Business Intelligence Interview Questions

and Answer
Business Intelligence, is nothing but the term that helps the user in decision making to

run the business or important questions related to business. It helps the user in the

management of any organization for the growth of their business. BI helps the user to

make the decision that leads to growth in their business with the help of the appropriate

reports and data of any business which is very important.

So you have finally found your dream job in Business Intelligence but are wondering

how to crack the 2020 Business Intelligence Interview and what could be the

probable Business Intelligence Interview Questions. Every interview is different and the

scope of a job is different too. Keeping this in mind we have designed the most

common Business Intelligence Interview Questions and Answers to help you get success

in your interview. You can easily crack these Business Intelligence Interview Questions

which are asked in an interview

Below are the top Business Intelligence Interview Questions and Answers

1. What is Business Intelligence?

The term ‘Business Intelligence’ (BI) provided the user with data and tools to answer
any decision making an important question of an organization, it can be related to run

the business or part of a business. In short, business intelligence is used for reporting

the specified data of any business which is very important and using which

higher management of any organization will make the decision for the growth of their

business. Normally below decisions can be decided by any organization from Business

Intelligence tool:

•BI is used to determine whether a business is running as per plan.

•BI is used to identify which things are actually going wrong.

•BI is used to take and monitor corrective actions.

•BI is used to identify the current trends of their business.

2. What are the different stages and benefits of

There are following five stages of Business Intelligence:

Data Source: It is about extracting data from multiple data source.

•Data Analysis: It is about providing proper analysis report based on useful knowledge

from a collection of data.

•Decision-Making Support: It is about to using information in the proper way. It always

targets to provide proper graph on important events like take over, market changes, and

poor staff performance.

remaining information in the context of the business and its environment.

•Risk Management: It is about to discover that what corrective actions might be taken,

or decisions made, at different times.

Following are different benefits of Business Intelligence:

•Improving decisions making.

•Speed up on decision making.

•Optimizing internal business process.

•Increase operational efficiency.

•Helping or driving for new revenues.

•Gaining an advantage in terms of competitive markets with another close competitor.

3. What are different Business Intelligence tools

There are a lot of intelligence tools available in the market, in between them below are

most popular:

•Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE)

•Cognos

•Microstrategy
•SAS Business Intelligence

•Business Object

•Tableau

•Microsoft Business Intelligence Tool

•Oracle Hyperion System

4. What is a universe in Business Analytics?

The universe is kind of semantic layer in between database and user interface or more

correctly it is one of the interfacing layers in between the client (business user) and data

warehouse. It actually defines an entire relationship between various tables in a data

warehouse.

5. Define or list the differences between OLAP and

In general, we can assume OLTP is actually helping to provide source data in a data
warehouse and OLAP help to analyze the same.

OLTP System OLAP System

Source of Data Operational data, OLTP are an Consolidated data, OLAP data

original source of data. has come from various OLTP

databases.

Purpose of Data For any kind of current or To help with future planning,

fundamental business tasks. problem-solving or decision

making.

Data Updating End users initiated data Data updated based on a batch

frequently insert or update in job after one defined time

the transactional database. interval. This time can be less

or more than one day.

Processing Speed As usual typically very fast. Obviously depends on the

amount of data. After refreshing

batch data, sometimes complex

queries are taken more than

hours. Common habit to add an

index to improve the speed.

Space requirement Again relative small considering Obviously larger as it has to

historical data in the archived hold all the historical data, the

state. existence of

aggregation structures, also

require more indexes than

OLTP.

Database Architecture Normalized data, so all the Typically de-normalize of few

relationship. It normally used a star or

snowflake schema.

Backup and Recovery Back up is essential Instead of regular backups,

requirements on OLTP, as it’s a some environment may

day to day data, so any loss of consider simply reloading the

data is likely to entail significant OLTP data as a recovery

monetary loss and legal liability. method.

6. What is dashboard in a data warehouse?

The dashboard is nothing but the arrangement of all the reports and graphs on one

page. It is nothing but the collection of reports in a different format which has same

functionality display on the same page.

7. Explain the difference between data warehouse and

Transactional System Data Warehouse System

It normally designed to process with day It normally designed to processed high

to day data, so mainly concentrate on volume analytical reporting and

high volume transaction processing, subsequence. It also elaborating report

It normally processes driven, means an It is actually subject-oriented, means it

action of it depends on business-specific load data from a transactional system,

task or execution. then open to use for any kind of

analytical reporting which helps

organization for taken proper decision

based on that specific subject.

It normally handling current transactional It normally handling historical data.

data.

Data within a transactional system can Data warehouse data is called as non-

insert or update or delete in each task. volatile, meaning that new data can be

added regularly, but once loaded those

data are rarely changed.

In case of performance or speed, we We should always prefer data warehouse

should always prefer a transactional to fast retrieval of a relatively large

system for inserting, updating or deleting volume of data.

small volumes of data.

8. Explain Fact and Dimension table with an example.

A Fact table is the center table in star schema of a data warehouse. It actually holding

quantitative information for analysis, and maximum time it de-normalized.

A dimension table is one of the important tables in a star schema of a data warehouse,

which stores attribute, or dimension, that describe the objects in a fact table.

Fact table mainly holds two types of columns. The foreign key column allows joins with

dimension tables, and the major columns contain the data that is being analyzed.

Example: suppose one company sells products to customers. So every sale will be one

fact, so fact table holds that information like below:

Time ID Product ID Customer ID Unit Sold

4 17 2 1

8 21 3 2

8 4 1 1

Now in the fact table, there has customer id, so we need to maintain one dimension

table for a customer like below:

Customer Name Gender Income Education Region

ID
1 SS M 2 3 4

2 AC M 3 5 1

3 MS F 1 7 3

9. Define or list the differences between a snowflake

  Snowflake Schemas Star Schema

Maintenance No redundancy, so easier to Holding redundant data, so less

maintain. easy to maintain.

Complexity More complex query, hence less Lower complex query, so easy to

easy to understand. understand.

Query More foreign key, so longer Less number of foreign key, so

Performance query execution time. query execution is faster

compared to snowflake.

Utilization Good to use for data warehouse Good for Data Mart with simple

core to simplify complex relationship (1:1 or 1: many).

relationship (many: many).

Dimension A snowflake schema may have Star schema contains only single

Table more than one dimension table dimension table for each
for each dimension. dimension.

De-normalize Fact table is in de-normalized Fact and Dimension both the

form, but dimension table is in tables are in de-normalized

normalized form. form.

10. Explain or Define a RAGGED hierarchy.

Ragged hierarchy actually maintaining a relationship in case of parent member of at

least one member of the dimension is not in the level immediately above the member.

As an example, if we think about geographical hierarchy and considering North America

as continent then it has a country (like the United States), province or state (like

California), and city (like San Francisco). But if we consider Europe, Greece, or Athens it

doesn’t have this kind of hierarchy. So in this example, Europe, Greece or Athens

branches descend to a different depth, creating a ragged hierarchy.