DSS LAB Internship Sharing: BI application prototype development on iPad

[Peter O'Donnell]

In recent years, mobile BI becomes a frequent topic among BI vendors and users, especially, after the success of iPhone and iPad since 2008. Smart phones and tablet PCs are acting an essential role of managers' daily life, however, BI users and vendors also have to face different problems and issues related to the mobile BI.


In the past 15 weeks, I worked as a research intern in the DSS Lab to develop an iPad application prototype for exploring dimension structures of BI reports. In this prototype, we adopt the approach that presenting the user interface with WebView controller supported by Apple and with the Javascript and HTML. The prototype is designed under the client and server architecture. Users select report generation criteria in the user interface and the criteria will be sent to the web server, then the data query command will be generated in the server retrieve data from the data warehouse. Finally, the information of the report will be sent back to the client system to generate reports.


During our research, we encountered that major vendors adopt the approach that client system has to connect the server to retrieve data, when users intent to generate a report. In term of this approach, we have concern to the application usage during the non-productive hours (e.g. while users are travelling on broad without Internet connection). As a further study inherited from this initial prototype, we may try an alternative that storing temporary report data locally in the iPad, such as temp DBs or local OLAP cubes. However, security issue would come along with this approach that latest critical data or company confidential information might leak, when users lose the devices, and data is stored locally in the device without effective encryption.


Moreover, with the benefit of the gesture function enabled by the multi-touch screen in iPad, in further development, users may use some pre-defined gestures to explore data into detail, such as the drill down and roll up.


To conclude, this internship experience offers me a great opportunity to have an in-depth study about the advantage and disadvantage of the mobile BI application enabled by the multi-touch mobile device comparing to that presented in a traditional user interface, mouse and screen monitor. In my opinion, with the tablet device, users can interact with the reports more intuitionistic, but they have to face the security and accessibility issue along with the benefit provided by the portable device.



Jason



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