ABSTRACT
Throughout this book, the focus has been on best practices for implementing a successful business intelligence and analytic solution marked by manageability, flexibility, extendibility, scalability, and the like, and accommodating any customizations. Overall, this proven best practice we refer to is to establish a firm foundation for the data which correctly translates and encapsulates the data elements and requirements of the business to enable business intelligence and analytics. This data foundation is called a dimensional model or star schema,
and the data architecture forms the basis for any downstream applications, such as decision support systems (e.g., OBIEE) and analytics (e.g., Essbase).
