1. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition1
Data Warehousing Concepts 2
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Architecture 3
Security in Oracle BI 4
Some Good Features of OBIEE 5
Oracle Business Intelligence Application

2. What is a Data Warehouse ?
Can I see credit report from Accounts, Sales from marketing and open order report from order entry for this customer
Data from multiple sources is integrated for a subject
A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated,
nonvolatile, time-variant collection of data in support of management's decisions.
- WH Inmon
Data stored for historical period. Data is populated in the data warehouse on daily/weekly basis depending upon the requirement.
Identical queries will give same results at different times. Supports analysis requiring historical data

3. Subject-Oriented- Characteristics of a Data Warehouse
Information is presented according to specific subjects or areas of interest, not simply as computer files. Data is manipulated to provide information about a particular subject.

4. Integrated - Characteristics of a Data Warehouse
A single source of information for and about understanding multiple areas of interest. The
data warehouse provides one-stop shopping and contains information about a variety of subjects.

5. Non-volatile - Characteristics of a Data Warehouse
insert
change
Operational
Data
Warehouse
insert
delete
Stable information that doesn’t change each time an operational process is executed.
Information is consistent regardless of when the warehouse is accessed.
load
read only
access
replace
change

6. Time Variant - Characteristics of a Data Warehouse
Operational
Current Value data
time horizon : days
key may not have element of time
Snapshot data
time horizon : 5-10 years
key has an element of time
data warehouse stores historical data
Containing a history of the subject, as well as current information. Historical
information is an important component of a data warehouse.

7. Transactional Vs Analytical Systems
Transactional System
Analytical System
Transaction Processing
Query Processing
Time Sensitive
History Oriented
Operator View
Managerial View
Organized by transactions (Order, Input, Inventory)
Organized by subject (Customer, Product)
Relatively smaller database
Large database size
Many concurrent users
Relatively few concurrent users
Volatile Data
Non Volatile Data
Stores all data
Stores relevant data

8. Warehouse Architecture
EIS /DSS
Metadata
Select
Extract
Transform
Integrate
Maintain
Query Tools
Data
Warehouse
OLAP
Web Browsers
Operational
Systems/Data
Middleware/
API
Data
Preparation
Data Mining

9. Dimensional Modeling Dimensional Modeling
It is a technique for logically organizing business data in a way that helps end users understand it
Data is separated into facts and dimensions
Users view facts in any combination of the dimensions
Every dimensional model is composed of one table with a multipart key, called the fact table, and a set of smaller tables called dimension tables.

10. Dimensional Modeling Concepts–Star Schema
Single data (fact) table surrounded by multiple descriptive (dimension) tables resulting in a star like framework (structure)
In the example, sales fact table is connected to dimensions location, product, time and organization.

11. Fact
The fact table is where the numerical measurements of the business are stored
Facts
Numeric in Nature
For Examples: Sales Quantity, Unit Sales Price, Sales Amount etc.
Key performance indicators of the business
Analyzed across the dimensions
Sales Fact
DATE KEY
ITEM KEY
STORE KEY
PROMOTION KEY
POS TRXN#
Sales Quantity
Unit Sales Price
Sales $ Amount

12. Dimension Provide Descriptive Information
Represent hierarchical relationships
Common Dimensions
Date
Product
Location/Region
Customers
ITEM KEY
Item Description
Item Size
Package Type
Category

13. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Architecture
Oracle BI Presentation Services
Oracle BI Server
Data Sources

14. Oracle BI Presentation Services
Oracle BI Presentation Services consists of the following interfaces.
Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards - Interactive Access
Oracle BI Answers - Interactive Access
Oracle BI Delivers - Proactive Alerts

15. Oracle BI Answers It provides answers to business questions.
It allows users with the appropriate permissions to build and modify
reports that let end users explore and interact with information.
Reports can be saved in the Oracle BI presentation Catalog and integrated into any dashboard
The results can be formatted, saved, organized, and shared with others. A report can be configured to refresh results in real-time.

16. Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards
It provides points of access for analytics information. It consists of one or more pages, which appear as tabs across the top of the dashboard
Pages can display anything that you can access or open with your Web browser, such as saved Oracle BI requests, alerts from Oracle BI Delivers, images, charts, tables, text, and links to Web sites and documents.

17. Oracle BI Delivers
It is used to create alerts based on analytics results.
To detect specific results and immediately notify the appropriate person or group through Web, wireless, and mobile communications channels.
Uses intelligence agents or Bots, called iBots.
iBots are software-based agents driven by schedule or events that can access, filter, and perform analytics on data based upon defined criteria

18. Oracle BI Administrative tool
To create and edit repositories.
Physical layer: Represents the physical structure of the data sources to which the Oracle BI Server submits queries.
Business Model and Mapping layer: Represents the logical structure of the information in the repository.
Presentation layer: Represents the presentation structure of the repository. It allows you to present a view different from the Business Model and Mapping layer to users.

19. Oracle BI Presentation Services
Renders pages
Extension to Web Server
Uses a catalog folder to store user content
Acts as an intermediary, receives data from Oracle BI server and provides it
to the client.
Presentation Catalog:
Stores the application Dashboards, requests definitions, pages and filters
Contains information regarding permissions accessibility of the Dashboards by groups and users
Is administered using Oracle BI Catalog Manager

20. Oracle BI Server
Provides processing to intelligently access the physical data sources and structure the information
Uses Metadata to direct processing
Generates dynamic SQL to query the data sources
Connects natively or through ODBC to the RDBMS
Provides data to the Oracle BI Presentation Services
Components used by Oracle BI Server:
Repository File (.rpd)
Cache
NQSConfig.ini
DBFeatures.ini
Log files
Oracle BI
Server
Cache
NQSConfig.ini
NQSServer.log
.rpd
DBFeatures.ini
NQSQuery.log
Oracle BI
Administration
Tool

21. Oracle BI Server NQSConfig.ini
Is a configuration file used by the Oracle BI Server at startup
Specifies values that control processing, such as:
Defining the repository (.rpd) to load
Enabling or disabling caching of results
DBFeatures.ini
Is a configuration file used by the Oracle BI Server
Specifies values that control SQL generation
Defines the features supported by each database
Log Files
NQSServer.log records Oracle BI Server messages
NQSQuery.log records information about query requests
Cache
Contains results of queries
Is used to eliminate redundant queries to database
Speeds up results processing

22. Oracle BI Scheduler & Data Sources
Manages and executes jobs requesting data analytics
Schedules reports to be delivered to users at specified times
In windows, the scheduler runs as a service
Data Sources
Contain the business data that users want to analyze
Are accessed by the Oracle BI Server
Data sources can be:
RDBMS
OLAP databases
Flat files
Spreadsheets

23. Sample Request Processing
User views a Dashboard or submits an Answer request
The Oracle BI Presentation Services makes a request to the Oracle BI Server to retrieve the requested data
The Oracle BI Server, using the .rpd file, optimizes functions to request the data from the data sources
The Oracle BI Server receives the data from the data sources and processes as necessary
The Oracle BI Server passes the data to the Oracle BI Presentation Services
The Oracle BI Presentation Server formats the data and sends it to the client

24. Security in Oracle BI

25. Security in Oracle BI
Oracle BI supports security mechanisms that allow users to access only the data for which they are authorized.
Business logic object security:
This security mechanism controls access to objects, such as subject areas, tables, and columns.
For example, report designers in a particular department can view only the subject areas that belong to their department when using Oracle BI Answers.
Presentation Catalog object security:
This security mechanism provides security for objects stored in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog, such as dashboards, dashboard pages, folders, and reports.
Users can view only the objects for which they are authorized.
For example, a mid-level manager may not be granted access to a dashboard containing summary information for an entire department.

26. Security in Oracle BI Data level security:
This security mechanism controls the type and amount of data that is available in a report.
When multiple users run the same report, the results that are returned to each user depend on their access rights and roles in the organization.
For example, a sales vice president sees results for all regions, while a sales representative for a particular region sees only data for that region.

27. Some Good Features of OBIEE
Write back - update or write to the back-end database using the write-back capability.
For example, Business users can enter the sales targets for the current quarter in a Sales dashboard.
Reports created from any Microsoft application(word document, excel or paint) can be imported to OBIEE using BI Publisher.
Developers can customize the reports. Level of customization is 100%

28. Some Good Features of OBIEE
Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics allows you to view analytics data, Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards, and queries when you cannot connect to the network to access the Oracle Business Intelligence application.
Typically, disconnected users connect their personal machines (usually laptops) to a server that runs Oracle Business Intelligence. After downloading an Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics application, they can disconnect their laptops from the network .
For example, to travel on a business trip and still view dashboards and queries on their laptop machines

29. Some Good Features of OBIEE
Time Series feature - in the form of AGO and TODATE. AGO gives you, for example, the value of sales one month ago or one quarter ago, whilst TODATE gives you the total of sales month-to-date, or quarter-to-date, or year-to-date.
Various report views like compound Layout, Narrative etc.
Column Selector
To permit users to dynamically change which columns
appear in results. This allows users to analyze data along
Several dimensions.
Narrative
To show the results as one or more paragraphs of
text.

30. Some Good Features of OBIEE
Ticker
To show the results of the request as a ticker or marquee,
similar in style to the stock tickers that run across many
financial and news sites on the Internet.
Compound Layout
To assemble different views for display on a dashboard.
View Selector
To select a specific view of the results from among the saved views. When placed on a dashboard, the view selector appears as a drop-down list from which users can make a selection.
Drilling down from different data sources seamlessly.
For example I am loading data from SQL Server and Oracle 10g and my report when drilling down to the lower level will use SQL Server data source to a certain point and then use Oracle 10g data source.

31. Oracle Business Intelligence Application
Oracle BI applications include Extract Transform Load (ETL) routines to extract, transform, and load data into the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse.
An Oracle BI application consists of prebuilt, industry-specific Oracle BI interactive dashboards and Oracle BI reports that are built using industry best practices and address key functional areas within an organization.