Chapter 9. Oracle and Data Warehousing
Although a database is
general-purpose software, it provides a solution for a variety of
technical requirements, including:
- Recording and storing data
Reliably storing data and protecting each user's
data from the effects of other users' changes
- Reading data for online viewing and reports
Providing a consistent view of the data
- Analyzing data to detect business trends
Enables summarizing data and relating many different summaries to
each other
The last two solutions are often deployed as a data
warehouse, part of an infrastructure that provides
business
intelligence for corporate performance
management.
Data warehousing and business intelligence implementations are a
popular and powerful trend in information technology. There is a very
simple motivation behind this trend: businesses gain the ability to
use their data in making strategic and tactical decisions. Business
intelligence can reveal hidden value embedded in an
organization's data stores.
Recognizing the trend, Oracle began adding data warehousing features
to Oracle7 in the early 1990s. Additional features for warehousing
and business intelligence appeared in subsequent releases,
particularly to enable better performance, functionality,
scalability, and management. Oracle also developed tools for building
and using a business intelligence infrastructure, including data
movement and business analyses tools.
A business intelligence infrastructure can enable business analysts
to answer the following:
How does a scenario relate to past business results? What knowledge can be gained by looking at the data differently? What could happen in the future? How can business be changed to positively influence the future?
This chapter introduces the basic concepts, technologies, and tools
used in data warehousing and business intelligence. To help you
understand how Oracle addresses infrastructure and analyses issues,
we'll first spend a little time describing basic
terms and technologies.
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