While we may all differ on the definitions of BI, we do know that it is all about extracting and delivering specific and useful information in the midst of the data-explosion around us. And all the definitions and implementations, in their own ways, are geared towards that objective.

Margaret Dunham, the author of Data Mining: Introductory and Advanced Topics once said:

Data mining research and practice is in a state similar to that of databases in the 1960s.


That is true, but will have to change. Databases have long been standardized, and data-mining & BI would get standardized in due course. Till then, I guess, we’ll have to do with whatever information is available, ignore the hype, and take the plunge for defining our own solutions.

So what does it take to deliver upon the BI promise? Data, for sure. And then you need a lot of meta data as well to make sense out of the data. And most importantly, the context for analysis – the what, why, and how of the effort. In today’s implementations, the context is implicitly identified and built into the solution, which may not be flexible enough to meet the changing needs of the users.

As an excellent effort in the right direction, Dratz recently published a white-paper outlining why BI should be viewed as an Abstraction Architecture for Information, and how it should be structured. And why a flexible BI architecure should have be the ability to apply dynamic contexts at run-time for the conversion of data into meaning. He proposes a very interesting piece therein: a Transaction Clearinghouse that would house the data till all pieces of an enterprise transaction (possibly spanning across multiple systems) are available, and would apply contexts dynamically to create meaning out of the data.

Even if you aren’t sure what all this means, do read Introduction to an Abstraction Architecture for BI white paper by Dratz. It will give you a very good overview of what BI is, why it is needed, and how the vision could be actualized.

In case you’d like to first read a little bit of background about the white paper, you can read his post Abstraction Architectures…or, Why Everyone Should be thinking of BI.

Do let me know what you think?