GIS-Enabling Your Oracle Data Warehouse
October 27th, 2004 by Mark Rittman
In this month’s article for DBAZine, put
together in collaboration with fellow blogger
Justin Lokitz, I look at
GIS-Enabling Your Oracle Data
Warehouse.
"GIS" is short for Geographic Information Systems and describes the technique
of combining information and maps. Almost every database and data warehouse
contains an element of location data, be it customer addresses, location of
transactions, or geographic regions or areas. By taking this "spatial" data, and
displaying it through dynamic maps that graphically illustrate the distribution
of sales, customers and regions, you can "bring your database to life" and make
it immediately obvious where your organisation’s activity is taking place.
Using Oracle Locator and Oracle Spatial, it’s easy to add geographic analysis
to your data warehouse, and with the new Oracle MapViewer feature in Oracle
Application Server 10g, you can extend your Discoverer, Reports and BI Beans
applications to now include dynamic, layered maps. Best of all, basic GIS
functionality is free with Oracle Locator, as is the MapViewer feature in
Application Server 10g. Take a
look at the article if GIS is of interest to you, and also check out
Justin’s OraGIS weblog where
there’s more in-depth coverage of GIS on the Oracle platform.
