OWB11gR2 for Windows Now Available

The 11gR2 release of Warehouse Builder came out for Windows towards the end of last week, firstly as part of the wider Oracle Database 11gR2 download, and then in the standalone version. Now that there's a Windows client available to work with the various Unix server elements, everything is now in place for customers to start moving to 11gR2.

If you didn't see them at the time that the Unix versions became available, we posted a series of articles on new 11gR2 functionality that you can read here:

Now one new feature that I only just spotted in the Windows version (I assume it was there in the Unix ones, I just didn't see it) is the ability for administrators to restrict access to paid features. Much of the new functionality in OWB11gR2 requires the Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition license (code templates, heterogeneous access etc), and the old Enterprise ETL license was grandfathered into the ODI EE license. As such, you'll also need the ODI EE license for features such as type 2 slowly changing dimensions, transportable modules, interactive impact analysis, and you'll also need the Data Quality Option license to use data profiles and data rules.

Now in the past there was nothing in the OWB user interface that would tell you if you were using free, or licensable, features, meaning that you had to read the license documents quite closely to avoid using paid-for features when you thought you weren't. In the 11gR2 version though, when you set up your first workspace (the equivalent of 10gR2 or earlier repositories) you are asked if you would like to restrict access to these paid for features:

Then, if you remove access to these features and a developer tries to use then, you get an error message and the function isn't allowed:

There's a similar message if you try to access Data Profiling and Quality Option features and the feature has been restricted.

These restrictions apply to all workspaces that you set up on this particular database, and can be removed later on using the Repository Assistant utility.

Finally, if you're planning on upgrading a 10gR2 Warehouse Builder installation to the 11gR2 release, this blog posting from Stewart Bryson goes through some of the steps you'll need to carry out.