Oracle Essentials: Oracle9i, Oracle8i and Oracle8, Second Edition

Chapter 9. Oracle and Data Warehousing

Although a database is a general-purpose piece of software, it serves a variety of purposes with a variety of technical requirements, such as:

Recording and storing data

Requires reliably storing data and protecting each user’s data from the effects of other users’ changes

Reading data for online viewing and reports

Requires a consistent view of the data

Analyzing data to detect business trends

Requires summarizing data and relating many different summaries to each other

Together, the last two purposes listed are known as data warehousing.

Data warehousing has become one of the most powerful trends in information technology. There is a very simple motivation behind this trend: data warehousing allows businesses to use their data to aid in making strategic decisions. Data warehousing unlocks the hidden value embedded in an organization’s data stores.

Recognizing this trend, Oracle began adding data warehousing-related features to Oracle7 in the early 1990s. Oracle8, Oracle8i, and Oracle9i have all contained additional features for warehousing, particularly to improve the performance and management of very large data warehouses. Oracle has also developed additional tools for building a complete data warehouse infrastructure, including business analysis and data-movement tools.

Data warehousing produces an infrastructure that can provide answers to the following business questions:

• How does this scenario relate to past results?

• What knowledge can ...