Quite a hip and new term in the world of business intelligence is self-service business intelligence. If you visit this website regularly, you must have come across it. But is the term self-service not a term in contradiction?

To me the term service to me means that someone or something offers me a service, and that implies that I do less and the service provider does all or most of the work. For example, if I drive my car through a car wash, my car is automatically cleaned. It's the service that's being provided. Or, if I step into a hotel, packed with luggage, a porter will probably take over my bags, and will bring them to my room. Ok, I have carried them for hundreds of miles and he only does the last 100 yards, but it's still a service the hotel provides. That's basically the idea of service.

Now let's go back to the term self-service. The term self placed in front of the term service means you will do it yourself. In the context of self-service business intelligence, it means that the user can develop his own reports. But doing it yourself means you're not receiving service, you are actually doing it yourself. So, self-service means that no one offers you a service, you do all the work yourself.

For example, if a hotel positions itself as a self-service hotel, they would offer the service that you can carry your own luggage all the way up to your room. Comparably, a self-service carwash would provide the service that you can wash your car yourself. That's not service!

So combining the terms self and service make no sense, because the opposite of service is doing-it-yourself. Maybe we should rename self-service business intelligence to do-it-yourself BI, or no-service BI.