One of the new Business Intelligence features of Oracle 10G being launched at Oracleworld next month is the SQL MODEL clause.
According to a forthcoming presentation by Thomas Kyte, the MODEL clause is an extension of the SELECT statement, and is used for budgeting and forecasting applications, letting you treat results sets as multidimensional arrays on which you can base sets of sophisticated interdependent formulas. The new syntax eliminates the complex SQL joins and unions needed for inter-row calculations in traditional SQL.
Oracle OLAP of course works in both relational and multidimensional OLAP mode, and the introduction of features such as the MODEL clause allow the relational engine to match some of the powerful slice-and-dice features found in the multidimensional engine.
As the model clause can be used in regular SELECT statements, it can take advantage of the scalability and performance features of the relational engine; and, although the clause defines models in multidimensional terms, its inputs and outputs are all standard Oracle rows so that can easily be integrated into standard Oracle Business Intelligence tools.
The MODEL clause looks suspiciously like something Oracle would have to get in place before Enterprise Planning and Budgeting could be made available; from what I understand, EPB works in both ROLAP and MOLAP modes, and as the whole basis of the application is planning and budgeting, the MODEL clause would allow this to be done relationally as well as in an analytic workspace. This would however limit EPB to running on Oracle 10G, which would imply that Apps 12i runs on 10G, as EPB is being delivered as part of Apps 12i. We'll have to wait and see.
12:02:44 PM 
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