Business Intelligence (BI):

A very broad field indeed, it contains technologies such as Decision Support Systems
(DSS), Executive Information Systems (EIS), On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP),
Relational OLAP (ROLAP), Multi-Dimensional OLAP (MOLAP), Hybrid OLAP
(HOLAP, a combination of MOLAP and ROLAP), and more. BI can be broken down into
four broad fields:

Multi-dimensional Analysis Tools: Tools that allow the user to look at the data from a
number of different "angles". These tools often use a multi-dimensional database referred
to as a "cube".
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Query tools: Tools that allow the user to issue SQL (Structured Query Language) queries
against the warehouse and get a result set back.
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Data Mining Tools: Tools that automatically search for patterns in data. These tools are
usually driven by complex statistical formulas. The easiest way to distinguish data mining
from the various forms of OLAP is that OLAP can only answer questions you know to
ask, data mining answers questions you didn't necessarily know to ask.
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Data Visualization Tools: Tools that show graphical representations of data, including
complex three-dimensional data pictures. The theory is that the user can "see" trends
more effectively in this manner than when looking at complex statistical graphs. Some
vendors are making progress in this area using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language
(VRML).

Metadata Management:

Throughout the entire process of identifying, acquiring, and querying the data, metadata
management takes place. Metadata is defined as "data about data". An example is a
column in a table. The datatype (for instance a string or integer) of the column is one
piece of metadata. The name of the column is another. The actual value in the column for
a particular row is not metadata - it is data. Metadata is stored in a Metadata Repository
and provides extremely useful information to all of the tools mentioned previously.
Metadata management has developed into an exacting science that can provide huge
returns to an organization. It can assist companies in analyzing the impact of changes to
database tables, tracking owners of individual data elements ("data stewards"), and much
more. It is also required to build the warehouse, since the ETL tool needs to know the
metadata attributes of the sources and targets in order to "map" the data properly. The BI
tools need the metadata for similar reasons.