Vlamis Software Solutions, Inc.
Vlamis Software Solutions, Inc.
In this monthly newsletter we inform you about recent and upcoming events in Vlamis Software and the Oracle business intelligence and data warehousing communities. We hope you find this information helpful.
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Vlamis Software Solutions is a consulting company specializing in Oracle-related business intelligence and data warehouse solutions. Learn more about us at our web site at www.vlamis.com. Contact us at sales@vlamis.com or (816)781-2880.
We have been working on a project where we have successfully converted Express data to an Oracle9i OLAP analytic workspace. We have used Analytic Workspace Manager and OLAP Worksheet to add new data to this AW. The application that presents the data is written in Oracle9i OLAP Web Agent. This is very powerful and easy to implement. Give us a call and we can give you more details and a demonstration.
In our November newsletter article with our Analytic Workspace "Standard Form" Introduction, we mentioned the OLAP 9.2.0.4.1 documentation. That documentation is now released and available on OTN at http://otn.oracle.com/products/bi/olap/olap.html. See especially the Oracle OLAP Application Developer's Guide - Release 9.2.0.4.1 and the Oracle OLAP Reference - Release 9.2.0.4.0. There's a lot of interesting information there.
Oracle is collecting success stories from companies using Oracle OLAP. To watch a 2-minute video on how Camaieu, a French clothing manufacturer is using Oracle OLAP and BI Beans, click here. Dan Vlamis's interview with Oracle is featured as the first of the "Related Shows" on the window showing the Camaieu interview. The videos require Realplayer to be installed in your browser.
In addition, BridgePoint released a press release titled "BridgePoint Revolutionizes Analytical Processing With Oracle® Database Embedded OLAP" in which they announce that "BridgePoint has upgraded its analytics tool to exploit the powerful Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) capabilities embedded in the Oracle Database". For more information, see the press release on Yahoo!
Are you getting started with 9iOLAP? Let us train you and help make it easier! We offer standard and custom classes. We can train at your site or in our facility in Kansas City. Our training offerings are listed at http://www.vlamis.com/training.
We have added new modules on the following topics:
Our courses can be customized to use your own data for examples and exercises, giving you a combination of training and consulting that will jump-start your project. Contact us for more information at 816-781-2880 or sales@vlamis.com.
The documentation on AW Standard Form runs 30 pages and is pretty complete. However, in order for us to use this information on a day-to-day basis, we have started creating a "Standard Form Reference Page" that summarizes on a few pages the names of the structures involved and the syntax of the OLAP_TABLE function. Eventually, this will be used in one of our presentations at IOUG Live! or OracleWorld or turn up in a Oracle Magazine article. Please let us know if you would like to help review this document. Contact us at 816-781-2880 or sales@vlamis.com for details.
Chris Claterbos will be presenting "Using Oracle9i Warehouse Builder to Create OLAP-Ready Data Warehouses" at the Kansas City Oracle User's Group (KCOUG) January Quarterly Meeting on Tuesday, January 27. Attendees will be able to see some of Oracle's latest technology in action. Visit our Technical Papers page at http://www.vlamis.com/papers to view the full abstract.
Contact us if you will be attending or will be in Kansas City.
For a while now, we've had the ability to use SQL to access data in analytic workspaces. Maybe you've heard this is possible, but did you know how to really try this out for yourself? A lot of this is "automatic" if you use the Oracle tools to build your analytic workspaces, but if you want to see what's going on "behind the scenes" or want to really take this capability to the next level, read on:
For a simple example, let's just use a variable in the SYS.EXPRESS analytic workspace that gets installed with 9iOLAP. There are two objects in that AW of interest right now:
->describe intl.mlang intl.mlangmap DEFINE INTL.MLANG EXPRESS DIMENSION TEXT LD Microsoft Windows standard language codes DEFINE INTL.MLANGMAP EXPRESS VARIABLE TEXT <INTL.MLANG> LD Map Microsoft language codes to ISO ones
Let's say we want to access that information from SQL, but are only interested in those "rows" which have two-character INTL.MLANGMAPs. In order to access from SQL, we need to define some abstract data types and define a view. We can then do anything with the view we want. Here is the entire script for doing this in SQL Plus:
SET ECHO ON
SET SERVEROUT ON
DROP TYPE tabletype;
DROP TYPE rowtype;
CREATE TYPE rowtype AS OBJECT(
langcode VARCHAR2(8),
langmap VARCHAR2(8));
/
CREATE TYPE tabletype AS TABLE OF rowtype;
/
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW langawview AS
SELECT langcode, langmap
FROM TABLE(OLAP_TABLE(
'sys.express DURATION QUERY',
'tabletype',
'LIMIT INTL.MLANG to numchars(INTL.MLANGMAP) eq 2',
'DIMENSION langcode FROM INTL.MLANG WITH
ATTRIBUTE langmap FROM INTL.MLANGMAP'));
After this view is created, we can operate on the view with any SQL SELECT statement. Here is an example:
SQL> SELECT langcode, langmap FROM langawview where langmap = 'EN'; LANGCODE LANGMAP -------- -------- ENA EN ENB EN ENC EN ENG EN ENI EN ENJ EN ENL EN ENP EN ENS EN ENT EN ENU EN ENW EN ENZ EN 13 rows selected.
Obviously, this is a very simple example, and not very realistic. My goal here was to provide an example you could try right now with your own Oracle9i OLAP installation. Go ahead...try it! It doesn't take long to cut-and-paste this into SQL Plus. Analytic workspace data is now available from any tool that can read data from an Oracle SQL view. See Chapter 7 of the Oracle OLAP Application Developer's Guide for more information. Contact me if you want to explore this more on your own system or discuss this more.
Look for other tips in upcoming VSS Newsletters or contact me at dvlamis@vlamis.com for more information.
Dan
We feature breaking news in the "Headline" section of our home page at www.vlamis.com. More news items can be found on our news page at www.vlamis.com/news. An archive of our newsletters going back through 2002 can be found at http://www.vlamis.com/newsletters.
Our December 2003 newsletter featured the following articles:
Our November 2003 newsletter featured the following articles: