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Decision Support Discussion Paper

Instruction

• You must submit two separate copies (one Word file and one PDF file) using the Assignment Template on Blackboard via the allocated folder. These files must not be in compressed format.
• It is your responsibility to check and make sure that you have uploaded both the correct files.
• Zero mark will be given if you try to bypass the SafeAssign (e.g. misspell words, remove spaces between words, hide characters, use different character sets or languages other than English or any kind of manipulation).
• Email submission will not be accepted.
• You are advised to make your work clear and well-presented. This includes filling your information on the cover page.
• You must use this template, failing which will result in zero mark.
• You MUST show all your work, and text must not be converted into an image, unless specified otherwise by the question.
• Late submission will result in ZERO mark.
• The work should be your own, copying from students or other resources will result in ZERO mark.
• Use Times New Roman font for all your answers.

Question 1

Discuss, analytically yet briefly, the role of an enterprise data warehouse (EDW) in the decision-making process. (0.5 marks) Relate your discussion to operational databases and the type of decisions they support as well as their insufficiency for effective business intelligence strategy compared to EDW. (0.5 marks)

Question 2

What does a Performance Measurement System consist of? (0.3 marks) Which Performance Management System is considered a management as well as measurement methodology? (0.3 marks) What is its role as a performance measure and as a management tool separately. (0.4 marks)

Question 3

Decision makers in XYZ company need to analyze the organization’s financial performance in order to determine whether departments’ expenditures are over or under budget, thus, deriving actionable decisions. Table 1 provides information extracted from the organization’s data warehouse on the budgeted expenses against actual expenses of the company’s departments over one year period of time.

Table 1: Departments’ yearly performance

1. Use the most appropriate basic visual chart covered in class to show, for each department, the percentage variance between the budgeted and actual expences over each of the four quarters. (5 marks)

Variance% = ((budgeted expense – actual expense) / actual expense) * 100

(a positive value indicates that the department is spending less than the budgeted amount, whereas negative values indicate that expenses are more than anticipated)

1. Use the most appropriate basic visual chart covered in class to visualize the difference between the departments’ overall budget values against overall actual values over the four quarters. (5 marks)
2. As a decision maker, draw one informative conclusion from each chart (A) and (B) using your own words. (5 marks)

Question 4

Suppose that a data warehouse consists of the three dimensions, supplier[sup_name, type] customer[cust_name, email, mobile], location[street, city, country], and the two measures units_sold, and sales_amount (in SAR).

1. Draw a Star schema diagram for the above data warehouse. Include the appropriate attributes for dimension and factor tables (DT and FT). (5 marks)
2. Explain how Snowflake schema can provide better representation over Star schema. In the given 3D warehouse above, determine which DT will be affected when implementing the Snowflake model? (5 marks)
3. What specific OLAP operations (roll-up, drill down, dice, slice) should be performed (based on the above schema (A)) in order to list the total sales of each supplier in Saudi Arabia? (5 marks)