ISQS 3358 Business Intelligence Project

 

Instructor: Zhangxi Lin

 

Final Project Report Due: April 21, Wednesday

 

In this project 3-4 students will form a team to fulfill a data mart development project. The project includes deliverables in five different stages:

 

Stage 1 (10%): Project proposal. The selection of the project mainly relies on the availability of the dataset and your understanding of the business story about the data. The deliverable is a project proposal in 2-4 pages, containing (1) Project topic, (2) The availability of the dataset, (3) analytic themes, (4) A conceptual dimensional model, and (5) A list of references. Due March 5, Wednesday.

 

FAQ:

What does “The availability of the data set” mean? You need to confirm the data set used for the project is available

What is “analytic themes”? They are business needs or requirements for the project. You can read the “Business needs” descriptions in Chapter 6, 7 and 8 of the textbook to get the clue. 

What is “A conceptual dimensional model”? The draft of the dimensional model in a diagram format to be implemented later. See Chapter 6 for details.

 

Stage 2 (20%): Data mart development. Refer to Chapter 6 of the textbook for the tasks in this stage: (1) dimensional model design (at least four dimensions), and (2) data mart creation. The description of the data mart will be 3-5 pages including figures or screenshots of the designed model. Due March 12, Wednesday.

 

Contents of the deliverables:

1.     A dimensional model diagram, either PowerPoint slide or the screenshot of the data source view. This must be the refined version from the “conceptual dimensional model” in Stage 1.

2.     Screenshots of design pages for each table from SQL Server Management Studio.

3.     A brief description of the considerations in the dimensional model design.

a.     How time dimension is defined? In what granularity?

b.     The hierarchy within a dimension, if any. (For example, State, county, city, and street are in a hierarchical structure).

c.     The aggregate dimensions, if any. (For example, in MaxMinManufacturingDM, DimMachineType is an aggregate from DimMachine).

d.     Indicate the primary key and foreign keys in each table.

e.     Others.

 

Stage 3 (20%): Data mart populating. Refer to Chapter 7 of the textbook for the tasks in this stage. The deliverables: (1) The screenshot of ETL system logic design, (2) A brief description of ETL system implementation, (3) Notes about data quality and other issues during data preprocessing.  It will be 2-3 pages including figures and/or screenshots. Due April 7, Monday.

 

Stage 4 (20%): Analysis report: The analyses of the data in the data mart. The report contains:

(1) 4-6 findings from the data analysis.

(2) 2-4 diagram/charts/tables generated with SAS Enterprise Guide.

(3) An optional choice of the data analysis is to do OLAP with the cube created from your data mart. Try to wok out the OLAP application outcomes using SAS Enterprise Guide or SSAS. You may “drill down” or “drill up” the OLAP cube. Both SAS EG and SSAS Browser allow you to expand the dimension and to explore the data in tables or graphs.  

The report’s length is 2-4 pages plus figures and tables. Due April 21, Monday.

 

Stage 5 (30%): The compilation of the previous deliverables with modifications and enhancements. Hardcopy and electronic version are both needed, due May 7, Wednesday.

 

(1)   The report will contain the following parts

a.     Cover page. Including the team’s name, team members, title of the report, course number and name, and the date the report is submitted.

b.     Table of contents

c.     One-page executive summary

d.     Introduction section. Mainly based on the contents of Deliverable #1 but with extensions:

-       The background of the project, such as what are the businesses supported by this project.

-       Analytic themes, i.e. business requirement to this project. Relevant business processes that generate data and use the data are expected

-       The availability of the dataset, including the quality of the data. You have process the data for ETL. So you should have pretty much to say about this.

e.     Data mart development section, mainly deliverable #2 with necessary modifications

f.      Data mart populating section, mainly deliverable #3 with necessary modifications

g.     Analysis report section, mainly deliverable #4 with necessary modifications (highly suggested to do so)

h.     Summary section of the project, 1-2 page. It may contain: what you have learned, the top three comments on this project, the progress of the project regarding the time schedule.

i.      Reference list. If a reference is from the Internet, you need to list the title of the page in addition to the url address.

(2)   A hardcopy of the report will be submitted for grading, plus an electronic copy emailed to zhangxi.lin@hotmail.com.

 

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Project 2 Data Preparation or Target Advertising (Graduate Students only)

 

Find a web log dataset COMMREX.COM-ACCESS_LOG-9711.TXT from the shared directory \\BASRV1\ISQS 3358. Perform the following tasks:

1)     Import the text file into a SAS dataset

2)     Take lstsch3.cgi as the target page to convert the file into the format with one row per session. Follow the format the same as QUERY_DEC1997_VER3.XLS in \\BASRV1\ISQS 3358. If you have difficulty to write SAS code to process the data, you may use the Summary Statistics data describing function in SAS Enterprise Guide to process the data. Then copy the generated code into Base SAS for modification.

3)     Use SAS Enterprise Miner to perform classification modeling.

4)     The final report in both hardcopy and electronic copy contains:

a.     The SAS code for the project

b.     The screenshot of the SAS Enterprise Guide result

c.     The data mining results with necessary explanations

The project is due on May 9 Friday.

 

 

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Using the data set, especially the dataset from real business, will help you earn extra credit because of the originality. You need to explain the data collection and data preprocessing tasks you have performed in the report. If you have difficulties to find a good data set for your project, you may do one of the following as your team project:

 

Project A: Cotton/cottonseed data warehousing

 

If you know the cotton agriculture, this project may interest you. The Excel files \\BASRV1\ISQS3358\COTTON_DATA\ COTTON.XLS containing cotton/cottonseed dataset. The following are tasks to be fulfilled:

1)     Study the dataset “Cotton.xls” carefully. The main dataset is in “data” table. You also need to study other worksheet. You will notice that the main dataset has missed some values but this does not have major effect on this project.

2)     Define 5-8 analytic themes for the data warehouse.

3)     High level dimensional model design. This is based on the paperwork

a.     Identify 2-4 business processes

b.     Declaring the grain for the data warehouse

c.     Define dimensions

d.     Identifying the facts (according to the bus matrix)

4)     Detailed dimensional model development. This will be based on computer work.

a.     You must specify the primary key for each table.

b.     The model must contain at least one Type 2 SCD, one conformed dimension, and any other specific treatment of modeling.

c.     Indicate the components of junk dimension, heterogeneous facts, etc.

5)     Dimensional model review and validation.

6)     Populate the data warehouse with the cotton/cottonseed data (use SSIS and Management Studio for this ETL task).

7)     Develop a few applications, such as queries, OLAP applications (use SSAS and Management Studio for this).

 

 

Project B: Commercial Bank Data Warehousing

 

If you have good knowledge in finance this project may fit you. Please check the datasets on the website of Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago http://www.chicagofed.org/economic_research_and_data/commercial_bank_complete_files_2001_2006.cfm. The datasets are pretty good – good for research and exercises.

 

1)     Chooses the dataset of four quarters in a year.

2)     Download and extract the datasets one by one using Base SAS (double-click the file and it will be extracted automatically to SAS’s Work library). You need to do this four times for datasets in a year.

3)     Study the variables of the dataset and conceive 2-4 analytic business questions. Decide which columns will be used for data analysis. Use up to 100 variables from at least two groups of columns to construct data warehouse for analysis purpose. Make sure what you need and you understand the columns well according to the explanations of the columns on http://www.chicagofed.org/economic_research_and_data/commercial_bank_dictionary.cfm.

4)     Data warehouse dimensional model design

5)     Examine the quality of the extracted data

6)     ETL system design and implementation

7)     Data warehouse population

8)     OLAP implementation

9)     Comprehensive data analysis

 

 

Project C: AWC Data Mart Project

 

Use the AdventureWorksDM data warehouse in OREDB Server. You need to study the data warehouse carefully and identify your business themes in order to reduce the size of your data mart. 6-10 dimensions will be good for your project. The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit, Joy Mundy and Warren Thornthwaite, Wiley, 2006, ISBN 0-471-26715-5, contains useful information about the data warehouse.