In Business Intelligence systems, data is collected from multiple sources to support decision-making, reporting, and analytics. These sources can be classified into four main categories:
These are operational systems used in day-to-day business activities such as sales, inventory, and customer management. They store structured data generated from business transactions.
Flat files such as CSV, Excel, and text files are commonly used for storing and transferring data. They are simple but may lack structure compared to relational databases.
APIs allow systems to exchange data in real time. Many modern applications such as payment systems, social media platforms, and cloud services provide APIs for data access.
These are real-time data sources such as IoT sensors, mobile applications, and system logs. They continuously generate data that must be processed instantly or near real time.
Understanding data sources is essential because it determines how data is extracted, transformed, and loaded into data warehouses for analysis.