Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)

Online transaction processing, or OLTP, refers to a class of systems that facilitate and
manage transaction-oriented applications, typically for data entry and retrieval transaction
processing
OLTP has also been used to refer to processing in which the system responds
immediately to user requests
An automatic teller machine (ATM) for a bank is an example of a commercial transaction
processing application.
The technology is used in a number of industries, including banking, airlines, mailorder,
supermarkets, and manufacturing. Applications include electronic banking, order
processing, employee time clock systems, e-commerce, and eTrading

Decision support system

A decision support system (DSS) is a computer-based information system that supports

business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management,
operations, and planning levels of an organization and help to make decisions
DSSs include knowledge-based systems. A properly designed DSS is an interactive
software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from
a combination of raw data, documents, personal knowledge, or business models to
identify and solve problems and make decisions.

Data Warehouse

A data warehouse is a database designed for querying, reporting, and analysis.

A data warehouse contains historical data derived from transaction data
A data warehouse (DW) is a database used for reporting . The data is offloaded from the
operational systems for reporting. The data may pass through an operational data store for
additional operations before it is used in the DW for reporting.
A data warehouse maintains its functions in three layers: staging, integration, and access.
Staging is used to store raw data for use by developers (analysis and support). The
integration layer is used to integrate data and to have a level of abstraction from users.
The access layer is for getting data out for users.
Time Variant
The data warehouse contains slices of data across different periods of time. With these data
slices, the user can view reports from now and in the past.

Historical
A data warehouse typically contains several years worth of data. This is necessary to support
trending, forecasting, and time-based performance reporting (for example, current year versus
previous year).

Information Retrieval and Decision Support

A data warehouse is a facility for getting at information to answer questions. It is not meant for
direct data entry; batch updates are the norm for refreshing data warehouses.

Atomic and Summary Data

Depending on the purpose of the data warehouse, it may contain atomic data (detail data at the
individual transaction level), summary data, or both.

Data mart

A data mart (DM) is the access layer of the data warehouse (DW) environment that is
used to get data out to the users. The DM is a subset of the DW, usually oriented to a
specific business line or team.

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

How do sales for our five most profitable products across the U.S. for this quarter
compare with sales a year ago?
What are the differences in the product-sales mix between the regions, relative to the
global sales mix?
What are our forecast units, unit price per service, unit cost per product, sales, cost
trends,
and profit for the next 12 months?

In what ways does the mix vary by salesperson, and what is the relative
performance of our salespeople?
What are the products making up 40% of our profit for each region over time?

In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP is an approach to swiftly answer

multi-dimensional analytical queries.
OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses
relational reporting and data mining.
Databases configured for OLAP use a multidimensional data model, allowing for
complex analytical and ad-hoc queries with a rapid execution time.
The output of an OLAP query is typically displayed in a matrix (or pivot) format. The
dimensions form the rows and columns of the matrix; the measures form the values.
The core of any OLAP system is an OLAP cube (also called a 'multidimensional cube' or
a hypercube). It consists of numeric facts called measures which are categorized by
dimensions. The cube metadata is typically created from a star schema or snowflake
schema of tables in a relational database. Measures are derived from the records in the
fact table and dimensions are derived from the dimension tables.
OLAP Questions Are Multidimensional Queries
The OLAP question shown in the slide is a common example of a multidimensional query.
It describes both the data that the user wants to examine and the structural form of that data.
Business users typically want to answer questions that include terms such as what, where, who,
and when.
For example, you find the following essential questions embedded in the sample question:

What products are selling best? (top 20%)

Where are they selling? (each region of the world)
When have they performed the best? (percentage change in revenue)

Oracle Data Mining

Oracle Data Mining is powerful data mining software embedded in the Oracle database that
enables you to discover new insights hidden in your data.

Oracle Data Mining helps businesses to target their best customers, find and prevent fraud,
discover the most influential attributes that affect Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and find
valuable new information hidden in the data.
Oracle Data Mining helps technical professionals find patterns in their data, identify key attributes,
discover new clusters and associations, and uncover valuable insights.

Business intelligence
Business intelligence can be defined as having the right access to the right data or information
needed to make the right business decisions at the right time
Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting,
and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by
associated costs and incomes.
BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Common
functions of business intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing,
analytics, data mining, predictive analytics.
Business intelligence aims to support better business decision-making. Thus a BI system can be
called a decision support system (DSS)

Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying,

extracting,and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or
departments, or by associated costs and incomes
Business intelligence aims to support better business decision-making.
Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS).
Business Intelligence and Transactional Applications

Transactional applications generally provide business intelligence to business users through

reports that reveal current data in transactional tables.

Oracles E-Business Suite of applications, PeopleSoft applications, JD Edwards

applications, and Siebel Customer Relationship Management applications all provide this
level of business intelligence.
Reporting is selected and deployed based on key business requirements (KBRs) and most
commonly displayed as key performance indicators (KPIs) in a dashboard using portal technology

BI USERS

Business User
BI Power User
BI Developer
Data Warehouse Analyst
BI Administrator

Business User
As a Business User you have an in-depth knowledge of one or more functional/business systems
or applications. You have demonstrated problem solving skills and good judgment in making
decisions. Very often you need to answer the following types of questions:

What is my best performing city in terms of sales?

What are my top n/bottom n selling products?
How does sales this year compare to last year?
What is the three month moving average of sales?
What will my sales look like next year?

BI Power User
As a BI Power User you work closely with Business Users to understand and anticipate the
strategic information that is required to develop the business data models. This strategic
information likely includes key business indicators, such as trends, anomalies, exceptions, and

data integrity issues, to mention but a few. You maintain a close "consulting" relationship with the
IT department and Business Users. Your primary role is to provide strategic and tactical expertise
in the design, development and maintenance of metadata, and to provide a conceptual view of
the database to users. This generally involves:

Analyzing and validating customer information requirements and data sources

Defining and managing the metadata for ad hoc querying and reporting and articulating
these requirements
Defining access control for Business Users

BI Developer
As a Business Intelligence (BI) Developer you are expected to understand Business Users
requirements and develop and enhance current reporting capabilities. You have a clear
understanding of the source and target structures from which you are able to glean current
business performance and key business indicators for developing reports.

Data Warehouse Analyst

As a Data Warehouse Analyst you perform database analysis and design in solving complex
problems. You define architecture, including database structures and metadata, and develop and
maintain best practices for data extraction, data loading, and data transformation into and out of a
data warehouse or data mart.
To meet your data warehouse implementation needs, you use OracleBI Warehouse Builder.

BI Administrator
As a BI Administrator you understand the business requirements that govern design,
development, and implementation of your data warehouse.
You have a solid knowledge of SQL/PL*SQL, query, database, and data warehouse optimization
and configuration. You determine strategies, including indexing, space management, or creating
database/materialized views, to leverage the capabilities of the database and data warehouse.

Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation

Oracle's Business Intelligence (BI) Foundation is a common set of BI tools and shared services that enable
the Enterprise Performance Management System. It supports both, performance management applications,
and BI applications.
The BI Foundation includes a Common Enterprise Information Model, which is a unified metadata model
accessed by end user tools, allowing you to "model once and deploy everywhere.
Oracle's Hyperion Essbase - System 9 is also part of the BI Foundation. It is an OLAP (Online Analytical
Processing) Server with the most advanced calculation engine that provides an environment for rapidly
developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.
The BI Foundation also leverages Oracle Real-Time Decisions, a platform that combines both rules and
predictive analytics to power solutions for real-time enterprise decision management. It enables real-time
intelligence to be instilled into any type of business process or customer interaction.

Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition

Oracle provides the technology foundation for building a complete business intelligence (BI) and data
warehousing (DW) solution. Oracle Database 10gan analysis-ready database with ETL, OLAP, and Data
Mining built into the data serverand Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition (SE) allow you to
rapidly develop and deploy data warehouses and data marts with an integrated array of query, reporting,
analysis, desktop integration, and BI application development capabilities.
Oracle Business Intelligence SE is available standalone or as part of Oracle Application Server Enterprise
Edition. It includes:

Oracle BI Discoverer: Relational and OLAP data access and user-driven customizable dashboards

Oracle BI Spreadsheet Add-in: OLAP data access from within Excel spreadsheets
Oracle BI Beans: For building powerful custom business intelligence applications
Oracle Reports Services: High-fidelity enterprise reporting

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus

The Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus (EE) is a comprehensive suite of enterprise
BI products, delivering the full range of BI capabilities including interactive dashboards, full ad hoc, proactive
intelligence and alerts, enterprise and financial reporting, real-time predictive intelligence, disconnected
analytics, and more. In addition to providing the full gamut of BI functionality, the Oracle Business
Intelligence Suite EE Plus platform is based on a proven, modern Web Services-Oriented Architecture that
delivers true next-generation BI capabilities.
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus has the following components:

Oracle BI server

an analysis server providing a calculation and aggregation engine that integrates

data from multiple relational, unstructured, OLAP, and other sources.
Oracle BI Admin Tool
an administrator tool used to construct repositories consisting of a Physical Layer,
Business Model and Mapping Layer, and an abstracted end-user Presentation
Layer subsequently visible in BI Answers.
Oracle BI Answers
an ad-hoc query and analysis tool that processes the data from multiple data
sources in a pure web environment. Users are isolated from data structure
complexity and they view and work with a logical view of the information. Users
can create interactive charts, pivot tables, reports, and dashboards. Analysis can
be saved, shared, modified, formatted, or integrated in the user's dashboards.
Oracle BI Marketing
caters to marketing needs, known as Segmentation Server.
Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards
interactive web architecture dashboards that display required information to help
users' decision making. Access to the information is interactive, based on the
individual's role and identity. The end user works with live reports, charts, tables,
prompts, pivot tables, and graphics and has full capability for modifying and
interacting with results. Dashboards can aggregate content from other sources
(e.g. the Internet, shared file servers, and document repositories).
Oracle BI Delivers
an alerting tool that provides monitoring of business activity. They are reached via
multiple channels including email, dashboards, and mobile devices. It includes a
web-based self-service portal where users can create and subscribe to alerts.
Dashboard can initiate and pass contextual information to other alerts to execute
multi-step, multi-person, and multi-application analytical workflow. It can
determine recipients and personalize content to 'reach the right users at the right
time with the right information'.
Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics
offers BI Answers and Dashboards to mobile professionals on computers
disconnected from the network. It provides the same interface for users whether
they are working in connected or disconnected mode.
Oracle BI Publisher
a reporting engine capable of generating reports from multiple data sources in
multiple formats via multiple channels.
Oracle BI Briefing Books
reports captured series of snapshots of Oracle BI Dashboards.
Oracle BI Office Plug-In
automatically synchronizes information from BI Answers to Microsoft Word,
Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting
creates book quality financial reports in a variety of formats (including XBRL)
and supports a variety of sources including Oracle's Hyperion performance
management applications (EPM) and Oracle Essbase.

Hyperion Interactive Reporting

pulls data together from operational or analytic sources to create charts, privots,
and reports and can access the Oracle BI Server semantic layer.
Hyperion SQR Production Reporting
provides cross functional reporting from a variety of relational databases and data
sources.
Hyperion Web Analysis
delivers out-of-the-box presentation and reporting for Oracle [[Essbase]] and
other multi-dimensional sources