With involvement from diverse groups, I wanted to make sure the presentation would be interesting from a lot of perspectives, so involving core database functionality like OWB seemed important. And this particular presentation is directed at DBAs and developers, so the non-BI representation from GOUSER might be interested in what’s going on.

If you’re new to OWB, don’t be alarmed by the focus on the newest release: 11gR2. I’ll explain in general what OWB is and how it’s positioned, moving into some of the new features that make this release the best OWB yet. Also speaking at the event will be Mitch Campbell, Director of Business Intelligence with Oracle, who will be talking about Oracle’s BI product roadmap. Following both talks, I’ll be sitting for a BI panel discussion with Mitch and Greg, to give responses to attendees questions, hopefully representing the perspectives of Oracle, their partners, and their customers.

The event is free, with snacks and refreshments provided, so hopefully we’ll see you there.

Though the most requested aspect of Transcend is it’s support for loading SCD’s in set-based mode, including combinations of Type 1 and Type 2 attributes in the same table, this aspect depends on a lot of core features in the product, so it’s prudent that I demonstrate some of these core features first, and then build up to the more advanced features in future postings. So the first thing I’d like to demonstrate is Transcend’s support for index maintenance in an ETL context. I’ll also use some of Transcend’s other features in setting up the test case.

First, I’ll build a table just like the SH.SALES table, but I’ll create it in another schema. I’ll include the partitioning information, the indexes, and all the rows. The combination of parameters below dictates which table properties to include in the cloning process:

SQL> BEGIN
  2     trans_etl.build_table(
  3                            p_table          => 'sales_fact',
  4                            p_owner          => 'target',
  5                            p_source_table   => 'sales',
  6                            p_source_owner   => 'sh',
  7                            p_tablespace     => 'users',
  8                            p_partitioning   => 'yes',
  9                            p_rows           => 'yes',
 10                            p_indexes        => 'yes',
 11                            p_constraints    => 'no',
 12                            p_statistics     => 'transfer'
 13                          );
 14  END;
 15  /
Table TARGET.SALES_FACT created
Number of records inserted into TARGET.SALES_FACT: 918843
Statistics from SH.SALES transfered to TARGET.SALES_FACT
Index SALES_FACT_CHANNEL_BIX built
Index SALES_FACT_CUST_BIX built
Index SALES_FACT_PROD_BIX built
Index SALES_FACT_PROMO_BIX built
Index SALES_FACT_TIME_BIX built
5 index creation processes executed for TARGET.SALES_FACT

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:14.92
SQL>

I also need a version of the table without the rows, the indexes, or the partitioning information. Then, I’ll insert only the rows from the SH.SALES table from the year 1998:

SQL> BEGIN
  2     trans_etl.build_table(
  3                            p_table          => 'sales_stg',
  4                            p_owner          => 'target',
  5                            p_source_table   => 'sales',
  6                            p_source_owner   => 'sh',
  7                            p_tablespace     => 'users',
  8                            p_partitioning   => 'no',
  9                            p_rows           => 'no',
 10                            p_indexes        => 'no',
 11                            p_constraints    => 'no',
 12                            p_statistics     => 'transfer'
 13                          );
 14  END;
 15  /
Table TARGET.SALES_STG created
Statistics from SH.SALES transfered to TARGET.SALES_STG

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.77
SQL> insert into target.sales_stg select * from sh.sales where to_char(time_id,'yyyy') = '1998';

178834 rows created.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.95
SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.04
SQL>

With these two tables set up, I’ll demonstrate some of the options Transcend provides for index maintenance. First is the ability to mark indexes on a particular table unusable by a variety of the attributes. First, I’ll mark all bitmaps unusable, and then I’ll rebuild them:

SQL> BEGIN
  2     trans_etl.unusable_indexes(
  3                                 p_table          => 'sales_fact',
  4                                 p_owner          => 'target',
  5                                 p_index_type     => 'bitmap'
  6                          );
  7  END;
  8  /
5 indexes and 0 local index partitions affected on table TARGET.SALES_FACT

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:03.07
SQL>
SQL> BEGIN
  2     trans_etl.usable_indexes(
  3                               p_table          => 'sales_fact',
  4                               p_owner          => 'target'
  5                          );
  6  END;
  7  /
Rebuild processes for unusable indexes on 28 partitions of table TARGET.SALES_FACT executed
No matching unusable global indexes found

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:04.77
SQL>
SQL>

Now, I’ll mark indexes unusable that match a particular regular expression:

SQL> BEGIN
  2     trans_etl.unusable_indexes(
  3                                 p_table          => 'sales_fact',
  4                                 p_owner          => 'target',
  5                                 p_index_regexp   => 'prod'
  6                          );
  7  END;
  8  /
1 index and 0 local index partitions affected on table TARGET.SALES_FACT

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:01.25
SQL>
SQL> BEGIN
  2     trans_etl.usable_indexes(
  3                               p_table          => 'sales_fact',
  4                               p_owner          => 'target'
  5                          );
  6  END;
  7  /
Rebuild processes for unusable indexes on 28 partitions of table TARGET.SALES_FACT executed
No matching unusable global indexes found

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:02.69
SQL>
SQL>

Now, I just want to mark bitmaps unusable for a particular partition: SALES_Q4_2003. I also want to change up the rebuild of the indexes. Instead of rebuilding the indexes one after another… I’d like to have them all rebuild at the same time. Thankfully, Transcend supports this, by sending the rebuild statements to the Oracle Scheduler, DBMS_SCHEDULER. The TRANS_ETL package will wait for the conclusion of all rebuild processes before continuing. All of this is done by simply passing a value of ‘yes’ to the P_CONCURRENT parameter.

SQL> BEGIN
  2     trans_etl.unusable_indexes(
  3                                 p_table          => 'sales_fact',
  4                                 p_owner          => 'target',
  5                                 p_partname       => 'sales_q4_2003'
  6                          );
  7  END;
  8  /
0 indexes and 5 local index partitions affected on table TARGET.SALES_FACT

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.67
SQL>
SQL> BEGIN
  2     trans_etl.usable_indexes(
  3                               p_table          => 'sales_fact',
  4                               p_owner          => 'target',
  5                               p_concurrent     => 'yes'
  6                          );
  7  END;
  8  /
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES61 created
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES61 enabled
Rebuild processes for unusable indexes on 1 partition of table TARGET.SALES_FACT submitted to the Oracle scheduler
No matching unusable global indexes found

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:06.19
SQL>
SQL>

Finally, the most complicated bit in index maintenance… and the reason I built the staging table with only the rows from 1998 in it. When loading a fact table, we rarely want to affect all the local index partitions on that table. As a matter of fact, we usually want to mark unusable only a very small number of the local index partitions, and this is usually dependent on which rows we are loading into the fact table.

Transcend supports this notion by allowing the specification of a particular table or view, using P_SOURCE_OWNER and P_SOURCE_OBJECT, to determines which partitions to mark as unusable on the target table. Remember that the SALES_STG table contains only the rows from the SH.SALES table for 1998. First, I’ll turn up the logging level for Transcend slightly so we can see the actual DDL being generated, and then I’ll affect the local index partitions on SALES_FACT that correspond to the rows in SALES_STG:

SQL> BEGIN
  2
  3     trans_adm.set_module_conf(
  4                                p_logging_level=> 3
  5                              );
  6
  7  END;
  8  /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.01
SQL>
SQL> BEGIN
  2
  3     trans_etl.unusable_indexes(
  4                                 p_table          => 'sales_fact',
  5                                 p_owner          => 'target',
  6                                 p_source_object   => 'sales_stg',
  7                                 p_source_owner   => 'target'
  8                               );
  9
 10  END;
 11  /
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_CHANNEL_BIX modify partition SALES_Q1_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_CHANNEL_BIX modify partition SALES_Q2_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_CHANNEL_BIX modify partition SALES_Q3_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_CHANNEL_BIX modify partition SALES_Q4_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_CUST_BIX modify partition SALES_Q1_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_CUST_BIX modify partition SALES_Q2_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_CUST_BIX modify partition SALES_Q3_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_CUST_BIX modify partition SALES_Q4_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_PROD_BIX modify partition SALES_Q1_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_PROD_BIX modify partition SALES_Q2_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_PROD_BIX modify partition SALES_Q3_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_PROD_BIX modify partition SALES_Q4_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_PROMO_BIX modify partition SALES_Q1_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_PROMO_BIX modify partition SALES_Q2_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_PROMO_BIX modify partition SALES_Q3_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_PROMO_BIX modify partition SALES_Q4_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_TIME_BIX modify partition SALES_Q1_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_TIME_BIX modify partition SALES_Q2_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_TIME_BIX modify partition SALES_Q3_1998 unusable
SQL: alter index TARGET.SALES_FACT_TIME_BIX modify partition SALES_Q4_1998 unusable
0 indexes and 20 local index partitions affected on table TARGET.SALES_FACT

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:03.65
SQL>
SQL> BEGIN
  2
  3     trans_etl.usable_indexes(
  4                               p_table          => 'sales_fact',
  5                               p_owner          => 'target',
  6                               p_concurrent     => 'yes'
  7                          );
  8  END;
  9  /
SQL: alter table TARGET.SALES_FACT modify partition SALES_Q1_1998 rebuild unusable local indexes
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES62 created
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES62 enabled
SQL: alter table TARGET.SALES_FACT modify partition SALES_Q2_1998 rebuild unusable local indexes
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES63 created
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES63 enabled
SQL: alter table TARGET.SALES_FACT modify partition SALES_Q3_1998 rebuild unusable local indexes
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES64 created
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES64 enabled
SQL: alter table TARGET.SALES_FACT modify partition SALES_Q4_1998 rebuild unusable local indexes
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES65 created
Oracle scheduler job USABLE_INDEXES65 enabled
Rebuild processes for unusable indexes on 4 partitions of table TARGET.SALES_FACT submitted to the Oracle scheduler
No matching unusable global indexes found

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:05.88
SQL>

That’s pretty much it for unusable and usable index functionality. Transcend also supports cloning indexes and dropping indexes, with many of the same parameters mentioned above.

We have a number of ongoing projects in London and around the UK and Europe based around OBIEE, quite often with Essbase or the BI Applications in the background. Looking specifically at OBIEE, successful candidates will typically be responsible for:

1. Converting end user requirements into system design
2. Developing an appropriate solution
3. Testing the proposed solution against the individual requirements

Tool sets you will be required to use include:

1. The OBIEE adminstration tool
2. Dashboard development tools, including answers, delivers and catalogue manager
3. Database tools such as Toad, Warehouse Builder, ODI

Other useful skills are Essbase or Oracle OLAP, Cognos, PL/SQL, ApEx and ADF.

Whilst we would prefer permanent employees we are reasonably flexible about our relationship with our consultants, and can typically start with either an employed or contract arrangement which we can discuss at a later stage if appropriate. You will need to either be based in the UK or already have the right to work here, and as our work involves a high level of customer interaction, excellent English language and written skills are a must.

If you are interested in working with us, please provide details of where and how you have done the following

1. Repository development
2. Webcat development
3. Database modelling
4. Testing

and when you provide details, could you please outline how you went about:

1. Converting user requirements
2. Creating the design
3. Developing the solution
4. Testing
5. Implementation

For successful candidates at this stage, the next step will be a technical interview. In anticipation, could you please provide in your reply your availability for a telephone interview of approximately 30 – 45 mins for the week following your application.

Rittman Mead are an equal opportunities employer and does not discriminate in terms of gender, religion, disability or ethnic background.

If you are interested, drop us a line to careers@rittmanmead.com, and one of us will be in contact by return. If you know OBIEE inside-out and want to work with the best team in the industry, get in touch now and you could be working with us by the end of the year!

We’re located at Booth 124, Moscone South, which is on the perimeter of the outer track of booths. Basically, when you walk in through the main exhibition doors, you take an immediate left, and walk all the way down until you see the Tap and Brew, which I should point gives away free beer in the afternoons. So depending on the timing, grab a beer, and then take a right and go about three quarters of the way down until you see the Rittman Mead booth on your left. Most likely, you’ll see either Joe or myself, and probably Venkat as well. Jon and Mark will be in and out of the booth depending on how their schedules of presentations and other things go.

It’s been interesting speaking to attendees about their BI needs, and hearing the different ways that Oracle customers are using the products and the challenges they are facing. It’s also been gratifying when customers seek out our booth with their latest technical dilemma because they think we are the one’s that can help them solve it.

Today is the last day of exhibition hours, so take a minute to stop in and say hello.

It’s an exciting time for the company, as this is the first Open World with the US branch established and operating. Joe Leva and I are here along with a few other guys you may have heard of: Mark Rittman, Jon Mead and Venkatakrishnan Janakiraman. As we all travel so much, and hail from such disparate locations, we don’t often get to be in the same place at the same time, so it should be good fun to see the guys from across the pond (and across the world in Venkat’s case).

Another first for us at Open World: Rittman Mead is exhibiting this year, so come by and see us at Booth 124, Moscone South. Because I’m spending so much time at the booth, speaking to attendees about their BI and data warehousing needs, I haven’t had much time to see many technical sessions, though I did get a chance to see Mark and Venkat’s presentation yesterday… a “Deep Dive” into OBIEE and Essbase integration. There were a lot of good questions from the audience, especially those that stayed behind to speak to us, and it does appear that there are customers out there trying to make this work. It’s also evident that there is a real desire for people to get their hands on OBIEE 11g.

Joe and I will be at the booth all day… and after the Oracle Press event that will last most of the morning, Jon and Mark should be by in the afternoon. So if you have any Oracle product questions, general BI questions, or just want to come by and meet the team, we’d be glad to see you.

As Oracle BI EE has matured, and more organizations have taken on the technology, our course materials have expanded to take on subjects such as Hyperion Essbase integration, Oracle BI Applications development, tuning and optimizing and project deployment. Up until recently we have tried to cram this into our two main Oracle BI EE and Oracle BI Applications courses, but in response to demand we’ve now taken this wider set of material and made it into a new series of Oracle BI EE and Oracle BI Applications courses. In addition, we are currently developing new courseware around Oracle Warehouse Builder 11gR2 and Oracle BI EE 11g, and we will still continue to offer intensive, 5-day “boot camp” courses for those customers to want to learn a product intensively in a short period of time.

If you’re interested, here’s our new course curriculum:

Special Events:

• SPC02: Oracle BI Training Days, London October 27th – 29th 2009

Oracle BI Enterprise Edition Courses:

• TRN 201 : Oracle BI EE 10g “Bootcamp”
• TRN 202 : Oracle BI EE 10g Basic Administration
• TRN 203 : Oracle BI EE 10g Advanced Administration
• TRN 204 : Oracle BI EE 10g Create Reports, Dashboards and Alerts
• TRN 205 : Oracle BI EE 10g, Essbase and Hyperion Integration
  

Oracle BI Applications Courses

• TRN 301 : Oracle BI Applications 7.9.5 “Bootcamp”
• TRN 302 : Oracle BI Applications 7.9.5 Basic Administration
• TRN 303 : Oracle BI Applications 7.9.5 Customization and Advanced Administration

Oracle Data Warehousing Courses:

• TRN 401 : Oracle Warehouse Builder 10gR2/11gR1 Development and Deployment
• TRN 501 : Oracle 11g Data Warehouse Design

We typically run our courses in-house, for internal development teams of between 4 – 10 developers. Courses are all instructor-led, and (apart from the data warehousing one) all come with labs and examples so you can have a practice. Prices usually work out at about half the cost of sending your development team on a public course, and of course you are only paying the travel expenses of our instructor, not your entire team. Best of all though, you’re being taught by someone who develops using these tools when they are not delivering courses, which means we can discuss your particular issues and talk about how we’ve solved similar ones on other engagements.

If you’re interested in our new training courses, drop us a line and we’d be pleased to provide more information. We can provide trainers out of our UK, USA and Indian offices, which means we’ve got most places covered.

Training Days Agenda:

• Day 1
  • Oracle BI and EPM architecture overview – Mark Rittman
  • Oracle BI EE Data Modeling against DW and 3NF sources – Mark Rittman
  • Oracle BI Delivers + Integration with Java and BI Publisher – Venkat Janakiraman
  • What’s new in Oracle BI, DW and EPM from Oracle Open World – Mark Rittman
• Day 2
  • Oracle BI EE Data Modeling against Essbase – Venkat Janakiraman
  • Leveraging MDX functions and calculations in OBIEE – Christian Berg
  • Integrating Security across OBIEE and EPM – Venkat Janakiraman
  • I can do this in Hyperion – how do I do it in OBIEE? – Christian Berg and Venkat Janakiraman
• Day 3
  • OBIEE Systems Management with OEM BI Mgmt Pack – Mark Rittman
  • OBIEE Configuration Management Best Practices – Christian Berg
  • ODI functionality in Oracle BI Applications – Mark Rittman
  • ODI Integration with Essbase, Planning and Oracle EPM Suite – Venkat Janakiraman

Looking forward to meeting you all over there.

Rittman Mead now has two offices, one in the UK run by Jon Mead and myself and another in the USA, run by Joe Leva and Stewart Bryson. Both parts of Rittman Mead are focused on Oracle Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing, offering consulting, training and mentoring for customers in Europe and the Americas.

Since Jon and I started the company back in 2007, our aim has been to work with the best Oracle BI&W consultants and trainers from around the world. By recruiting only the best people, with the most experience, our aim has been to carve out a name for ourselves as the most capable Oracle BI&W implementors in the industry. Since the start of 2009, we’ve been joined by such famous names as Venkat Janakiraman, Stewart Bryson and Adrian Ward, and all told we now have eleven consultants in the UK and two in the USA, with most of us contributing to the company blog and presenting at conferences and events.

Our main activity is consulting, with projects running around the world and a particular focus these days on Oracle BI EE, Oracle Essbase, Oracle Exadata/Database Machine and Oracle Data Warehousing. As we only recruit senior, experienced consultants we tend to mix and match roles on projects, with Jon, Joe, Adrian and I usually providing the project lead and colleagues such as Peter Scott, Borkur Steingrimsson, Venkat, Ragnar Wessels and Stewart Bryson leading the technical implementation. We also have Jennifer Albu leading our methodology and project governance function, ensuring that our projects deliver as expected and within the required timeframe and budget.

Our other area of focus is training, with our courses on Oracle BI EE Development and Administration, Oracle Warehouse Builder Development and Oracle BI Applications Development being the most popular. Our courses are run by our consultants which means that you get real project experience from your trainer as well as a superb understanding of the products, which means that once we’ve trained up your development team the same trainer can come back later and help with the project, if you ever need a helping hand. Here’s a list of our current courses:

• TRN01: Oracle Warehouse Builder 10gR2 Development and Deployment (3-5 Days)
• TRN02: Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition: Design, Build and Dashboards (3-5 Days)
• TRN05: Oracle Data Warehouse Design (3 Days)
• TRN06: Oracle BI Publisher Development and Administration (2 Days)
• TRN07: Oracle BI Applications Development and Administration (3-5 Days)
• TRN08: Oracle BI Discoverer Administration & Reporting (3 Days)

One final area that I’m particularly involved in is organizing events and conferences. Earlier in the year we ran our first Rittman Mead BI Forum, an excellent three-day technical event in Brighton focusing on Oracle BI EE, Oracle Essbase and Oracle Data Integrator. Later on in 2009 we’re planning to run another one of our three-day intensive Training Days events, with sessions run by myself, Venkat and Christian Berg, where we’ll be focusing on the deep technical details of OBIEE and Essbase development.

With all of this activity, we’re very keen to speak to any experienced Oracle BI EE, Oracle Essbase, Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle Warehouse Builder developers who might be interested in working with us. We’ve got a young, dynamic team that works all around the world, our focus is solely on Oracle BI&W and our aim is to assemble the best team of implementors and trainers around the world. If you’re interested in working for us either in Europe or in the USA, or indeed if you’d like us to help with your project or training, drop us an email and we’d be pleased to speak with you.

We’ve known Venkat now for a couple of years, firstly through our mutual interest in Oracle’s BI, DW and Performance Management technologies, and recently through his attendance at our BI Forum in Brighton. We’d spoken informally about Venkat joining us before the event and when we all met up, it was clear we all shared a similar passion for Oracle technology. Venkat joins us from Oracle India where he provided consulting support and assistance on some high-profile projects, and brings his unsurpassed knowledge of OBIEE, Hyperion and DW integration and development to our team. At Rittman Mead, our approach since Jon and I started the company was to try and work with the best people in the Oracle BI&DW industry, bringing out join skills and project approach to customer engagements to ensure the success of their projects. Venkat joining us really adds significant weight to our project abilities and we’re all super-excited about his joining us, and in future contributing to the Rittman Mead blog.

I’m sure you’ll all join us in welcoming Venkat to the team, and keep an eye out on this site for news of the second of our Training Days events in London for later in the year, where Venkat, myself and Christian Berg will be running three days of advanced-level training on OBIEE and the Hyperion EPM stack.

If you’re still looking to come along or know someone who’s thinking of it, you’ll need to register before that date to get in. So far we have 43 registrations and we can take up to a maximum of 50, so there are still a few places left if anyone is interested.