More First Impressions Of The Analytic Workspace Manager

Jon Mead writes on the OTN OLAP Forum:

"I have got the AWM up and running and have spent some time looking at it.

I was able to create AW's from CWM1/CWM2/OLAP Catalog metadata. The wizard functionality seemed to work OK. I was then able to attach the AW's through the OLAP worksheet, and also use BI Beans against them new cube. I was not however able to export to Discoverer as one of my dimensions did not have a hierarchy.

If you switch views to the 'Object View' you get a simple version of Express Administrator, you can create AW objects, import from EIF file etc.

One thing I was not able to do is to import an EIF of a Express database, and then in the OLAP Catalog view create the OLAP API/BI Beans metadata - the message I got was that the database was not in Database Standard Form. My guess is that this refers to the GID etc objects required, and I presume will be available in future releases.

I found a few problems with either the OLAP Catalog view or the Object displaying databases attached as read write inconsistently, and hence not being able to save changes."

Just to add to Jon's point about the Express database needing to be in 'standard form' - Oracle mentioned at a recent SIG that they will be posting some routines to OTN in the next few days, that will convert existing Express databases to 'standard form' analytic workspaces, which deals with this issue.

Once these routines have run, and as Jon mentions, created all the GIDs and additional metadata required, you will then be able to create OLAP Catalog entries for these migrated objects. In the meantime, if you want to have a go yourself and do it manually, the steps required to do this are discussed in a paper we put together, downloadable from http://www.plusconsultancy.co.uk/downloads/white_papers/Migrating_express_apps_to_9i.pdf