Rittman Mead Blog - Technical Insights

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As Mark mentioned in a comment to a posting [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/03/15/a-site-makeover/], we run the Rittman Mead blog on Wordpress. The recent blog revamp may have upset some feed readers that used feed URLs that we no longer maintain. Using Wordpress gives us many

Technical

ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008 Hyperion Track Now Available

If you're an Oracle Hyperion Essbase developer, or perhaps an Oracle BI developer looking to see what the new Hyperion products will bring to the Oracle BI stack, ODTUG have recently published details of the Hyperion track planned for ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008 [http://www.odtugkaleidoscope.com/hyperion.html]

Technical

Migrating OBIEE Logical Models to use a Data Warehouse : Part 2

In yesterdays posting [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/03/16/re-wiring-obiee-logical-models-to-use-a-data-warehouse-part-1/] , I took a look at some of the practicalities behind my recent article on OBIEE "next-generation" architectures [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/02/15/a-future-oracle-obiee-architecture/]. The idea behind this architecture is that you can use

Technical

Migrating OBIEE Logical Models to use a Data Warehouse : Part 1

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about a next-generation Oracle BI architecture [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/02/15/a-future-oracle-obiee-architecture/], where I advocated building a first cut OBIEE system against your operational applications, producing some "quick win" reports, and then over time copying your

Technical

My first Rittman Mead blog post

As I mentioned [http://pjsrandom.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/meetings-and-blogs/] on my personal blog I will be moving the more technical posts over to this site and keeping the old site as more of a personal weblog. Of course, there will be some posts that are both personal and

Technical

Indexing the unusual

For many years I had an interest in non-standard indexing and exotic data types, that is things that weren't NUMBER or VARCHAR2. In fact before I came in to data warehousing I was involved in indexing free text such as conversation transcripts and and narrative reports; some of

Technical

Data Warehouses are not dead, yet

One of the reasons that I left my old job to work with Rittman Mead Consulting was to get back to technology. Don't get this wrong, I really did enjoy managing people and having responsibility for a BI practice, but that was at the expense of involvement in

Technical

OLAP and summary management

So, why is someone who normally writes about data warehouses going to talk [http://www.collaborate08.com/collaborate08/] about Oracle OLAP, and in particular, cube organized materialized views? I could run out the argument that I work in a BI consultancy and none of us here at Rittman Mead [http:

Technical

Taking a Look at ApEx 3.1 Interactive Reports

The latest copy of Oracle Magazine [http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/08-mar/index.html] dropped through the door yesterday, and as I was looking through it last night I noticed an article on the new Interactive Reporting feature in ApEx 3.1 [http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/

Technical

Almost started OLAP 11g...

The proposal deadline for the upcoming Collaborate 08 was shortly before I was to leave my old employer - it was already known that I would be leaving them to join Mark and Jon (and possibly, it was known before Rittman Mead Consulting existed!) so it came as no real

Technical

A Future Oracle OBIEE Architecture

Following on from my blog article earlier this week on future Oracle BI architectures [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/02/12/towards-a-future-oracle-bi-architecture/], I've read through the comments and had a think about how things might work, and put together some thoughts on how organizations might use Oracle&

Technical

Towards a Future Oracle BI Architecture?

One of the presentations I'm giving over the next couple of months is one for the UKOUG BI & Performance Management [http://www.ukoug.co.uk/calendar/show_event.jsp?id=3347] event on future Oracle BI architectures [http://www.ukoug.org/other/?t=mr1803]. The driver for

Technical

New Hyperion Track at ODTUG Kaleidoscope - Call for Papers

ODTUG [http://www.odtug.com], who are organizing the ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008 [http://www.odtugkaleidoscope.com/] conference in New Orleans next June, have recently added an additional, dedicated Hyperion stream to the event for Essbase and Hyperion Developers. From what I've seen of the Hyperion and Essbase world

Technical

Oracle Data Integration Suite

Keeping my head down building Oracle 11g OLAP cubes for research and self-education meant the I missed yesterday's product announcement from Oracle, but with the wonders of Blog aggregators (and in particular Beth's [http://feeds.feedburner.com/InfoQualityAggregator]) I spotted a mention on Vincent McBurney'

Technical

Quality thoughts as I continue to chill out

Over at another Blog, Beth [http://datageekgal.blogspot.com/2008/01/data-quality-changes-large-and-small.html] notes that she is editor of the month for the Carnival of Data Quality. When It comes out I urge you to take a look. With those strange quirks of global IT companies Beth and I once

Technical

Some New Oracle OLAP and Essbase Blogs

Just a quick posting on Saturday morning to mention some new Oracle OLAP and Essbase blogs that I've come across. First up is an Oracle OLAP blog [http://oracleolap.blogspot.com/] by some of the most well-known people behind the product. Kevin Lancaster (well known to us at

Technical

Used unused indexes

One of my old customers had a data warehouse with a three-area design model: a staging area for data load/cleanse, a third normal form (or more 3-NF-like than dimensional) raw data layer and a denormalised dimensional layer containing aggregated data for reporting. They ran a retail business and one

Technical

A flat world

A lot of data warehouses get some (if not all) of their data feeds through data files; in fact I can't recall a recent project where at least one feed from an external system did not arrive as some form of flat file. I have had customers whose

Technical

Email Distribution of Reports using BI Publisher and Discoverer

One of the presentations I'm giving on the Monday at the UKOUG Conference [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2007/11/22/looking-forward-to-the-ukoug-conference/] is a joint talk with Mike Durran, the Oracle Discoverer Product Manager. Mike is going to do an update on Discoverer migration and interoperability with Oracle

Technical

Essbase Integration with OBIEE 10.1.3.3.1

A month or so ago I posted a series of articles [http://www.rittmanmead.com/category/hyperion/] on getting up and running with Hyperion Essbase, and mentioned at the time that it soon would be possible to plug Essbase directly in to Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition. In this article,

Technical

Virtually there

I have a couple of days between assignments so I am spending a little time doing research. Ultimately, there is a piece to write on Oracle 11g OLAP, and some course notes on aspects of data warehousing. But do this sort of thing I need to get myself set up

Technical

My first week at Rittman Mead Consulting

Well, it was not spent in San Francisco! I spent a couple of days working through some best practices for a group developing a new management information system on OBI SE-One and then spent the rest of the week trekking between home and hospital where my younger girl had her

Technical

BI information security

These days there are a wealth of restrictions or regulations (SOX, UK Data Protection Act to name but two) on data access and coupled with the simple commercial need to hide sensitive information that means unfettered access to data warehouse data is a thing of the past. Fortunately products such

Technical

Winding down

In addition to moving my responsibilities to other managers, I have been tying up the odd technical loose end. During the recent upgrade to 10gR2 for one of our DW customers we noticed a frequent query that queried for raw sales for a named customer over a rolling 12 week

Technical

OBIEE 10.1.3.3.1 Now Available On OTN

Venkat [http://oraclebizint.wordpress.com/2007/10/22/oracle-bi-ee-101331-new-release-new-features/] and Abhinav [http://oraclebi.blogspot.com/2007/10/101331-is-now-available-on-otn.html] posted the news earlier today; Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition 10.1.3.3.1 is now on general release [http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/ias/htdocs/101320bi.html]