February/
March
2005

In This Issue:

Contact Us

(816)781-2880

sales@vlamis.com

VSS Newsletter February/March 2005

In this 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.

To have your name removed from this mailing list, follow the directions at the bottom of this message.

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.

Analytic Workspace Manager 10g Released!

Oracle has finally released the new version of Analytic Workspace Manager (AWM). You can find it at http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/olap/olap.html. This requires version 10.1.0.4 of the RDBMS (see next article). AWM and 10.1.0.4 combined greatly simplify the task of creating AWs and enabling them for viewing from BI Beans, Discoverer OLAP or the Spreadsheet Add-in. With AWM 10g 10.1.0.4 you can create dimensions and cubes, map them to your relational sources, and maintain them. All changes are made real-time to the AW while you are making the change. AWM also allows you to create calculated measures (it launches the calculation wizard BI Bean)--these are stored as formulas in your AW. Check it out--we now have a very nice tool for managing our analytic workspaces!

Oracle OLAP 10.1.0.4 released for Windows and Linux

Oracle RDBMS Version 10.1.0.4 was released on Metalink on March 21, 2005. OLAP version 10.1.0.4 has a few bug fixes over the previous release, 10.1.0.3(c), but the most important aspects of this release are:

Of course, if you are comparing this to OLAP 9i, there are VERY significant features (see previous newsletter articles). The most significant is the fact that AWs built with AWM and 10.1.0.4 are now fully ready for BI Beans-based applications such as Discoverer OLAP. You no longer need to "BI Beans-enable" your AW; it is automatic.

You can download a patch for 10.1.0.4 from Metalink by searching for patchset 4163362 or directly from the link http://updates.oracle.com/ARULink/PatchDetails/process_form?patch_num=4163362&release=80101040. As this is being written, the patch is available for Windows and Linux. It is not yet available on OTN, but eventually should be available at http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/oracle10g/index.html. We believe that ports of this version should be available within a month or so for other operating systems.

IOUG Live! 2005

We will be presenting four technical sessions and a University Class this year at IOUG Live! This year's conference will run May 1-5, 2005 and is in Orlando, Florida. There are more than 200 classes offered over three full days of sessions. Early bird registration ends April 1, 2005.

For additional information about the IOUG and its educational and membership offerings, please visit the IOUG Web site at www.ioug.org. As always, our papers and presentations are available for download on our website.

Classes Forming for Oracle BI and Oracle OLAP

Vlamis Software will be presenting classes on Oracle BI and Oracle OLAP in May and June, 2005. Attendees will be able to have hands-on experience in creating and mapping cubes in Analytic Workspace Manager 10g and will be able to see the results in Discoverer, the Spreadsheet Add-in, and custom BI Beans applications. We are determining locations and dates for these classes in early April. Theses classes can be brought to you and can be customized to include your specific data. Please contact us today to sign up!

Dan's OLAP Tip: Use AWM 10g to Create AWs

There are some new features in Oracle OLAP 10g that have not been heavily publicized. If you work with AWM 10.1.0.4, you will find that you can create calculated measures directly in the AW while creating the AW. In effect, this allows AW designers to create calculated measures using the Calcbuilder Bean instead of having to do this using JDeveloper after the AW is created and "BI Beans enabled". If you create a Year-To-Date measure and describe the resulting formula, you will see that it uses the new CHGDIMS formula as in the following example:

  chgdims(total(chgdims(this_aw!SALES_CUBE_SALES to this_aw!TIME))
          limit lmt(this_aw!TIME to this_aw!TIME_YEAR_TO_DATE_VSET))

This allows you to create expressions that calculate totals using a different status. For example, for the month MAR2005 you can calculate a total using a valueset that has the time periods JAN2005, FEB2005, MAR2005. This gives AW formula creators a lot more flexibility in creating formulas now. If you execute a LISTBY TIME, you will see that AWs created with OLAP10g have several new objects that allow you to manipulate the dimension in new ways.

The beauty of creating calculated measures with AWM is that truthfully, you don't have to understand the syntax of what is being created. You just ask for a year-to-date measure and it creates the formula necessary to calculate the YTD values. I only mention the tip for those that want to use CHGDIMS for other purposes. Have fun!

Look for other tips in upcoming VSS Newsletters or contact me at dvlamis@vlamis.com for more information.

Dan

Prior Newsletter Articles

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 January 2004 newsletter featured the following articles:

Our December 2004 newsletter featured the following articles: