Architectural support for business intelligence: a push-pull mechanism

Purpose - As business globalisation and internet usage continue to grow, the internet-based version of data warehouse systems (DWS) is expected to improve traditional DWS. However applying the web-based interfaces to client-server-based DWS structures may cause problems such as inflexibility, inefficiency, loss of scalability, and threats to security. These arise due to the complexity of manipulation and management of heterogeneous data with various categories of decisional tasks. This paper seeks to develop a flexible mechanism by applying Extensible Markup Language as a foundation for an internet-based DWS and to overcome the weaknesses of solely client-server-based DWS architecture. Design/methodology/approach - For better control and security the proposed architecture utilises an embedded pull-push mechanism to propagate the distributed decision information. This research also justifies the feasibility of the proposed mechanism by implementing a prototype, evaluating its performance, and conducting a real business case study. Findings - The results indicate that the mechanism can not only improve DWS scalability and efficiency, but also enhance security. Originality/value - The proposed architecture provides a support mechanism for business intelligence to efficiently and flexibly help companies make the right decisions in real time, grasp business opportunities and gain competitive advantage.