After spending some time on discussing some of the new parallel features (like AutoDOP and Statement Queuing) it is about time to put these features in a larger context. That context is managing diverse workloads with varying degrees of parallelism for various actions on the data.

A lot can be said about setting up workload management, so expect this to be one of the posts in a series on this topic. As it is the first post, let's start from the beginning, with understanding workloads and a framework of setting up such a management infrastructure.

I have a dilemma. In the BI system that I’m working on I have the perfect application for the use of Expression Filters. It is almost as if someone specifically devised this problem in order to tempt me into using them, and I really am very tempted indeed. Let me explain. In the application which [...]

Just a quick follow up to my post from the other day about using DBMS_Scheduler to generate lists of dates in SQL. I mentioned that you can use named schedules in this method, and that’s actually a handy way of testing your schedule definition. The syntax is along the lines of: begin dbms_scheduler.create_schedule( schedule_name => [...]

A rather common question in the Oracle community goes along the lines of this: “How do I generate a list of dates?”, with variations such as needing only working days, excluding specific dates, etc.. If there is a standard method for this it tends to go along the lines of this: Generate a rather vanilla [...]

Exadata System-Sizing Techniques for the Oracle Database Machine

BIWA SIG and Exadata SIG Joint Wednesday TechCast Series         

Wednesday, August 18, 12 noon Eastern or check your local area's time

Quick and short post as a follow up to the ODTUG session I did on Partitioning. With Database 11g we introduced REF partitioning, which allows us to do PWJ's in a master-detail scenario. Which of course is very cool in any 3NF schema where we have lots of these examples.

Pfff, it took me a while to finally post my thoughts on ODTUG this year, and now I'm reading Mike telling us all to sign up for the super-early-bird special for Kscope11... man, I'm getting old and slow as I'm just about to write a bunch of stuff on the 2010 show...

Within data warehousing there is a growing trend, created and heavily promoted by certain vendors, to pull data out of the enterprise data warehouse platform and spread that data across specialized platforms according to how it needs to be analyzed. This process is seen as the next evolutionary step in data warehousing

Oracle has initiated a "pissing contest" with IBM, as Bob Evans appropriately characterized it, with bravado about adoption of its Exadata appliance. The numbers may sound impressive, but in my view, the vendors leading the big-data era are Teradata, Netezza, Greenplum and a few other independents and upstarts.

You heard it here first... Oracle is now starting to roll out industry specific solutions that are based on Oracle Exadata and deliver pre-built advanced analytical capabilities leveraging the Oracle industry experience and technological leadership.

The goal of these pre-built industry specific solutions is to deliver:

The Data Warehouse Insider

Frank Davis

One of the things that I did not talk about in the initial partition wise join post was the effect it has on resource allocation on the database server.

Last year the Oracle OpenWorld team decided to use Oracle Mix as a way to select some of the papers for OpenWorld and this year we are following the same process. The majority of papers for this year's conference have already been selected, however, there are some presentation slots still available so the OpenWorld team are giving you the chance to vote on which papers you want to see at this year's OpenWorld conference.

Some say they are the holy grail of parallel computing and PWJ is the basis for a shared nothing system and the only join method that is available on a shared nothing system (yes this is oversimplified!). The magic in Oracle is of course that is one of many ways to join data. And yes, this is the old flexibility vs. simplicity discussion all over, so I won't go there... the point is that what you must do in a shared nothing system, you can do in Oracle with the same speed and methods.

Some time ago, when we moved from OWB 9 to 10, I noticed the size of OWB exports into mdl files dramatically decreased. That was a good thing in that it was easier to distribute the mdl files e.g. to production sites. It it also meant you could not read (or edit) the contents of [...]

Personally, I like this stuff. It places the unique features of Exadata in perspective with the overall business value.

In our quest to share our endless wisdom (ahem...) one of the things we figured might be handy is recording some of the best practices for data warehousing. And so we did. And, we did some more...

We now have recreated our websites on Oracle Technology Network and have a separate page for best practices, parallelism and other cool topics related to data warehousing.

In those rare instances, there is a necessity to utilize the EVALUATE function within OBIEE.  Most cases the use is to utilize a database function that is not available, yet, by OBIEE; but, is available within the database reporting fr

I've mentioned OCDM in previous posts but found the following (see end of the post) podcast on the topic and figured it is worthwhile to spread the news some more.

ORetailDM and OCommunicationsDM are the two data models currently available from Oracle. Both are intended to capture:

After spending a few days in Mandalay Bay's THEHotel, I guess I now call everything THE... Seriously, they even tag their toilet paper with THEtp... I guess the brand builders in Vegas thought that once you are on to something you keep on doing it, and granted it is a nice hotel with nice rooms.

Calculating grand total column or % of grand total is easy in pivot table view.  But how can I create the same in a table view?  Well in table view you can create a grand total row with the table view o

After spending some time in the cloud, I figured it is time to come down to earth and start discussing some of the new Auto DOP features some more. As Database Machines (the v2 machine runs Oracle Database 11.2) are effectively selling like hotcakes, it makes some sense to talk about the new parallel features in more detail.

I have been seeing a lot where people take paint or samplesales webcat and either cloning it or modifying it to make a new webcat.  This has its issues and problems.  For one, you inherit all the users and privileges that

Nothing new here, just a reminder for myself where I can find a short, concise description of how to do this. I use it mainly when cloning VMWare Virtual Machines. Safes the trouble of reinstalling Oracle.
Thanks must go to Scott van Vliet, the owner of the blog entry that explains it all.
[...]

Recently Keith spent  some time talking about the cloud on this blog and I will spare you my thoughts on the whole thing. What I do want to write down is something about the Big Data movement and what I think is the killer app for Big Data...

Where is this coming from, ok, I confess... I spent 3 days in cloud land at the Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara and it was quite a lot of fun. One of the nice things at Cloud Connect was that there was a track dedicated to Big Data, which prompted me to some extend to write this post.

It happens every four years and it happens when ODTUG is a guest in Washington DC. What is the fuss about, the FIFA World Cup is coming to ODTUG and so is data warehousing...

The world cup of course starts on June 11 in South Africa, ODTUG starts on June 27 in Washington DC. The noise in the stadiums in South Africa will be deafening because of the many Vuzuvelas that will be tooted over there. I'd be curious to see if any make to ODTUG... If they do it will be a tad noisy in any session where they are employed.

It has been a long time, couple of months, since I last posted.  But busy beaver that I am, took me away from blogging.  Anyways, I got a breather and will add-on. Filters and the ‘is prompted’ operator.  Many migh

The OpenWorld team has offically opened the "Create or View your Submissions" tab on the OpenWorld site so now is the time to start submitting your ideas for presentations for this years OpenWorld Conference.