Business Intelligence and Testing!!!!
Testing the data that traveled from Top to Bottom of any Organization. Testing the Front End Applications, Mainframes Systems, Networking Systems, Windows Applications, .Net Applications are different from Data warehouse testing.
Let me explain you with an Example what is a Warehouse and how we can connect it to Information and Technology!!
If suppose you wanted to set up a Provisional Store and you wanted to know how to stock the Goods to maintain Supple and Demand life cycle. So the shop keeper creates different racks to keep different goods to access them easily and very quickly. He should know where he stored the goods and how they are related say for an example -
He should store all the Groceries at one section, Home Maintenance at one place, Canned foods at one place etc., If he stores the goods logically and physically he can able to get the Stock easily.
So he need to set up a warehouse and needs to monitor What Comes In ? and what Goes Out ! and How was the Sales and Demand based on the Goods available. The shopkeeper needs to do analysis based on the Goods available and the sales in the warehouse to add or stop buying things (forecasting).
To achieve this he will maintain all the data into a work book and does calculation (Add, Subtract ,Multiply , Divide). If he can’t able to do analysis the data based on the good available in his warehouse then he would be looser in his business.
As on today we have 7,195,883,823 population in this world. Most of them are connected with one or more Public or Private organization , it could be Banks, Schools, Colleges, Employees, Employers etc.,. Like the above shop keeper the organization needs to maintain the Data relates to 7,195,883,823 people. So Experts in Information and Technology industries are developing robust techniques to maintain and validate the data.
Just think 10 years ago the cost of a 500 MB USB Drive was sold for INR 2500.00, but now we are getting 500 GB Flash Drive for INR 2500.00 – what does it mean ? the data is increased !! so we need more space for lesser price !!!
All organizations are very much interested on Customer data to enhance and forecast their business. So they are seeking Information and Technology specialists for designing. Technology specialist are proposing solutions at various levels to capture and maintain the data for Analysis and Forecasting.
They have formed a closed group called Business Intelligence (Group Information System). There are many roles involved to capture the customer data.
Some of the roles and their responsibilities -
Solution Architect who designs the whole System right from how the data retrieved from source? and how we are loading them into Warehouse ? and how we can use for analytic purposes ?
Business Analysts who analysis the business needs and creates the rules for capturing the right data from the source systems.
Data Analysts who designs the how they source system and target (warehouse) can interact each other. They fixes the criteria what data can be loaded and how it should be loaded into ware house.
Developers who converts business needs into coding that will extract the data from the source system and load them into warehouse based on the Rules provided by Data modelers and business analysts
Testers who needs to validate is source sending the data what they agreed ? Validating the business based on the data received, validating the rules defined in Source to target document as per the data received and the business designed, verifying the code developed by developers are as per the requirements provided.
Folks – please comment how useful the write up is!!! I will be posting about Test Planning (Estimation,Test Plan, Test Cases and Test Conditions) in my next blog.
Many Thanks - Asik
