One Tier Architecture
This is the most basic architecture for Business Intelligence projects, because does include a kind of ODS or staging area between operational systems and final users tools and most of times this area is a periodical copy of operational data. A lot of the organizations have this level of basic architecture, mostly as an inevitable operational need. This basic design can provide excellent source of production/schedule reporting and also some degree of low intensity analysis using final-user analysis tools. Today more than 80% of the enterprises are working with this design, much of them making proof-of-concept testing and demonstrations.
The main goal with this architecture is to differentiate and to distribute load between operational systems and reporting systems to ensure no impact on production and have reporting capabilities without endanger operational continuity. In early stages, this design lacks of improvements or transformations over operational data, but it could be a good starting point to obtain a good foundation to better Business Intelligence platform.
The upper stage for this design includes:
- Repository standardization and normalization.
- Key data aggregations.
- Historical data.
- Advanced transformations for data cleansing.
- Relationships among distributed-systems data.