Data virtualization design model for near real time decision making in business intelligence environment

The main purpose of Business Intelligence (BI) is to focus on supporting an organization‘s strategic, operational and tactical decisions by providing comprehensive, accurate and vivid data to the decision makers. A data warehouse (DW), which is considered as the input for decision making system activities is created through a complex process known as Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). ETL operates at pre-defined times and requires time to process and transfer data.
However, providing near real time information to facilitate the data integration in supporting decision making process is a known issue. Inaccessibility to near realtime information could be overcome with Data Virtualization (DV) as it provides unified, abstracted, near real time, and encapsulated view of information for
querying. Nevertheless, currently, there are lack of studies on the BI model for developing and managing data in virtual manner that can fulfil the organization needs. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to propose a DV model for near-real time decision making in BI environment. Design science research methodology was adopted to accomplish the research objectives. As a result of this study, a model
called Data Virtualization Development Model (DVDeM) is proposed that addresses the phases and components which affect the BI environment. To validate the model, expert reviews and focus group discussions were conducted. A prototype based on the proposed model was also developed, and then implemented in two case studies.
Also, an instrument was developed to measure the usability of the prototype in providing near real time data. In total, 60 participants were involved and the findings indicated that 93% of the participants agreed that the DVDeM based prototype was able to provide near real-time data for supporting decision-making process. From the studies, the findings also showed that the majority of the participants (more than
90%) in both of education and business sectors, have affirmed the workability of the DVDeM and the usability of the prototype in particular able to deliver near real-time decision-making data. Findings also indicate theoretical and practical contributions for developers to develop efficient BI applications using DV technique. Also, the mean values for each measurement item are greater than 4 indicating that the respondents agreed with the statement for each measurement item. Meanwhile, it was
found that the mean scores for overall usability attributes of DVDeM design model fall under "High" or "Fairly High". Therefore, the results show sufficient indications that by adopting DVDeM model in developing a system, the usability of the produced system is perceived by the majority of respondents as high and is able to support near real time decision making data.