Session 4 - Business Intelligence

This week we learned that businesses can try to extract more use out of the data that they have collected in their databases over the years. The technology which allows them to do this belong under the category or umbrella called "B.I.".

Unlike query and reporting tools in regular databases, BI tools can help users find previously unknown patterns and trends in their data, or it can help them perform ad-hoc queries and comparisons on large amounts of current and historical data. BI is not meant for daily operational use but it is meant for decision-support and analytical use.

Here's a link to a demo of an OLAP cube. Try to query the cube along multiple dimensions to see how easy it is to gain insights from a data warehouse.

Session 3 - Databases

This week we learned how data is organized in a relational database. We looked at actual tables in a database, and we learned how to create a query and a report using MS ACCESS.

Videos showing how to build the query and report in MS ACCESS have been uploaded to our course web site on SOUL. Look for the videos under the "General Documents" folder. You need Windows Media Player to view the videos. Let me know if you can't view the videos as I can provide you with another (free) player.

For the lab exercise, we continued building the Products page. A table is used to layout the product catalog, and hyperlinks are used to allow the user to jump quickly to specific sections on the same page (e.g. by defining anchors named top, shoes, balls, apparel).

A lightbox effect can also used to show an enlarged version of the product photo within an expanded box in the browser window.

Here's the output of the Monday group.

Here's the output of the Tuesday group.