MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATA MODELLING: DATA SETS AND TOOLS FOR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Business Intelligence (BI) is an expanding data management area. BI analysis requires students to understand key concepts such as multidimensional data modelling, data cleansing and data mining algorithms, tools and techniques. Practical work for BI is often based around Excel which has a number of limitations as far as the teaching of BI is concerned. This paper discusses the experience of using the SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services) tool to introduce students to multidimensional data modelling. We describe the way in which the tool was used, the issues encountered, the strengths and limitations of working with SSAS and possible future extensions. We also discuss issues with identifying and using data sets and outline a proposal to extend the data sets available to our students