Rittman Mead Blog - Oracle Database Technology

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A collection of 141 posts

Oracle to Announce New "OLTP"-Focused Database Machine

Oracle released details over the weekend of a news conference they are running on September 15th 2009, to announce a new OLTP-focused database machine this time based on Sun hardware [http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=101483]. I'm surprised that this wasn't

Thoughts on the New DW Features in Oracle Database 11gR2

Well it's been about a week since Oracle Database 11gR2 [http://www.oracledatabase11g.com/] became available for download on Linux, and we've since had a chance to play around with it and see what's new. The Linux release on 32 and 64-bits is available

Slightly Fuzzy Lookups

Recently I had a requirement to selectively "translate" the data in one column of a table before loading into a data warehouse. In this case we had to "standardise" a list of countries. Normally, this is classic use of an outer join to a table containing

Drilling Down in the Oracle Next-Generation Reference DW Architecture

If you've read this blog over the past year or heard me present at conferences on Oracle data warehouse architecture, you'll probably have seen this architecture diagram used at some point, put together by Doug Cackett, Simon Griffiths, Kevin Lancaster, Andrew Bond and Keith Laker from

Cardinality of Rowsources

One of the things I sometimes come across when looking at legacy ETL code for data loading is the misuse of query hints to "improve" data load performance. Sometimes DBAs or developers do not remember that "tuning the select" may not be the same thing as

Materialized View and Partitioning "Gotchas", Part II

If you follow the blog, then you know that Mark recently posted about materialized views for aggregation, located here. [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2009/04/18/materialized-view-and-partitioning-gotchas/] One of the issues he encountered was how to refresh materialized views based on tables loaded with partition exchanges... a common approach

Dynamic SQL

One of my pet hates is the inappropriate use of dynamic SQL within ETL processes, for example building a command as VARCHAR2 string then using it in an "execute immediate" statement. Putting commands into strings whether hard-coded ones within the package or procedure, retrieved from some 'code&

Using a PARTITION BY JOIN to Fill In The Gaps

As a quick introduction, I'm Stewart Bryson, Technical Director for North America. It seems strange to be posting an entry on this blog after so many years of reading it, and learning from it. The momentum it has in the community is something I do not take lightly,

Analytic Views as OWB Data Source

Readers of my old blog - much now ported here to the Rittman Mead blog may remember my fondness for things SQL (rather than PL/SQL) and analytic functions in particular. It is not that I can't "do" PL/SQL it is more that I think

Ten Thoughts on Oracle BI&DW for 2008

Today is New Year's Eve, and a kind of review of the year, here's ten of my thoughts on what happened in Oracle B&DW in 2008. 1. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. 2008 was the year that OBIEE went from early-adopter technology (at least

Bitmap Indexes Redux

I was running a data warehousing training event for a client recently, and in one of the sessions we looked at bitmap indexes and bitmap join indexes. Whilst the session went OK I remember thinking to myself at the end, "you know what, there's a fair bit

Exa-ctly

Sitting about half-a-flying-day from San Francisco and OOW and for that matter my colleagues, gives me opportunity to mull over Larry's keynote address that has been so widely reported on-line. I would love to say my prediction for what was going to be announced was completely right; although

Tuning an Oracle 11g Data Warehouse Using the DBConsole Advisors

I'm currently back in Denmark running the first of my Oracle 11g Data Warehousing Masterclasses [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/07/15/oracle-11g-data-warehousing-seminar-denmark/], today was the first day and I'm currently back in the hotel working through some material for tomorrow. One of the main

Oracle BI Training Days

Over the past few months the team at Rittman Mead have been busy developing new course content and seeking out suitable venues for our first ever public course, the Oracle BI Training Days [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/oracle-bi-training-days-october-22nd-24th-london-uk/] . This course is a fantastic opportunity to learn more about designing,

Testing Advanced (OLTP) Compression in Oracle 11g

Another new feature in Oracle 11g of interest to data warehouse developers is Advanced Compression [http://www.oracle.com/database/advanced-compression.html]. This new feature extends the capabilities of segment compression first introduced with Oracle 9i, but crucially makes it work for all DML operations, not just direct path inserts,

Investigating Oracle 11g Interval Partitioning

If you've kept abreast of what's new in the latest release of the database, you will probably be aware of three major enhancements to partitioning in Oracle 11g. Firstly, there's the new reference (ref) partitioning where you can partition one table based on a

So, What is "Oracle's New Database Accelerator"?

I was just taking a look through the Open World session catalog when I came across what I presume is recently added session, "Oracle’s New Database Accelerator: Query Processing Revolutionized" [http://www28.cplan.com/cc208/session_details.jsp?isid=298677&ilocation_id=208-1&ilanguage=english]

Cube, Rollup, Grouping Sets and Grouping IDs

If you've kept up with the various new data warehousing features in Oracle over the past few years, you might have noticed extensions to the GROUP BY clause such as ROLLUP, CUBE, GROUPING SETS and so on. If like me you've glanced at these features and

Oracle 11g Partitioning

Last time I mentioned [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/08/28/bitmap-index-examples/] that I have been helping Mark with some demonstrations of the Data Warehouse features of modern (notably 11g) Oracle databases. Having a few minutes spare I decided to take a look at partitioning. I have long been

Bitmap Index Examples

Between assignments (mostly, OBIEE and BI Applications work) and a family holiday in the Austrian Alps I have been helping Mark with some of the examples he will be demonstrating as part of his 11g Data Warehousing Seminar [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/07/15/oracle-11g-data-warehousing-seminar-denmark/]. I must confess

Tuning 11g Data Warehouse Schemas using the SQL Access Advisor

One of the new features in Oracle Database 11g that I've been meaning to try out for a while now is the SQL Access Advisor, part of the 11g Tuning Pack. Given that one of Oracle's key product directions is to make administering the database as

Taking a Look at ApEx 3.1 Interactive Reports

The latest copy of Oracle Magazine [http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/08-mar/index.html] dropped through the door yesterday, and as I was looking through it last night I noticed an article on the new Interactive Reporting feature in ApEx 3.1 [http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/

Towards a Future Oracle BI Architecture?

One of the presentations I'm giving over the next couple of months is one for the UKOUG BI & Performance Management [http://www.ukoug.co.uk/calendar/show_event.jsp?id=3347] event on future Oracle BI architectures [http://www.ukoug.org/other/?t=mr1803]. The driver for

Used unused indexes

One of my old customers had a data warehouse with a three-area design model: a staging area for data load/cleanse, a third normal form (or more 3-NF-like than dimensional) raw data layer and a denormalised dimensional layer containing aggregated data for reporting. They ran a retail business and one

Winding down

In addition to moving my responsibilities to other managers, I have been tying up the odd technical loose end. During the recent upgrade to 10gR2 for one of our DW customers we noticed a frequent query that queried for raw sales for a named customer over a rolling 12 week