There has not been an open-source
Introduction
[ 6 ]
tool that really addresses this shortcoming. Crafty developers can take the long
approach and write out scripts and programs that automate data reporting tasks,
but this is a long and complicated process. Proprietary software for doing reporting
tasks has been around, such as the report developer inside Microsoft Access for
reporting of Access databases or Crystal Reports. These are tools that have been
built to automate reporting tasks??”such as data retrieval, sorting, aggregation, and
presentation??”into a format that is meaningful to the user. These kinds of tools have
been lacking in the open-source community, and have only begun to gain speed in
the last few years.
Introduction to Business Intelligence
There are two major questions if you are reading this book that need to be answered
at this point. What is business intelligence, and why do we need it? Business
intelligence is a lot like many other technology buzzwords that get thrown around;
many people say it, and many people will give you a complicated definition of it.
However, the answer is really quite simple.
If I had to give it a formal definition I would say that business intelligence, as it relates
to information technology, is any tool or method that allows developers to take data
or information, process it, manipulate it, and associate it with related information and
present it to decision makers.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25