for managing an organization's BI data (346).

Supervised Data Mining

A form of data mining in which data miners develop a model prior to the analysis and apply statistical techniques to determine the validity of that model and to estimate values of the parameters of the model (357).

Unsupervised Data Mining

A form of data mining whereby the analysts do not create a model or hypothesis before running the analysis. Instead, they apply the data mining technique to the data and observe the results. With this method, analysts create hypotheses after the analysis to explain the patterns found (356).

Decision Tree

A hierarchical arrangement of criteria that predict a classification or a value (359).

Neutral Networks

A popular supervised data mining technique used to predict values and make classifications, such as "good prospect" or "poor prospect" (357).

OLAP Cube

A presentation of an OLAP measure with associated dimensions. The reason for this term is that some products show these displays using three axes, like a cube in geometry. Same as OLAP report (354).

Expert Systems Shells

A program in an expert system that processes a set of rules, typically many times, until the values of the variables no longer change, at which point the system reports the results (364).

Cookie

A small file that is stored on the user's computer by a browser. Cookies can be used for authentication, for storing shopping card contents and user preferences, and for other legitimate purposes. Cookies can also be used to implement spyware (379, 396).

RFM Analysis

A technique readily implemented with basic reporting operations to analyze and rank customers according to their purchasing patterns (352).

BigData

A term used to describe data collections that are characterized by huge volume, rapid velocity, and great variety (360).

MapReduce

A two-phase technique for harnessing the power of thousands of computers working in parallel. During the first phase, the Map phase, computers work on a task in parallel; during the second phase, the Reduce phase, the work of separate computers is combined, eventually obtaining a single result (360).

Regression Analysis

A type of supervised data mining that estimates the values of parameters in a linear equation. Used to determine the relative influence of variables on an outcome and also to predict future values of that outcome (357).

The Singularity

According to Ray Kurzweil, the point at which computer systems become sophisticated enough that they can create and adapt their own software and hence adapt their behavior without human assistance (371).

Data Broker

Also called data aggregator; a company that acquires and purchases customer and other data from public records, retailers, Internet cookie vendors, social media trackers, and other sources and uses it to create business intelligence that it sells to companies and the government (350).

Semantic Security

Also called data triangulation; concerns the unintended release of protected data through the release of a combination of reports or documents that are not protected independently (372).

Rich Directory

An employee directory that includes not only the standard name, email, phone, and address but also expertise, organizational relationships, and other employee data (367).

Hadoop

An open source program supported by the Apache Foundation that manages thousands of computers and that implements MapReduce (362).

Static Reports

Business intelligence documents that are fixed at the time of creation and do not change (368).

Dynamic Reports

Business intelligence documents that are updated at the time they are requested (368).

Push Publishing

In business intelligence (BI) systems, the mode whereby the BI system delivers business intelligence to users without any request from the users, according to a schedule, or as a result of an event or particular data condition (341).

Pull Publishing

In business intelligence (BI) systems, the mode whereby users must request BI results (341).

Data Acquisition

In business intelligence systems, the process of obtaining, cleaning, organizing, relating, and cataloging source data (340).

Confidence

In market-basket terminology, the probability estimate that two items will be purchased together (358).

Support

In market-basket terminology, the probability that two items will be purchased together (358).

Lift

In market-basket terminology, the ratio of confidence to the base probability of buying an item. Lift shows how much the base probability changes when other products are purchased. If the lift is greater than 1, the change is positive; if it is less than 1, the change is negative (359).

Business Intelligence (BI) Systems

Information systems that produce business intelligence (337).

Content Management Systems (CMS)

Information systems that support the management and delivery of documentation including reports, Web pages, and other expressions of employee knowledge (365).

Pig

Query language used with Hadoop (363).

Expert Systems

Rule-based systems that encode human knowledge in the form of If/Then rules (364).

Decision Support Systems

Some authors define business intelligence (BI) systems as supporting decision making only, in which case they use this older term as a synonym for decision-making BI systems (339).

If/Then Rules

Statements that specify that if a particular condition exists, then a particular action should be taken. Used in different ways, by both expert systems and decision tree data mining (364).

Hyper-social Knowledge Management

The application of social media and related applications for the management and delivery of organizational knowledge resources (367).

Data Mining

The application of statistical techniques to find patterns and relationships among data for classification and prediction (356).

Measure

The data item of interest on an OLAP report. It is the item that is to summed, averaged, or otherwise processed in the OLAP cube. Total sales, average sales, and average cost are examples of measures (353).

Granularity

The level of detail in data. Customer name and account balance is large granularity data. Customer name, balance, and details of all contacts with that customer, orders, and payments is smaller granularity (348).

BI Analysis

The process of creating business intelligence. The four fundamental categories of BI analysis are reporting, data mining, BigData, and knowledge management (341).

Knowledge Management (KM)

The process of creating value from intellectual capital and sharing that knowledge with employees, managers, suppliers, customers, and others who need it (363).

Publish Results

The process of delivering business intelligence to the knowledge workers who need it (341).

Business Intelligence (BI)

The processing of operational data, social data, purchased data, and employee knowledge to expose solutions, patterns, relationships, and trends of importance to the organization (338).

Cross-selling

The sale of related products to customers based on salesperson knowledge, market-basket analysis, or both (357).

BI Application

The software component of a BI system (338).

Cluster Analysis

Unsupervised data mining using statistical techniques to identify groups of entities that have similar characteristics. A common use for cluster analysis is to find groups of similar customers in data about customer orders and customer demographics (356).

Subscriptions

User requests for particular business intelligence results on a stated schedule or in response to particular events (369).

Drill Down

With an OLAP report, to further divide the data into more detail (354).