I've just come across Pete Finnigan's website [http://www.petefinnigan.com/index.htm], where's he's put together an excellent set of links through to Oracle security papers written by himself and other third parties [http://www.petefinnigan.com/orasec.htm]. One particularly

Oracle don't release specifics about forthcoming product releases until just before the product gets launched, but if you take a look through the OTN OWB Forum [http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jsp?forum=57] there's a few clues emerging about what's coming up

"We are trying to decide which reporting tool to use. What are some of the differences between Oracle Reports and Discoverer [http://oracle.ittoolbox.com/documents/document.asp?i=2656]?"

Cognos have launched a replacement for Impromptu, their venerable web-based reporting tool, and it's causing quite a stir in the BI market [http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1227246,00.asp]. Credited by some with being the real reason behind the recent series of mergers [http://groups.

Red Hat 9.0 [http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/] looks like being the last release of this Linux distro, with Red Hat the company concentrating on Red Hat Enterprise Linux [http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/] and the consumer distro being merged with the Fedora Project [http://fedora.redhat.

Data warehouse fact tables contain one or more measures (such as 'volume sold', 'cost price' and 'retail price') and one or more dimensions. When the data model is first put together, the number of dimensions is usually quite small, and centre around common business

Once the domain of a small group of knowledge workers within an organization, data warehouses are increasingly becoming a critical part of an overall  I.T. infrastructure. Organizations have come to depend on the information held in data warehouses and data marts, and often the warehouse is the only source

Data warehouse fact tables contain one or more measures (such as 'volume sold', 'cost price' and 'retail price') and one or more dimensions. When the data model is first put together, the number of dimensions is usually quite small, and centre around common business

An update to the story posted on 19th July about Oracle's Mark Jarvis and George Roberts resigning. Jon Wilkinson points out an error in Reuters description of Charles Phillips, who is described in the article as a former star software analyst at Morgan Stanley. In fact, according to

Mark Van De Wiel and Ali El Kortobi put together a presentation for Oracleworld on the data quality features in Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g [http://www.oracleworld2003.com/scps/download/download.jsp?53455353494F4E5F4944=3430313533&414242524556494154494F4E=3430313533] . It covers the name and address cleansing and match-merge features, the new debugging

Once the domain of a small group of knowledge workers within an organization, data warehouses are increasingly becoming a critical part of an overall  I.T. infrastructure. Organizations have come to depend on the information held in data warehouses and data marts, and often the warehouse is the only source

One of the most interesting new features of Oracle Database 10g is the new 'self-managing' framework outlined in this white paper [https://www.oracleworld2003.com/published/40090/40090.doc] by Sushil Kumar, available on the Oracleworld site. Automatic maintenance and tuning has always been one of the key

Apart from the announcement that a future version of Discoverer will fully support Oracle OLAP multidimensional queries [http://www.rittman.net/2003/09/09.html], the most important new business intelligence feature of Oracle 10G is the 'SQL Model Clause'. Outlined in Tom Kyte's recent white

Keen to run Oracle on Red Hat 9 [http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/] but having problems with libraries and kernel parameters? This article over at ITToolbox [http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2003/09/04/oracle_install.html] gives you step-by-step instructions on installing Oracle 9i Release 2

Bud Endress has written an excellent paper on Oracle 10g OLAP new features which is currently available for download [https://www.oracleworld2003.com/published/40260/40260_Endress.doc] from the Oracleworld website. Some of the new features for the 10g OLAP option look pretty exciting, and the benefits of integration

More details about the new Oracle 10G and Application Server 10G are becoming available the closer we get to Oracleworld [http://www.oracle.com/oracleworld/sanfrancisco/conference/], and it's becoming clear that the 'grid' element of the new products is mainly an enhancement to the existing

There's an interesting article [http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=14100138] over at informationweek.com about Java Server Faces [http://java.sun.com/j2ee/javaserverfaces/], a proposed new standard for building browser-based interfaces in Java. According to the article "The little-known Java Server Faces will

A note on metalink [http://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=Not&id=246955.1] advises that Analytic Workspaces built using Oracle 9i 9.2.0.3 will corrupt if the new 9.2.0.4 patchset is applied. According to the note; "Please be advised that

Standard Oracle relational theory tells you that, when putting data into a table, it doesn't matter in which order you insert the data, as Oracle doesn't guarantee the order in which it's returned, unless you specifically use an ORDER BY clause. Therefore, you can&

If you're looking for some background reading on Oracle development, particulary to do with business intelligence and datawarehousing on Oracle 9i, i've put together a recommended reading list [http://www.rittman.net/stories/2003/08/23/recommendedOracleDevelopmentBooks.html] which you might find useful.

If you're serious about tuning an Oracle server, you'll probably be familiar with STATSPACK [http://www.engin.umich.edu/caen/wls/software/oracle/server.901/a87503/statspac.htm] , a set of Oracle-provided SQL, PL/SQL and SQL*Plus scripts which help you collect, store and analyze

Ameed Taylor, Chair of the E-Business Suite Customization and Extension SIG within the Oracle Applications User Group, has started up a weblog [http://ebizsig.blogspot.com/] on Oracle development. Ameed's aim is to try to keep his SIG members, and others with an interest in Oracle development, up

Oracle Discoverer [http://otn.oracle.com/products/discoverer/content.html] is the primary query and reporting tool that I use on data warehousing projects, and the latest version, Oracle 9iAS Discoverer, comes bundled with the Oracle 9i Application Server. With release 2 of 9iAS, Discoverer uses the Single Sign-on server

SQL Plus has a useful command called COPY that until now I had no idea about. It's an alternative to the IMP and EXP commands that lets you copy data between two SQL*Net connected databases. Using the syntax COPY FROM database TO database action - destination_table

Update on the 9i OLAP Spreadsheet Addin that was mentioned in a previous post [http://www.rittman.net/2003/08/14.html#a96]. Aneel Shenker has announced on OTN [http://www.oracle.com/forums/thread.jsp?forum=16&thread=193012&tstart=0&trange=15] that a 9i