Alex Gray, in his workshop on Business Intelligence, emphasized the vital role it plays in the development of modern applications. He focused on the benefits of adopting iterative methodologies while developing BI applications and services. The following paragraphs summarize the most important points of his discussion.

A. Waterfall vs. Iterative Methods

20 years ago, project managers worked well with the waterfall method. However, after the evolution of the software industry, clients started requiring solutions and software tailored to their specific needs. This led to the development of agile and iterative methodologies. With iterative development methodology, project managers can have fine-grained control over the software development process, minimize the risk of changes, and provide early engagement for the customer upon delivering small chunks of the project over several iterations. Therefore, Alex believes that the best approach for implementing a data warehousing project is to follow the agile methodology. By doing this, it is possible to split a project into several iterations, and with each iteration, a set of goals is delivered incrementally until the final data warehousing project is complete.

B. Definitions of Business Intelligence

According to Alex Gray, the most important feature of business intelligence is its ability to provide support for decision makers to confidently decide upon future strategies and visions based on big data collected from the data warehouse system over many years. Utilizing business intelligence platforms provides a huge advantage for the company, placing it ahead of other competitors. He thinks about business intelligence and how it can be utilized by global companies. For instance, a platform that gathers user ratings and feedback from millions of products sold by Amazon every day can provide important data for analysis.

C. Conclusion

Alex Gray's talk was informative, especially for those focused on computer and software engineering. It is essential to understand Business Intelligence and AI development for both during and after completion of studies. This knowledge will improve one's chances of standing out in the corporate domain and lead to interesting and challenging roles with higher benefits.