What is Data Analysis ?
Data Analysis is an activity of looking in to data then trying to understand the business performance based on the data. We can extend data analysis to - understanding data patterns then realize trend of the business, then predict future business behaviour.
Before starting the analysis of the data, it should be clean without errors and data quality matters for accurate analysis of the data.
Preparing Data For Analysis
We can collect data from Transactional systems such as ERP, CRM, e-COMMERCE, Online Systems, Mainframes, Client Server, Cloud Services and external data sources.
The transactional data can be available in RDBMS data sources, in general majority of the transactional systems use RDBMS as backend database.
Porpular RDBMS Database: Microsoft SQL Server, ORACLE, DB2, TERADATA, SYBASE, MySQL, PostgreSQL etc.
Data from Data Warehouse or Data Mart
ETL - Extract, Transform and Load process collects Transactional data ( OLTP )and external data then prepares in to OLAP stores permanently in Data Warehouse or Data Marts
Popular ETL tools are INFORMATICA, DATASTAGE, ABINITIO, ODI etc
SQL as Data Analysis Language
Whenever Data is in RDBMS data sources, SQL plays an important role to analyze the data.
Data Visualization Tools for Data Analysis
Instead of writing SQL for analysis, Data Analysis tools can provide analytical abilities without writing SQL.
Popular Data visualization tools are : Tableau, QlikView, MSBI, COGNOS, BUSINESS OBJECTS, MICROSTRATEGY, OBIEE etc.