Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Casual Users:
These are users who occasionally come to the data ware-
house to get answers. This is not part of their daily work. Casual users
generally use the BI application in a structured manner. They access
pre-defined reports, and are able to perform some limited manipula-
tion of the results. They are not typically interested in performing more
in-depth analysis, but rather are simply looking for a single report. The
BI application must be set up to ensure ease of use for these casual users.
Everything must be laid out intuitively and clearly labeled.
Casual users generally have structured and guided paths to get results
from the BI application. Pulling up pre-defined reports is usually all they
are allowed to do. They would have limited flexibility. When there is a
need for a different report, casual users would ask someone else to create
it for them.
Consumers of results:
There are many people in the organization who
are consumers of the BI solution. These people may not even know that
they are using a data warehouse at all. Information is provided to them
as part of another business process or served up automatically for them.
For example, when you make a purchases online, other recommended
products are often offered by accessing the purchase patterns of other
people who bought the product you just put into your electronic shop-
ping cart. As another example, some people may sign into the network
first thing every morning and see a company news page that includes
sales results and quality measures. These are provided by the data
warehouse.
As technology has expanded the reach of the BI delivery mechanisms,
more and more people can benefit from the data warehouse, even though
they may never actually log in and run a BI report themselves. Consumers
of results have no idea that they are even accessing a data warehouse.
The access is completely embedded in other applications, or results
are simply sent electronically. They never go to a BI portal to run a
report.
External users:
These users of the BI application are people who have
business relationships with the organization and can benefit from seeing
information about that relationship. External users may be customer,
vendors, suppliers, agents, or other business partners. This use may
be in the form of providing access to sales history to your customers,
or providing business results to franchise managers. These users can
have a profile like those already described, such as business analysts or
casual users. If there are any external users, there are additional security
responsibilities that need to be addressed to ensure the safety and privacy
of all the data in the data warehouse. Most often, external users have
structured access to the data warehouse. They may have limited flexibility
