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Oracle OLAP Newsletter
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| In This Issue: April 2008 |
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| Customer Feature |
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Auchan, Russia have implemented a BI solution incorporating Oracle Portal which leverages Oracle OLAP via SQL. It's been in use since the summer of 2007 for the hypermarket chain all over Russia. Auchan Russia is the Russian arm of the large, established Auchan French supermarket chain.
Business Benefits :
Middle and Top Managers in the Sales and Purchasing departments access interactive reports via the Portal for sales and performance analysis. The Management team can analyze stock and sales information such as assortment and pricing policies across stores to manage inventory better. They can analyze the impact of missing items so that stock can be controlled on all shop floors, thus improving sales and profitability. The Sales department analyze the impact of returns and writeoffs.
Now, the solution is being extended to sales floor employees (already used on the floor by managers). New areas of analysis are also being developed, such as further stock and financial analysis.
The Technical Solution:
Oracle Database with OLAP Option and Oracle Portal are used. Query performance, using standard SQL is very good with most interactive reports returning in under a second. Batch reporting 'jobs' take less than 10 seconds. Around 700 users are registered to the system, with most accessing on a daily basis.There are 3-4 dimensions for the 5 cubes (which contain 20 stored measures and 60 formulas), with up to 300,000 members in a dimension. The scope of this model may grow considerably in the subsequent release that is planned. Additionally, reports previously provided by the now obsolete Oracle (Express) Financial Analyzer are planned to be created in the next release.
Navitech, the commercial subsidiary of Informatom Company implemented the solution.
Kirill Boyko, IT Project Manager for Marketing, Finance and Data Warehouse states:
"We chose the Oracle OLAP solution because it was a simple solution integrated into the Database, which we already use for our Data Warehouse and other applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite . Not only is the solution simple in its integration, but it's simple and reasonable in cost, simple to implement and simple to use. Users find it really easy to create complex calculations and understand information. We are very satisfied with performance, scalability and capabilities of this solution."
About Auchan:
Auchan Russia is the Russian arm of the Auchan French supermarket chain who have over 1000 hypermarkets, mostly in Europe. There are 18 Auchan hypermarkets in Russia, mostly in the Moscow region; they also trade through supermarket ATAK. Auchan provide good quality products for cheaper than normal market prices. Independant retailers also trade within Auchan; the Auchan goal is to grow globally with more and more shareholders in this hypermarket enterprise.
www.auchan.ru
View more Oracle OLAP Customer and Partner references here.
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| Product Management Oracle OLAP Update |
Oracle OLAP Q&A
Q: What is the recommended version of Oracle OLAP if using Oracle Database 10g? A: 10.2.0.4 is now available for as patch 6810189 for Win 32, Linux32, and Linux64 on MetaLink. Other platforms should be available at the end of April. If 10.2.0.4 is not available, 10.2.0.3 plus OLAP A patch should be used.
Refer here for more information on recommended releases.
Q: What about using Oracle Database 11g? A: Oracle Database 11g (11.1.0.6) is available for Linux, Windows, HP UX, HP-IT, Solaris and AIX 5L on OTN. The required OLAP 'A' patch is available on MetaLink as Patch #6459753 for Linux and, AIX 5L and Windows 32 bit. The new AWM 11g version (11.1.0.6A) for Windows is available on OTN and MetaLink.
Q: What is the next version of Oracle Database 11g? A: 11.1.0.7 is the next version of 11g which will be available later this year.
Q: What about migrating from OLAP 10g to 11g? A: Until migration tools become available, analytic workspaces created in 10g or before will need to recreated in 11g. You can create 10g AWs from template if you have installed the Database as 10.2 compatible and choose connection type of OLAP 10g in AWM. See DBA Tip for more details.
Q: What help can I get for implementing OLAP 11g? A: The Oracle OLAP Development group is offering some technical help and advice to a small number of committed customers, as part of an OLAP 11g Reference Program initiative. If interested please send an email to orpnews_us@oracle.com. We'll contact you to find out your plans and if we can help each other.
Read more about Oracle OLAP on OTN.
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| OLAP Skills Corner - Why Oracle OLAP? |
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Why would you choose Oracle OLAP for inclusion in your Data Warehouse or Business Intelligence solution?
- It's an option to the database, thus it can be an easy, incremental, cost effective add-on for those wanting OLAP capability or a performance boost
- It's easy to maintain
- It's easy to secure
- It's scalable; data can grow as can Database
- Ease of SQL access to data
- Centralized data, metadata and business rules
- It leverages exisiting infrastructure
- It extends the Data Warehouse with analytic content
- It's an effective Summary Management Solution
As a Summary Management solution, Materialized Views (MVs) now leverage Oracle OLAP AWs via 'cube organized' MVs. For sparse data sets, complex reporting environments and the need for adhoc analytic reporting (including forecasting), cube MVs may be ideal as a booster for your environment. Read new White Paper available on OTN which explains and compares traditional table organized and cube organized MVs, their respective benefits, and describes how to create an AW, and create and maintain the cube MVs. A summary of the differences is also available in the December edition of this Newsletter.
For further information refer to Bud Endress' White Paper: Improve SQL Based Business Intelligence Tools with Oracle OLAP 11g |
OLAP Skills Corner - How do you create OLAP calculations? |
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Enhancing your application with analytic content, that other applications can't do, or do well is a core feature of Oracle OLAP. This feature can be easily leveraged by other tools, for example SQL based tools can easily and quickly report the calculations stored in the OLAP cube.
Oracle OLAP has a full range of predefined calculations that can be chosen in AWM 10g and 11g; there's a variety of
rank, share, time series, and other single-column functions, and forecasts which can be chosen or set up simply in AWM.
If the calculation you need is not available, there is an 'expression type' calculation that can be chosen in AWM; this free form calculation builder can allow you to define your own calculations using extended SQL expressions. To do this in AWM 11g, the simplest thing to do is to review the syntax of other calculated measures, and copy and paste into a new calculated measure 'expression'. Refer to OLAP User's Guide Part Number B28124-02 page 5-12 for more information.
Additionally, you can create extremely sophisticated calculations such as those below by using the function OLAP_DML_EXPRESSION to leverage the full library of Oracle OLAP capability.
This OLAP_DML_EXPRESSION is used as follows:
OLAP_DML_EXPRESSION('/function/',/data type/), such as ('lag(sales,1,time,nostatus)',NUMBER).
You can create a DML program and call it in the expression:
OLAP_DML_EXPRESSION('program_name', NUMBER)
To create a lot of calculated measures in batch you can define a cube with calculated measures in AWM with dummy formula, save to xml template and edit the formulas in the template, drop the cube and recreate from your edited template. Or easier, if using 10g, use the Excel sample utility available on OTN that enables you to define many complex calculations easily.
See Oracle OLAP Blogspot for articles describing calculated measures and how to create them in 10g:
Creating Calculated Measures - (solution is easy to implement)
Creating a Calculated Measure Cube - IOGALFF - (this solution is a more advanced technique, but more flexible).
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Can you use a 10.2 AW in 11g and why would you want to?
You may want or need to install 11g but run in 10.2 mode for OLAP, possibly to use an application you've developed for OLAP 10g. (for OLAPI based applications see July 08 newsletter).
To use a 10.2 AW in 11g, when connecting in AWM, in 'Connect to Database' pop up window input User/Password and set Cube Type to 'OLAP 10g'.
You may also use AWM 10.2.0.3A to connect to an 11g instance to administer your 10.2 AW. Obviously 11g features will not be enabled. This combination is not certified.
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The Oracle OLAP newsletter brings targeted technical news, articles and customer stories, to our customers in the Oracle OLAP community. Please send questions or comments to orpnews_us@oracle.com. Copyright 2006,2007 Oracle. All rights reserved. Published in the U.S.This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor is it subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission.
Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. |
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