Knowledge Platform

A complete solution for all members of an organization

Knowledge Platform provides an analysis, reporting and decision support or Business Intelligence solution that suits the needs of all members of an organization. Knowledge Platform leverages the capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services to provide a robust and flexible OLAP solution set.

A key feature of Knowledge Platform is the ability to create, save and load an Analysis report. An Analysis report is derived from an OLAP cube and its dimensions and hierarchies. A specific Analysis defines the dimensions it contains, the hierarchies specified for each dimension, the members selected from each hierarchy and a number of Views. A View is defined by its type (data table, bar chart, quadrant chart, etc.) and the dimensions selected and placed on an axis (row/column) and those dimensions not selected for an axis, but setting conditions for what is shown (controlling context). It is this ability to create, save, share and reuse Analyses that can be collaborated on and shared among an organization's members.

Within any organization, members end up playing many different data-oriented roles.  From our experience, the following are the most typical:

Analyst - Digging to find a nugget of information or knowledge that requires sifting through lots of data. In this role, we need to drill down and across, slice and dice, reorganize views, create graphics and use many OLAP functions. Often, we don't know what we are trying to find, but need the robustness and flexibility to try out different approaches. Our job may be a business analyst, an operational manager or an executive, but for some period of time we need to be analytical.

Consumer/Viewer - Periodically reviewing results of some activity. We have already established the data analysis framework or format and just want to see how things are going. Sometimes this is to confirm what we think we have already observed or sometimes it is to identify if a problem exists. An example is a Monday morning status reporting. Most times an OLAP Consumer is fulfilling a monitoring need.

Author - Creating an Analysis or report for someone's OLAP Consumer role. The Consumer may be another organization, another person or ourselves at some future point in time. As the author we sometimes leverage our Analyst roles to provide standard reporting for those who are not well suited for the Analyst role, sometimes our expertise with the authoring application drives the need to fulfill this role.

Knowledge Platform has been designed to provide a solution for each of these basic roles using either Knowledge Prospector or Knowledge Server: