Page 14 - DCAP606_BUSINESS_INTELLIGENCE

Unit 1: Introduction to Business Intelligence

Notes
Figure 1.6: IBM Business Intelligence Product Set

Source: www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg245415.pdf

1.4.2 Decision Support Tools

Query and Reporting

The two main query and reporting products (in IBM) are the Query Management Facility (QMF)
and Lotus approach. QMF has been used for many years as a host-based query and reporting tool
by DB2 whereas Lotus approach is a desktop relational DBMS that has gained popularity due to
its easy-to-use query and reporting capabilities.

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

If we talk about IBM structure, its key product in the OLAP marketplace is the DB2 OLAP Server,
which implements three-tier client/server architecture for performing complex data analysis.
The value of the DB2 OLAP server lies in its ability to generate and manage relational tables that
contain multidimensional data.

Information Mining

Intelligent Miner by IBM is one of the few products in the market to support an external API,
allowing resultant data to be collected by other products (for example an OLAP product) for
further analysis.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 9