I was there too. It has been a week ago. What do I remember? That “OLAP is fully integrated in the oracle database” and that … “OLAP is fully integrated in the oracle database”.

Yes, Oracle did a good job. Their main sales pitch is stuck in my head. Of course they also explained that OLAP itself is very important. End Users are more interested in (on line) KPI’s and not so much in raw data. The multi dimensional end user model is easy to understand, etc. But we know that already.

The main message is; you don’t have to store you multi dimensional data outside your main database. You can use Oracle Warehousebuilder to create a multidimensional model and store its physical components in the same database that stores your star model. Oracle Warehouse builder makes it even possible to map your tables on dimensions, measures and cubes.

I had the opportunity to ‘hack’ an OLAP environment, including a mapping between my facts and dimension tables and my multidimensional objects. The beta version of Oracle Warehouse builder was a bit buggy, but it works.

Warehouse Builder:
Oracle Warehouse Builder provides a complete environment for the design, population and management of data warehouses. One of the crucial improvements in the coming release is the seamless deployment, execution and data viewing of OLAP objects. Other major benefits of the coming release of Warehouse Builder are:
• All functionality embedded in the common editors you are used to for relational modeling.
• Direct deployment of any object
• Integration within Process Flows and dependency management.
During a short period of time we got an overview of the new functionality. The coming release seems easier to use than the current Warehouse Builder.

Discoverer:
Discoverer is a tool for ad-hoc query, reporting, analysis, that gives users at all levels of the organization access to information from data marts, data warehouses and online transaction processing systems.
The new release contains a functionality to give access to OLAP-cubes. The access is separate from the relational discoverer. Both Discoverers have the same look and feel. The desktop-version of the Discoverer Plus disappeared; it is only available via the web.
We also discovered some advantages for the relational part, which is not yet available in the Discoverer 4-release.
• The use of footnotes and being able to alter the title of workbooks.
• Drilling on cell-level to other workbooks and even to an URL-link.
• The printing-options have improved a lot. For instance fit-to-page options.
• Administrative options like sharing workbooks are more clear and easier to use.
• Nested parameters.
• List of Values can display descriptions and use IDs in background. This will improve the performance of the workbooks.