Analytical View of Business Data: An Example

Abstract

This paper describes an example of how the Analytical View (AV) in Microsoft Business Framework (MBF) works. AV consists of three components: Design time Model Service, Business Intelligence Entity (BIE) programming model, and the runtime Intell-Drill for navigation between OLTP and OLAP data sources. Model Service transforms an “object model (transactional view)” to a “multi-dimensional model (analytical view).” It infers dimensionality from the object layer where richer metadata is stored, eliminating the guesswork that a traditional data warehousing process requires. Model Service also generates BI Entity classes that enable a consistent object oriented programming model with strong types and rich semantics for OLAP data. Intelli-Drill links together all the information in MBF using metadata, making information navigation in MBF fully discover-able.