Rittman Mead - Delivered Intelligence

One of the themes I keep retuning to is the time dimension in Data Warehouses. I use the word “time” in the physics sense of something continuous and not the cyclical “clock” sense. Time (and in my sense, time could be measured in units far more coarse than hours and minutes) is almost ubiquitous in […]

I just noticed on the OTN OWB Exchange page that four add-on “Experts” are available for Warehouse Builder 10gR2.

the Create Dimension Expert, that allows you to create a ROLAP or MOLAP dimension from an existing table.
the AW/XML Import Expert, that allows you to import AWM dimension, cube and measure templates into OWB.
the OLAP Accelerator Expert, […]

I was reading The Guardian on the way up to London yesterday, and I got thinking about what I’d say if I was interviewed for the “My Media” column (well, got thinking about for a total of about two seconds, but it makes an interesting blog post). Anyway, as I’m a total media sponge, here’s […]

Now this looks interesting. Swivel is a new site that aims to be the “Youtube of data”, with a Flickr-like interface and a means for users to upload interesting sets of data and make them available for everyone to download. Once data is uploaded, you can match it up with other sets of data (global […]

Following on from the 10.2.0.3 patch release for Oracle Database 10g, Anthony Waite has just informed us that the 10.2.0.3 release of Analytic Workspace Manager and the Global Sample Schema are now available for download on OTN.
According to Anthony, the new features of this release include:
“* Sparsity Advisor determines which dimensions are sparse, which storage […]

Well, I’m official now. The contracts have been signed and I’ve been allocated an ISBN number. It won’t be out for at least a year from now, but I’m now officially the author for the forthcoming Oracle Press book, “Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Developers Guide”.
It’s a bit too early to get in to too much […]

One of my pet hates is moving shed-loads of data from the disk to aggregate it away to resolve a user’s query. Experience tells me that the very thought of doing this imposes a massive strain on a data warehouse. Ok, millions of people tell me that I exaggerate, but I don’t think I am […]

I’ve more or less finishing the opening chapter of the book I’m working on, and I’ve reached the part now where I need a set of sample data for the examples that are going to follow. Without giving too much away (the contracts are being signed now), I need a set of data that I […]

Sadly, it seems ingrained into Western culture that having more of something than someone else is “good”. This idea that “my dad’s tougher / bigger / richer / cleverer (insert your choice here) than yours” has been the stuff of school yard taunts down the ages. But for a data warehouse is bigness a desirable […]