Rittman Mead - Delivered Intelligence

I recently came across some free online training on OWB that anyone looking
to get into the product, or bring their product knowledge up to date, might find useful. The training homepage is at http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/warehouse/selfserv_edu/self_service_education.html
and breaks the training into a number of sections.

The first section, Getting Started, provide a product
overview, installation
instructions and a look at the new
features in OWB10g. The installation training comes with a couple of
viewlets on carrying out the client
and server-side
installs, and provides a link to a demo
project that you can install and work with through the rest of the training.
The demo project is also useful if you want to do an OWB demo as it comes with a
"here’s one I completed earlier" set of modules that show off most of
the functionality. Note that the demo assumes you’ve installed OWB10g and the
two repositories and starts off from the point where you import the MDL (project
export) file. Also note that you can use Oracle 10g as well as Oracle 9i Release
2.

With the demo, there’s a couple of points to note:

• Make sure you use the runtime and runtime access user schema names
  mentioned in the demo docs, as the project references these particular
  schema names.
• Install the OWB92_DEMO.mdl file for a bare-bones "build it
  yourself" project file, or OWB92_DEMO-final.mdl for the finished
  project file.
• Only worry about the workflow and HTTP server install and configuration if
  you’re looking to use process flows or web-based repository reporting (not
  mandatory).
• Navigate to the HR module within the project, right-click and select
  "properties", then complete the database link details to point to
  your HR sample schema if the schema isn’t on the same server as your OWB
  repository. Note that the HR schema is locked by default and you’ll need to
  unlock it ("alter user HR account unlock") before you can access
  it. You’ll probably want to change the HR password as well ("alter user
  HR identified by password") as you probably won’t know the
  default HR password. If you’re working with a local database though you
  won’t need to create database links as it’ll connect through without them.
• Make sure the demo zip file is copied to c:\OWB92_demo
• Within the OWB project, right-click on the RTR92 entry under "Runtime
  Repository Connections" and change the service name and password to
  your server’s hostname and the password you set for the Runtime Access User.
• If you’re working with a 10g warehouse target, you’ll need to change the
  version number on the details tab for the TARGET_LOC location within the
  project.

After the installation the training then goes on to the design phase and
looks in detail at the following design tasks

• Capture
  data source definitions (mostly a case of reading the manual, with a
  small bit on the MITI bridges for business objects and other non-"out
  of the box" data sources
• Dimensional
  Modeling (a broadband recorded presentation, then working on the demo
  project)
• ETL
  Basics (another broadband presentation and further work on the demo)
• ETL
  debugging (viewlet, read the manual and a demo exercise)
• Advanced
  ETL (lots of manual reading, consider as "optional")
• Process
  Flow basics (broadband presentation and two hands-on exercises. You’ll
  need the workflow server installed for this bit)

Next up is Implementation, with two sections, on Deployment
and OLAP
Cube Creation. Deployment consists of a short ten minute broadband
presentation together with a hands-on demo, and is probably worth taking a bit
of time on as deployment is one of the major areas of change between older and
more recent version of OWB. The OLAP Cube Creation lesson is quite a big section
and important if you’re looking to deploy to either a ROLAP or MOLAP cube (using
the OLAP Option), and consists of a broadband demo, an Oracle
iLearning online class, and another hands-on demo. Note that you may well
have to pay for the iLearning class so it’s not mandatory.

After implementation is the project lifecycle section, with sessions on Runtime
management, Life-cycle
management and Metadata
management. All of these are pretty essential if you’re the administrator
behind an OWB project and consist of presentations and hands-on exercises. You
might also find it useful to look at another document on OTN entitled "Case
Study 9: How Do I Manage Multiple Versions of my BI Implementation?"
which goes through the suggested approach to migrating OWB through dev, test and
prod environments (clue - it’s not
all that straighforward).

The last major section in the training is the Data Quality section that looks
at Name
and Address Cleansing and Advanced
de-duplication. Name and address cleansing is one of the features of OWB
that you would otherwise have to code yourself and consists of a couple of
viewlets and an optional iLearning class. Advanced Deduplication consists of
viewlets and a hands-on demo and looks at the match-merge
feature, another bit of OWB that would require a lot of work if you put
scripts together manually.

The final bit of training is on OMB*Plus but I wouldn’t worry too much about
this as it’s a feature that’s rarely used on projects. Wrapping all of this up
is a Reviewer
Guide for Warehouse Builder that is described thus: "This section is
particularly relevant if you are interested in evaluating Warehouse Builder or
if you need to understand the basic functionality at a hands-on level. This
comprehensive scenario walks you through an example, start to finish on how you
can develop a Warehouse Builder system. The session covers many of the topics
above integrated into a single flow and can help you understand how a typical
project is done using Warehouse Builder.". If you’re looking for an
integrated guide to building the demo you might also want to look at the OWB92_demo.pdf
document in the C:/OWB92_demo/doc
directory which contains all the demo steps together with how to set up the
prerequisites.

Posted in Oracle Warehouse Builder |