BIT3203 Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

This course introduces the student on how companies can build data warehouses and utilize business intelligence for decision-making hence saving money and increasing profit. Several, initiatives ranging from supply chain integration to compliance with Organizational/government-mandated reporting requirements depend on well designed data warehouse architecture. Therefore, the course introduces you to the main components of a data warehouse for business intelligence applications. This will include how a data warehouse fits into the overall strategy of a complex enterprise, how to develop data models, data mats useful for business intelligence, and how to combine data from disparate sources into a single database that comprises the core of your data warehouse. The course will also explore how to define and specify useful management reports from warehouse data.

Course Objectives
The objectives of the course are to:

• Give students the understanding on the role and operation of data warehouses
• Equip students with skills of developing data warehouses
• Equip students with skills of maintaining existing data warehouses
• Equip students with skills of manipulating data warehouses to generate information for business decision making

Learning outcomes
On completion of this course, the students will be able to:

• Explain how data warehouse combined with good business intelligence can increase a company’s bottom line.
• Describe the components of a data warehouse.
• Describe different forms of business intelligence that can be gleaned from a data warehouse and how that intelligence can be applied toward business decision-making.
• Develop dimensional models from which key data for critical decision-making can be extracted.
• Sketch out the process for extracting data from disparate databases and data sources, and then transforming the data for effective integration into a data warehouse.
• Load extracted and transformed data into the data warehouse.