Mark Rittman

Next week I'm off to see a client in Ireland, who's using us to help put together the design for their data warehouse. They're looking to use tools such as Business Objects, Discoverer and so forth, there's a certain element of OLAP-style

A few of bits of product news I've picked up recently. The next release of Oracle Business Intelligence is due around the end of the summer (2005) and is being referred to as Business Intelligence 10g Phase 2 (although this might be an internal name). The big news

A couple of open-source BI links.Nicholas Goodman [http://www.bayontechnologies.com/bt/blog/] sent me a link through to arecent summary he'd made [http://www.bayontechnologies.com/bt/blog/archives/2005/06/open_source_bi.php] of the various open-source BI projects, and in particular pointed out

I noticed a useful thread on the OTN OLAP Forum oncontrolling the sort order of a dimension in AWM 10.1.0.4 [http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jsp?forum=16&thread=306195&tstart=30&trange=15] . As it's sometimes difficult to link to

I guess the big news last week from a tech point of view wasApple's announcement that they were moving to Intel processors [http://news.com.com/Its+Intel+inside+for+Apples+Mac/2009-1006_3-5733937.html?tag=nefd.lede] from 2006, starting with the Mac Mini. It's

Using Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer with the OLAP Option [http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/rittman_olap.html] : "Learn the advantages of adding the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition OLAP Option to your OracleBI Discoverer reporting and analysis, and the steps required to make OLAP reporting available to users.

Like a few other people I was up in Edinburgh earlier this week for the OUG Scottish SIG. I was asked to present at a fairly late date on Business Intelligence 10g, and as the short BI presentation I did at the last Scottish conference went down well, I thought

Another one of our clients is looking to put some hardware in place for a new data warehousing project. The two hardware options are: 1. Buy a single, large Unix server (probably a HP box running HP-UX) with 8 CPUs 2. Buy two or more commodity "Lintel" boxes,

Well that's it for the rest of the week for me. I'm off up to Manchester for Jonathan Lewis' "Optimising Oracle, Performance By Design" [http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk/seminar.html] seminar for the next three days, and as no doubt I&

"Scott Berkun, Smart People, Bad Ideas" [http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/05/scott_berkun_sm.html] : "Scott Berkun, former Microsoftie, just got slashdotted [http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/28/2058251] with an essay about"Why smart people defend bad ideas"

One of the most powerful features of the multidimensional engine behind analytic workspaces is the ability to create formulas. Formulas, or "calculated measures" as they're referred to in AWM10g, are measures that are derived from other measures. Using AWM, you can create simple formulas that reference

Another new batch of Oracle blogs: Jeff Hunter [http://marist89.blogspot.com/] (not to be confused with Jeffrey Hunter [http://www.idevelopment.info]),Robert Vollman [http://thinkoracle.blogspot.com/], Frank van Bortel [http://vanbortel.blogspot.com/] andPeter K [http://pkhosblog.blogspot.com/]. Niall's site [http://www.niall.litchfield.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1555583229/markrittmansh-21/202-8312887-4980615] I've been meaning to post a plug for this one for a while."Oracle 10g Data Warehousing" [http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1555583229/markrittmansh-21/202-8312887-4980615] by Susan Hillson, Shilpa Lawande, Pete Smith

One of the customers I work with is looking to us for advice on how to set their data warehousing database up. They're looking to use the Enterprise Edition of the latest Oracle version (10.1.0.4) and are planning on using Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g as

It's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks recently, with trips over to Ireland, down to Swindon and a couple of times up to London to work with clients and do a couple of presentations. I've had a lot of "dead time" where I

I'm working over in Ireland at the moment, and staying over in Dublin for the weekend, hence the lack of updates to the website this week. In the meantime, if you're coming to the UKOUG BIRT SIG meeting [http://www.ukoug.org/calendar/show_event.jsp?

Michael Armstrong-Smith, author of theforthcoming Oracle Discoverer 10g book [http://learndiscoverer.com/books/Enhanced.htm] and a regularOTN Discoverer Forum contributor [http://forums.oracle.com/forums/profile.jsp?user=416145], recently posted theslides [http://learndiscoverer.com/IOUG617.zip] andwhite paper [http://learndiscoverer.com/The%20art%20and%20science%20of%20Discoverer%2010.

> "I have a question about drilling from an OracleBI Discoverer for OLAP 10.1.2 worksheet to a Discoverer Plus Relational worksheet. When you pass values from an OLAP worksheet you pass either the dimension name or the dimension value to the associated parameter in the relational worksheet.

The customer is not always right [http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/13932.aspx] : "First, though, I’m posting the longest comic I’ve ever drawn - practically a graphic novel by my own standards - illustrating why the customer is not always right. This is an old adage which

Oracle works quietly with Mozilla [http://news.com.com/Oracle+works+quietly+with+Mozilla/2100-7344_3-5706116.html] : "Oracle and the Mozilla Foundation are keeping a joint venture under wraps, leading to speculation that the database giant may by planning to release an open-source product. The Mozilla Foundation revealed in

The next meeting of the UKOUG Business Intelligence & Reporting Tools SIG [http://www.ukoug.org/calendar/show_event.jsp?id=798] is taking place on Wednesday, 25th May at theInstitute of Physics, 76 Portland Place London [http://www.ukoug.org/calendar/show_venue.jsp?id=441]. We've

The Future of Databases [http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/1944248&tid=221&tid=198&tid=8] : ""Ever wonder where database technology is going? This is something thatTuring award winner Jim Gray [http://research.microsoft.com/~Gray/]from Microsoft has given

One or two of you might be wondering how I've managed to find the time to write so many articles recently, and the answer to this is down to something youmight have read about a few weeks ago [http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story1343.shtml] where our

I've been playing around with one of the OWB "Paris" betas, and one of the things that most struck me about this version of OWB compared to previous ones is the degree to which it utilizes theOLAP Option [http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/olap/

Oracle in talks to buy Siebel [http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1321]: "Oracle is in talks to buy Siebel Systems for a price tag that could reach $5 Billion The Daily Deal reports. The high-level discussions between the two companies have been confirmed by insiders and industry analysts,