Data Reflections Discussions of data warehousing, transformation and analysis by the Business Intelligence Team at Tallan.

Yesterday, I attended a seminar covering the Oracle BI landscape. My aim was to come out of this session with a clearer idea of how Oracle products correspond to the Microsoft BI stack. My impression going into this seminar was that Oracle had many, many applications bundled under the BI umbrella. Nevertheless, I was surprised by the sheer number of options available. Practically every piece of the MS BI Stack has at least two parallel products on the Oracle side, in some cases many more. My second impression was that Oracle has done some very credible work to integrate the vast number of applications they’ve developed alongside their Siebel and Hyperion purchases.

Here’s how Oracle visualizes their BI offering:

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This post is intended to introduce Analysis Services 2005/2008 foundational concepts.

SQL Server Analysis Services is a component included in the Microsoft SQL Server product, and its use is fully covered under the same license (which applies to Integration Services and Reporting Services as well). Like the database engine, SSAS has a range of features stratified by Express, Workgroup, Standard Edition and Enterprise Editions.

SSAS is an OLAP, multi-dimensional database. While a relational data warehouse can also be described as OLAP, products such SSAS, Cognos and Essbase have fundamental differences. These OLAP servers:

· Aggregate data from a variety of sources into a compressed format optimized for query response
· Emphasize end-user navigation with modeling capabilities such as hierarchies, or drill-paths
· Employ MDX as the standard query language for retrieving result sets
· Use XMLA as the standard communication mechanism between clients and servers
· Automate the aggregation of granular data

OLAP browsing tools, such as Excel Pivot tables, enable users to drag in measures (facts in DW terminology) and constrain and slice them by dimensional attributes (columns in a dimensional DW table). This is a typical browsing session of the AdventureWorks cube in Management Studio:

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