09 September 2003

Well, Oracleworld is San Francisco is now up and running and details of the new 10G versions of the Oracle Database, Application Server, and the Business Intelligence tools are now publicly available. There's a lot to take in at the moment but first impressions are pretty exciting. The most impressive development from the BI tools perspective is support for Oracle OLAP data sources with Oracle Discoverer. Bud Endress's white paper describes how a future version of Discoverer (probably Discoverer 10g Plus) features the BI Beans query selector, and native Oracle OLAP access, allowing proper multidimensional queries to be used against the Oracle OLAP multidimensional database in the same way that it can currently create queries against an Oracle relational database. This now gives users three options when working with Discoverer against an Oracle database; Straighforward relational queries against a relational star-schema (or any other Oracle data model) Relational queries against detail level data in a star-schema, coupled with summaries held in an Analytic Workspace Multidimensional queries using the BI Beans selector against an Analytic Workspace This is exciting news and reinforces Discoverer as the primary 'out-of-the-box' ad-hoc query tool for the Oracle database, removing the need to build a custom BI Beans application in order to access OLAP datasources. Indeed, now that Discoverer has the ability to create rich multidimensional selections against the Oracle OLAP multidimensional database, it gives Oracle Sales Analyzer users an excellent alternative to Enterprise Planning & Budgeting if they don't plan to implement the e-Business Suite. 6:13:21 PM

Oracle have issued an update on metalink outlining the current status of Enterprise Planning & Budgeting. The update seems aimed at countering some of the 'misinformation' about EPB currently doing the rounds, mainly around the area of write-back in Version 1, and what release of e-Business Suite it will be part of. According to the article; Version 1 will be a full budgeting and reporting release and will support write-back EPB will require Apps 11.5.9 and Oracle Server 9.2.0.4, and will come as a patch to 11.5.9 Product testing is going OK and feedback is still being obtained from test users. 2:22:44 PM

If you're looking for some in-depth information on Oracle 9i for Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing, and you're in the UK or Ireland, Plus Consultancy are running a number of free seminars at Oracle's offices in Reading and Dublin during September and October. These have always proved extremely popular in the past, with a number of live product demos, customer case studies, and a chance to get some inside technical knowledge from Plus' team of consultants. The agenda for the September and October seminars is; 09:30 Registration and Coffee 10:00 Introduction and Product Overview 10:15 The Database of Choice for Integrated Data Warehousing, ETL, OLAP and Data Mining 10:45 Integrated Business Intelligence using Oracle Portal, Reports and Discoverer including live demonstration of an Integrated BI Portal 11:30 Coffee 11:45 Customer Success Story: Irish Life MIS Self Service 12:15 Oracle 9i OLAP and Business Intelligence Beans 13:00 Summary and Q&A 13:15 Lunch I'll be attending both of the seminars so it'd be a good chance to catch up with customers in the UK and Ireland who are using, or looking to use, Oracle 9i for Business Intelligence. If you want to come along, register for either the Reading event or the Dublin event and we'll be pleased to meet you. 9:37:07 AM

Thanks to Julian Ford for this one. Business Objects are adding 9i OLAP support to their suite of business intelligence software. According to Richard Neale, a Product Marketing Manager at Business Objects, "We don't mind if the data is in Oracle 9i OLAP or in a normal Oracle warehouse or in an ERP system like SAP -- our job is to make sense of data wherever it is and give the user a single view of their business." I was wondering why Business Objects were due to present at the next UKOUG BI&W Special Interest Group in London; it'll be interesting to see if this 9i OLAP support is native through either the Java API or PL/SQL, or through the OLAP Catalog, or whether it's just through the standard SQL Views? 8:02:05 AM