Top 50 Business Intelligence Interview Questions You Must Prepare 19.Mar.2024

A channel is a Web site that uses "push" technology, also known as Webcasting, to keep subscribers abreast of up-to-date information.

Each BUSINESSOBJECTS channel is associated with a BROADCAST AGENT, itself associated with a user group in the Business Objects repository. One BROADCAST AGENT can have several channels.

A Prompt is an end users object, which allows the users to enter the value or select the values to restrict the data in the report.

  • Designer is a Business Objects IS module used by universe designers to create and maintain universes.
  • Universes are the semantic layer that isolates end users from the technical issues of the database structure.
  • Universe designers can distribute universes to end-users by moving them as files through the file system, or by exporting them to the repository.

BO Main.key, File that contains the address of the repository's security domain.

  • User Module
  • Designer
  • Supervisor
  • Auditor
  • Set Analyzer
  • Info View (Web Intelligence)
  • Business Objects Software Development Kit (SDK)
  • Broadcast Agent etc.

In a business Intelligence environment 80% of development time is allocated to OLAP interface designing, 20% of time allocated to Report development.

Data Mining is the analysis of data and use of software techniques for extracting hidden, comprehensible, and useful information from databases.

  1. BROADCAST AGENT is a collection of server components that can be deployed over a distributed CORBA network.
  2. The distributed architecture enables scalability, load balancing and failover.

Business Intelligence is a technology used for preparing the reports for multidimensional analyses.

There are 2 Multidimensional analysis methods available in BO, they are:

  1. Slice and Dice.
  2. Drill Down.

  • Drill mode allows you to analyze data from different angles and on different levels of detail.
  • Drill down displays next level of detail in hierarchy.
  • Drill up goes back up through the hierarchy to display data on less detailed levels.
  • By using Drill by option you can move to another hierarchy to analyze other data that belongs to a different hierarchy.
  • Drill Through if the lowest level of detail you need is not currently available in the report, you can drill through to the database directly from drill mode and get the data you need. You do not have to edit the query in the Query Panel.

  • Join is the relation that occurs between the two tables that helps to combine into one table.
  • The purpose of join is that to restrict the Cartesian product.
  • The join is specified in the Where clause of the sql statement.

The different types of joins are:

  • Equi join - is based on the equality between the values in the column. Because the same column is present in both tables, the join synchronizes the two tables.
  • Outer join - An outer join links two tables, one of which has rows that do not match those in the common column of the other table.
  • Theta join - A theta join links tables based on a relationship other than equality between two columns.
  • Shortcut join - Shortcut joins can be used in schemas containing redundant join paths leading to the same result, regardless of direction.

Slice and dice mode enables you to switch the position of data in a report (for example, move data from columns to rows).

  • The qualification of an object reveals how it can be used in multidimensional analysis.
  • An object can be qualified as a dimension, a detail, or a measure.
  • In the Universe pane, the symbol beside each object indicates its qualification.

The responsibilities that universe designer has: 

  • Designing, Creating and maintaining the Universe. 
  • Distributing the Created Universes.

Metadata reporting of BO is possible. BO provides a separate universe which actually contains repository tables, objects etc.Using this Universe one can do metadata reporting in BO.

  • A good OLAP interface writes an efficient SQL and reads an aqua rate data from database.
  • To design the interface and architect having good knowledge on database under standing the report requirements.

The following are the responsibility assigned to administrator:

  • Installations and configurations in a distributed environment .
  • Creating the BO Enterprise Repository.
  • Performing back up and recovery of Metadata.
  • Tuning the servers.
  • Deployment of reports.

There are two types of parsing:

  1. Quick parsing
  2. Through parsingents

The data source (Query) is called as the data provider.

There are two types of filter:

  • A global filter affects the whole report.
  • A blockspecific filter only filters data for the specified chart, table or crosstab.

Modeling the relationships among objects in the data mining to explore and use those relationships.

  • Statistics
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Neural Network
  • Data visualization
  • Decision Trees

You can view Business Objects documents in the following formats:

  • HTML
  • PDF
  • Enhanced Document Format
  • Business Objects Format

Design the Reports according to the report requirement templates.
Testing the each report with following types of tests:

  1. Unit Testing
  2. System Testing
  3. Performance Testing
  4. User Acceptance Test (UAT)

  • User Friendly
  • Familiar Business Terms
  • Graphical Interface
  • Drag and Drop
  • Powerful reports in less time
  • Enterprise wide Deployment of documents using WebI
  • Customized dashboards using Application foundation and Business Objects SDK

There are four types of Query Filter you use in Web intelligence:

  1. Predefined Filters
  2. Single and Multi – value Filters
  3. Prompted Filters
  4. Complex Filters

Designer provides four types of functions:

  1. Number
  2. Character
  3. Date and
  4. @Functions.

Functions beginning with the @ character are BusinessObject functions that render the definition of objects dynamic and database–independent.

A Join is a relationship that explains how the data in one table relates to data in another table.

Cardinality expresses the minimum and maximum number of instances of an entity B that can be associated with an instance of an entity A. The minimum and the maximum number of instances can be equal to 0, 1, or N.

Because a join represents a bi-directional relationship, it must always have two cardinalities.

There are two main methods for detecting or editing cardinalities:

  • The Detect Cardinalities command
  • The Edit Join dialog box

Using check Integrity, u can check the universe.

Go to Designer, Tools -> check Integrity

Built-In-Strategies:

  • Extracting the joins with tables
  • Detect cardinalities in joins
  • Create default classes and objects from the tables
  • Objects - In this we can set how the objects to be displayed in the universe pane
  • Joins - In this we can set how the joins between the tables has to be retrieved like matching column names or matching names etc.
  • Tables - In this it will reads the table structure from the database.

The other strategies:

  • Setting the number of rows to be retrieved - default 100
  • The number of row retrieved from database
  • The execution time of the query based on the number of minutes specified.
  • The maximum size of the long text objects.

External Strategies: External strategies are declared in STG section of .PRM file. We can create the external strategy using either sql or flat file.

  • Save business objects documents in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF)
  • Add hyperlinks to reports such as mail addresses and web site addresses.
  • These hyperlinks are maintained when you save the report in HTML or PDF.
  • Zero Administration – Only the business objects client software installed on the windows pc; all middleware is stored and administered on the web intelligence web server and the server side processing is handled by the web intelligence system.

The repository is the database in which the information about the users and data is present. It is created and maintained by the general supervisor. It is used to share resources of business objects.
It comprises of three domains:

  • Universe domain – It holds all the exported universes and there may be more than one universe domain in the repository.
  • Document domain – It holds all exported documents, templates, scripts, and lists of values.
  • Security domain - secured connections are stored in this.

  • Queries on Universe
  • Stored procedure
  • Free hand SQL
  • Text files or Spread sheets
  • VBA Procedures
  • OLAP servers
  • SAP

The main components that interact in the designing of universe are :

  • Table browser - The table browser is used to choose the tables and columns.
  • The Structure pane - The Structure pane refers the database structure of the universe.
  • The Universe pane - The Universe pane refers the components in which it is going to use in BO or WEBI documents.

  • Star Schema
  • Snowflake Schema
  • Multistar Schema
  • Normalized production Schema
  • Data warehouse with aggregates

The strategy is the script that automatically extracts the structural information from the database or flat file.

  • Built-in-strategies
  • External strategies

Supervisor is the product is used to set up and maintain a secure environment for Business Objects products.

Report bursting allows you to maintain the version documents based on the user profiles.

BCA is a software product for the users of WEBI and BO to process and distribute documents automatically at the scheduled dates and time.

Designing, Creating and maintaining a universe The phased in this include:

  • Planning: Break down the information system into functional areas.
  • Analysis: Analyze the information needs of users
  • Design: Design a conceptual schema
  • Design: The specification of a universe
  • Implementation: Create a universe with DESIGNER
  • Test the universe with BUSINESSOBJECTS/WEBINTELLIGENCE
  • Distribute the universe
  • Repeat the above steps for other universes
  • Maintenance: Update and maintain the universe
  • Notify end users of changes.

There are two ways to distribute a universe:

  1. through the repository 
  2. through the file system.

  • "Scope of analysis" me a subset of data, returned by a query that you will use for analysis in your report.
  • The data for your scope of analysis does not appear in the report until you decide that you want to use it in analysis.

If the data provided is from two different data providers then we can link those two universes, such type of universe is called Linked Universe.

There are two types of hierarchies:

  1. Default hierarchy: It contains the dimension objects in the order in which they are presented in the class.
  2. Custom hierarchy: A custom hierarchy is created from default hierarchy.

  • Automated document scheduling and publishing.
  • On the server side, CORBA-enabled features such as load balancing and server optimization using caches.
  • Tracing BROADCAST AGENT activity

  • A hierarchy is an ordered series of related dimensions grouped together to perform multidimensional hierarchy.
  • The relationship between object in the hierarchy is one – to – many.

The design method consists of two major phases:

  • During the first phase, you create the underlying database structure of your universe. This structure includes the tables and columns of a database and the joins by which they are linked. You may need to resolve loops which occur in the joins using aliases or contexts. You can conclude this phase by testing the integrity of the overall structure.
  • During the second phase, you can proceed to enhance the components of your universe. You can also prepare certain objects for multidimensional analysis. As with the first phase, you should test the integrity of your universe structure. Finally, you can distribute your universes to users by exporting them to the repository or via your file system.