Abstract: Data is a vital resource for businesses. It is important to businesses to manage and use their data effectively. Because of this businesses value college graduates with an understanding of and experience working with databases, data warehouses and data analysis. Faculty in many business disciplines try to prepare students for this data-oriented business environment by teaching some database and business intelligence concepts in their courses. However, many faculty may not be aware of some important online resources, some of which come from major businesses themselves. The Microsoft Enterprise Consortium (MEC) provides data and instructional resources to faculty in business colleges through access to several data sets to be used for teaching a range of topics: fundamentals of database management, beginning and advanced SQL, data warehouses, business intelligence (data mining, data cubes and dimensional reporting). For fundamental database concepts, the MEC provides databases that range from fairly simple in terms of the number of tables, relationships and data rows to fairly complex databases with large amounts of data. For teaching data warehouses and business intelligence the MEC offers very large data sets contributed by companies, such as Sam’s Club, Tyson Foods, and Dillard’s. These companies made these data sets available specifically for instructional purposes in higher education. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of this teaching resource and present an overview of the materials available at the MEC, which is hosted at the University of Arkansas Walton College of Business.

Keywords: Data Warehouse, Business Intelligence, teaching resource, Data Mining, data cube, Database

Download this article: ISEDJ - V10 N6 Page 84.pdf

Recommended Citation: Kreie, J., Hashemi, S. (2012). Microsoft Enterprise Consortium: A Resource for Teaching Data Warehouse, Business Intelligence and Database Management Systems. Information Systems Education Journal, 10(6) pp 84-92. http://isedj.org/2012-10/ ISSN: 1545-679X. (A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of ISECON 2011)