You'd think that a profession that works with getting consensus on terms and their meanings would be able to figure out how to name our own tools and products...but we aren't.
In my Contentious Issues presentation, I choose to start our debates buy asking questions about Conceptual Data Modeling because I know that there are probably n+1 definitions and understandings about what makes a good CDM...or even what one is.
Vincent Rainardi at SQLservercentral.com has written an article about one set of confusing terms we use - Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. I hadn't really thought about this set, but he's right -- we use these terms to sometimes mean the same thing and sometimes something completely different.
Rainardi writes:
Try asking your colleague what is the difference between business intelligence and a data warehouse. I find that a lot of people, even those who work in BI projects and BI industry, do not understand the difference. A lot of people use these 2 terms interchangeably. Some people even prefer to use 1 term instead of the other because it simply "sounds better". Many people think that business intelligence is not just a data warehouse, but there is more to it. But when asked "what business intelligence systems are not data warehouse systems?" or "what part of business intelligence systems are not data warehouses?", most of them have difficulties explaining the answer.
These days, "business intelligence" is the norm used by most vendors in the industry, rather than "data warehouse". Most of them call / classify their tools as business intelligence software, not data warehouse software. The name of Cognos product is "Cognos 8 Business Intelligence". BusinessObjects label themselves as "BI software company" and "global leader in BI software". The name of one of Hyperion products is "Hyperion System 9 BI+". SAS Enterprise BI Server provides a fully integrated and comprehensive suite of business intelligence software. Microsoft promotes SQL Server 2005 as the end-to-end business intelligence platform. It seems that only Kimball Group who consistently use the term data warehouse. Bill Inmon, as the inventor of this term, also uses the term data warehouse.
Can you see how our business users are driven crazy when we tell them our job is to help them sort out their data and their meanings?
What have you done to clear up some of this confusion in your shop?