New! Oracle OLAP Overview Video

A new fifteen minute Oracle OLAP video has been released - describing the benefits of Oracle OLAP in the context of the Oracle Database, Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence platform.

You can either watch this video online, or download for replay on an iPod:
• Click here to view the video now
• Click here to download the iPod video

Experience with Oracle University OLAP Essentials Course

I've recently taught two sessions of the Oracle University Course 'OLAP Database 11g: OLAP Essentials'. The first session was in Reading UK and the next in Munich. Both sessions were highly rated by students (9.4 out of 10). As an instructor I found the course a pleasure to teach (kudos to Brian Pottle and Marty Gubar who put much of this class together).

This is a three day introductory course that is appropriate for anyone who is approaching the OLAP Option for the first time or who is upgrading to 11g from earlier releases (there is so much new in OLAP 11g that even experienced users can learn a lot in this course). The students in the class were a mix of OLAP Option newbies and upgraders. Both groups were equally pleased with the course.

Students remarked that one of the real strengths of the course is the hands-on exercises. By the end of day 1 students have defined, populated and queried their first cube. Later in the course they get hands-on experience with cube-organized materialized views, SQL query of cube, creating calculated measures, forecasting, security and even building a custom application in Application Express on the OLAP cube. One of the things about the hands-on exercises that I found remarkable was the high success rate experienced by the students. These are very well put together.

The outline of the course follows:

Day 1

1. Examining the role of the OLAP Option in the Oracle BI/DW platform.
2. Examining the OLAP Data Model.
3. Building an OLAP Cube (with 2 hands-on exercises).

Day 2

4. Examining Cube-Organized Materialized Views (with hands-on exercise).
5. Creating Calculated Measures (with hands-on exercise).
6. Using SQL to Query OLAP Cubes (with hands-on exercise).
7. Enhancing Analytic Content (with hands-on exercise). (This uses OLAP DML programs to create a forecast.)

Day 3

8. Using Oracle Application Express and Oracle Business Intelligence with OLAP Data (with hands-on exercise).
9. Cube security (with hands-on exercise).
10. Designing cubes for performance and scalability.
11. Performance tuning (this is really about things the DBA should know to tune the Database for cubes).

These three very full days. Expect to get a lot of value from this class. And, it was lots of fun.

Here is one student's perspective of the class: http://ofaworld.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/oracle-university-oracle-11g-olap-essentials-training-course/

For more information, see the Oracle University site.

New Tutorial - Creating Interactive APEX Reports Over OLAP 11g Cubes

The latest in a recent series of 11g OLAP tutorials has been added to the Oracle OLAP product page on OTN.

The tutorial is called 'Creating Interactive APEX Reports Over OLAP 11g Cubes' and shows how you use Oracle Application Express (APEX) to create an interactive sales analysis report that runs against OLAP 11g data.



You learn how to query and create analytic reports of OLAP 11g cubes, including both stored and calculated measures. You also learn how to apply query techniques that leverage unique characteristics of OLAP 11g cubes.

The other tutorials already published in this series are:

• Building OLAP 11g Cubes
• Querying OLAP 11g Cubes
• Creating BI EE Metadata for OLAP 11g Cubes
• Querying OLAP 11g Data Using Oracle BI Answers

Get hands-on with 11g OLAP & Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition

Happy New Year to everyone!!

Following the announcement last month of two new 'Oracle By Example' tutorials on building and querying 11g OLAP cubes, here are the details of a further two tutorials on working with 11g OLAP and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE).

The first tutorial shows how to create OBIEE metadata over 11g OLAP cubes

(if you are using 10g OLAP, use this tutorial to create OBIEE metadata instead)

The second new tutorial shows how to query 11g OLAP cubes using OBIEE Answers - using the metadata repository created during the first tutorial

While OBIEE Answers is a widely used query tool for Oracle OLAP (for an example, see the article on Micros Systems), it would be interesting to hear from people using some of the other components of OBIEE, especially some of the newly integrated 'plus' components like Smart View which appears to be receiving a lot of development effort from the BI/EPM folks.

Please feel free to share any experiences you might have in our comments section.

Now Available! Two new Oracle OLAP Demonstrations

Two new Oracle OLAP demonstrations have been added to the Oracle OLAP product page on OTN:

Fast Answers to Tough Questions Using Simple SQL :- Oracle OLAP is a world class analytic engine embedded in the Oracle Database. OLAP Cubes and dimensions are easily accessible thru a star-model. Using very simple SQL, Oracle OLAP delivers fast answers to tough, analytic questions. This demonstration shows how to query OLAP cubes using several tools, including: Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Application Express and SQL Developer.

Transparently Improving Query Performance with Oracle OLAP Cube MVs :- Oracle OLAP cubes may also be deployed as materialized views. Summary queries written to base fact tables can transparently leverage the fast query performance delivered by Oracle OLAP - without any changes to the application's query. The Oracle Optimizer automatically rewrites queries to cubes when appropriate. This demonstration shows how Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition seamlessly benefits from this capability. The demonstration then provides an "under the covers" view of how this improvement is achieved.

Get hands-on with 11g OLAP

You may have already noticed but over the past couple of weeks some new 11g OLAP training material has been published on the OTN OLAP home page.

Two new tutorials have been added to the popular Oracle By Example (OBE) series.

The first is titled 'Building OLAP 11g Cubes' and covers using Analytic Workspace Manager (AWM) 11g to build and load an OLAP cube.

The second is titled 'Querying OLAP 11g Cubes' and is a guide to querying a cube via SQL, both directly using OLAP Cube Views, and indirectly using Cube Materialized Views.

Supporting both of the tutorials is a new sample schema which gives you the opportunity to get hands-on and experiment in your own environment. Remember, that patch level 11.1.0.7 is required and to always check the recommended release details for your chosen operating system.

Oracle Database 11g: OLAP Essentials - First dates announced

Following the announcement last week about the new Oracle OLAP 11g Oracle University Training Course, the dates and locations for the first classes have been announced.

The very first class will be in Bridgewater, New Jersey, US from 20-Jan-2009 through to 22-Jan-2009.

The first class in Europe will be in Reading, UK from 21-Jan-2009 through to 23-Jan-2009.

The code for the course is D70039GC10 and more details on both events can be found on the Oracle University web site

Be sure to register early if you wish to attend as places are sure to be high in demand.

New! Oracle OLAP 11g Oracle University Training Course

A brand new OLAP 11g training class has been added to the Oracle University schedule.

Here is a brief synopsis:

Oracle OLAP 11g, a fully-integrated component of Oracle Database 11g, provides a full featured multidimensional data model and calculation engine that is easily accessible to any SQL based business intelligence application or tool.

In this course, students learn to progressively build an OLAP data model to support a wide range of business intelligence requirements. Students learn to design OLAP cubes to serve as a summary management resource for existing SQL table queries. Students also learn to leverage the power of Oracle OLAP by adding rich analytic content to your data model.

Students learn to create sophisticated reports of OLAP data by using simple SQL queries. Students also create and execute OLAP queries in SQL Developer, Oracle Application Express (APEX), and in Oracle BI Enterprise Edition. Students learn to implement cube security, including how to authorize access to cube data and methods for scoping user views of data. Finally, students learn to design OLAP cubes for performance and scalability.

Learn To:

* Design and create an Oracle OLAP data model
* Enable query rewrite to OLAP Cube MVs for relational summary management
* Easily create OLAP calculations that enrich the analytic content of your data model
* Query OLAP data using simple SQL
* Implement cube security
* Efficiently design cubes for performance and scalability

More details and scheduling information can be found on the Oracle University Website