BI DW

New SAP Certified Application Associate Business Objects Certification Details

BIDW Team — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 03:48:58 +0000

Now Business Objects Certified Professional exam is SAP Certified Application Associate and exams has been redesigned as per SAP Certification policy. Below are the details regarding new SAP Certified Application Associate Business Objects Certification.

The scope and content of these new certification exams is identical with the exams of the former BOCP program. A change is that instead of multiple exams that were needed for one certification, now only one exam qualifies for the certificate. Also, the items have been reviewed for their validity on the 3.x release.

In addition to these Application certifications of the former BOCP program SAP Education is launching a new Support certification. This certification is targeting support consultants and verifies their proven skills and fundamental knowledge to handle client messages as first line support providers. This certification is not tied into an Education curriculum but is surrounded by a learning map provided through the Partner Channel Portal.

Following are the BO certification available.

Sample questions for all five exams are published as well and can be accessed here

To appear for certification without attending any BO course you need to fulfill the following criteria’s:

- To appear for Associate level certification without attending any BO course you need Minimum 1 year of BO Implementation Experience with minimum of 6 months experience in the module in which you wish to take up certification

- The last 1 year should be with your present employer

- Your present employer should be a CUSTOMER or PARTNER of BO

If you fulfill the above criteria’s you would need to send your updated project profile in specified format to SAP Education for direct certification evaluation. On establishing your eligibility they will guide you through the process of registration.

Cost of each exam is almost approx 400.00 Euro.

Data Warehousing Concepts and Data Warehouse Project Lifecycle

BIDW Team — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:49:49 +0000

Data Warehousing Concepts

What is Data Warehouse
OLTP vs OLAP : Difference
What is dimensional modeling
What is star schema
What is snowflake schema
What is slowly changing dimension
SCD Type 1
SCD Type 2
SCD Type 3
What is surrogate key
What is Metadata
Whats is ODS
Data Warehouse Conceptual Data Model
Data Warehouse Conceptual Logical Model
Data Warehouse Conceptual Physical Model
Data Warehouse Conceptual Semantic Model

Data Warehouse Project Lifecycle

Data Warehouse Lifecycle
Problem Analysis and Design
Requirement Gathering and Analysis
Prototyping
Environment Setup
Design and Development
Testing
Deployment and Training
Enhancement and Helpdesk

What is ETL

BIDW Team — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:01:46 +0000

That’s a very basic question for a BI DW professional but it carries its own importance. Let’s discuss it.

ETL stands for Extract Transform and Load.

Extract: In a Data Warehouse environment data comes from various sources like, flat file, Operational database. Extract in ETL is nothing but extracting data from various sources in order to process it further.

Transform: Data Extracted from various sources often requires cleaning, validation to make it load ready for Data Warehouse.

e.g. Generally Data stored in OLTP data base is not Data Warehouse ready, it needs cleaning. If we consider Customer information systems, Customers often skips pin code on entry form or they enter something junk value. Its ok for OLTP but not for Data Warehouse. Its very important dimension in Data Warehouse. So we need to clean the pin code before loading it in database.

Load: Loading is the final step in ETL. It means loading the clean and filtered data in to Data Warehouse.

ETL is a very important step in overall Business Intelligence project implementation. ETL can also be called as Data Integration.

ETL can be performed using commercial ETL software’s like Informatica, Data Stage or can be performed by home grown ETL tool written in some high level language.

However using commercial tool is more popular and cost effective considering scalability, administration and speed of development.

What is Operational Data Store (ODS)

What is Business Intelligence?

BIDW Team — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:05:11 +0000

Business Intelligence is not a tool nor Business Intelligence means any particular technology rather we can Business Intelligence a collection of tools and technologies which collects data business data, processes it and presents it in different format like charts and tables to the end user which will in turn help him to make business decisions based on fact derived by using Business Intelligence.

Business Intelligence can not be limited to only data processing and presentation it can further be viewed as a astrologer of business performance as it tracks the historical data and with the use of certain algorithm it can help to find the pattern and predict the future of Business Performance.

Tools and Technologies use in Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence is a collection of tools and technologies which process and presents data. Following are few tools and technologies used in BI.

SAP Business Objects

Cognos

Excel

Data Mining Tools

Micro strategy

Choosing right Business Intelligence tool is one of the most important factor of successful Business Intelligence Project and Implementation.

List of Business Intelligence Softwares

BIDW Team — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:43:51 +0000

Following are populer tools used in Business Intelligence Development.

Oracle Enterprise BI (OBIE)

SAP Business Objects Enterprise

SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0

SAS Enterprise BI Server

SSAS, SSRS

IBM Cognos Series

WebFocus

QlikView

Microstrategy

Oracle Hyperion System

Actuate

Pentaho BI Suite

Jasper

Why I posted this list? I get lots of requests from my client regarding such a BI Tool list. So now i can point them here

Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Independent Certification

BIDW Team — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:43:24 +0000

There are number of certification available based on Business Intelligence/ Data Warehousing tool vendor as

SAP Business Objects

Cognos

Microsoft BI ( SSIS, SSAS, SSRS)

Microstrategy

However, apart from these vendor specific certification, generic TDWI’s BI DW certification (Independent Certification) is also very popular and globally accepted. Its name is “Certified Business Intelligence Professional”

There are following 5 expert areas in which you get certified.

Leadership and Management.

Business Analytics.

Data Analysis and Design.

Data Integration.

Administration and Technology

In order to get certified every one has to clear core data warehouse exam and on core exam from chosen area.

Based on the score in exam. Certification is awarded as “Practitioner” or “Master” level.

You can find more details on official website of TDWI ( www.tdwi.org)

Enhancements and Helpdesk

BIDW Team — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:17:32 +0000

Once the new data warehouse is deployed and its in use. You will get lot of enhancement and change request as users will see a new system and new ideas will pop in their mind. be ready. Also make sure you have very good helpdesk ready for users to solve user problems. Related posts:Deployment and [...] Related posts:

Deployment and Training

BIDW Team — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:16:22 +0000

Development is over and testing results are quite good. There are no major bugs or issues. Data quality is good, ETL is doing its job well. Now we are ready to roll out the data warehouse for actual use. Have detailed deployment plan ready along with production environment details. Announce the deployment to business users like a movie launch. Make sure you stick to date .

Once data warehouse is deployed, you need to train end user on how to use the new data warehouse. Have a training plan ready. Launch organization wide training for new BI DW solution. Create user manuals with detailed steps. Success of data warehouse is also depends on how you market it. Business Users are very use to with there existing systems and will find it very difficult to use the new systems without proper training. Make sure you train them well and show the benefits.

Testing

BIDW Team — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:14:41 +0000

Having a testing plan ready in advance is always advisable as it also help the development steps to test it timely. Once data warehouse is ready and ETL transformation is in place get all the components and modules tested from testing team. Testing teams needs to be aware of Business process along with technical details of data warehouse. following are the areas where testing needs to be done before rolling out the data warehouse.

1. Test the data warehouse against reporting needs.
2. Test the ETL process for quality of data and its coverage in terms of available data sources.
3. Test the data warehouse against SQL queries to be written for reporting.
5. Test the data warehouse for performance loads.
6. Check the data warehouse for organizations data security norms and rules.

Design and Development

BIDW Team — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:11:56 +0000

This is the actual start of your Data Warehouse project. Following things needs to executed in this step.

1. Design a data model based on requirement analysis. It could be star schema or snowflake schema based on requirement. Data modeling consist of following three parts.
a. Conceptual data model
b. Logical data model
c. Physical data model
2. Document in the data model design process including all possible details.
3. Get it reviewed and cross check the data model with reporting needs and your technical team.
5. Design a ETL process. ETL can be done using home grown tool or commercial tools. Having commercial tool speed up the process and also make is easy to maintain as skill set and support is available easily.
6. Create a sample data for the data warehouse and ETL. this could be a snap shot of the OLTP data.
5. Create a Unit testing plan and test ETL and data model for every new addition and change.
6. Try creating sample reports on top of data warehouse to test it.