OWB10g Online Training Resources

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.