GIS-Enabling Your Oracle Data Warehouse

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.