University Data Warehouse And Decision Support System A Case Study Of A University

Abstract

The reporting and sharing of information has been synonymous with databases as long as there have been systems to host them. Systems users expect to share information in an efficient and secure manner. However, most enterprises have a large number of systems that work separately which makes it difficult to share information in an effective manner. Today’s enterprises really need to integrate data in one location to effectively utilize it and improve decision making. Data warehousing involves integrating all enterprise data in one location. Universities have their own way of measuring success different from business oriented enterprises. Also the analysis done on university data is quite different from that of a business entity. The main objective of this research is to develop a University data Warehouse and business intelligence prototype to integrate university data for report writers to efficiently analyze, report and present information to University decision makers. The process of data warehousing starts with extracting data from the University operational systems which is copied to a server. At the server it is transformed, and added with data from other sources. The resulting data warehouse becomes the main source of information for report generation, analysis, and presentation through ad hoc reports, portals, and dashboards (Rapid decision, 2013).