Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Unleashed, Second Edition

An Analytics Mini-Methodology

Assumption: You are building a business-area focused OLAP cube.

Requirements Phase:

1. Identify the processing requirements for this decision-support system. What analysis do you need to do? Are trend reporting, forecasting, and so on necessary? These can often be represented in Use Case form (via UML).

   1. Ask each user what business decision questions he needs to have answered.

   2. Ask each user how often he needs these questions answered and exactly when the questions must be answered.

   3. Ask each user how current the data must be to get accurate answers. This is data latency.

2. Identify the data needed to fulfill these requirements. What must be touched to provide answers? The best way to capture this type of information is a logical ...