More and more complex reporting needs of today's organizations have resulted in a growth of attention paid to Data Warehousing. Thank to a comprehensive set of products, Oracle provides one of the best Data Warehousing systems in the market.

There are tens of different Data Warehousing solutions accessible in the market at the moment. They are provided by more or less popular vendors, they are more or less complex, and more or less flexible and scalable. Thereupon, they address the business requirements of today's organizations more or less sufficiently. Oracle, though, is one of these vendors which provided services' quality no one doubts in. In a very few words, Oracle Data Warehousing - combining Oracle Exadata and Oracle Database 11g supplied with in-database analytics tools - is responsible for ensuring a fast and reliable reporting in a secure environment, based on a low cost platform.

What it ensures are relatively high scalability and performance of data warehouses. Included products are responsible for trouble free quality data integration and loading management as well as for searching for the patterns and insights which could be omitted if investigated "manually". Additionally, large tables partitioning influences on the boost of performance and manageability in the broad sense of term. The time needed for analytics execution also has got accelerated thank to materialized views organized in cubes.

Oracle Data Warehousing components

Oracle Data Warehousing system isn't leaned on one product. In point of fact, there is about ten different applications which - all together - create the power of the whole DW. What one could distinguish there are:

• Oracle Database 11g,
• Oracle Exadata Database Machine,
• Oracle Exadata Storage Server,
• Oracle Partitioning,
• Oracle Advanced Compression,
• Oracle OLAP,
• Oracle Retail Data Model,
• Oracle Data Mining,
• and Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition.

Oracle Database 11g is a base of the whole system ensuring a proper clustering and consolidation of organization applications. What they are turned into are private clouds - fast to use, scalable, and - what's most important - reliable. Database compresses also data onto low cost partitions to enhance the performance. Simultaneously, Oracle Exadata Database Machine "keeps an eye" on OLTP (online transaction processing) and data warehousing, ensuring both processes' outrageous performance. The core of Exadata Database Machine, though, is Oracle Exadata Storage Server - a powerful combination of intelligent software and high performance hardware. Other products within the Oracle Data Warehousing system play also important roles. For instance, Oracle OLAP engine ensures the highest efficiency of analytics, allowing therefore to lower the total cost of ownership. Oracle Data Mining, on the other hand, provides users with a chance to perform predictive analysis or - if needed - build business intelligence application integrated systems.

All these tools together create quite a comprehensive data warehousing system which may successfully compete with other solutions in the market. Oracle proved its universality once again.

Oracle Data Warehousing resources:

http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/datawarehousing/index.html - here is a part of the Oracle official website. The section applies to data warehousing solution and includes basic information about all the products which Oracle Data Warehousing as a whole consists of. However, what one should be prepared for is no details. Oracle provides only the very basis, saving the details for white papers and data sheets (which are accessible through the links on the right side of the website).

http://www.oracular.com/white_paper_pdfs/DataWarehousingwithOracle.pdf - if one expects the details, wouldn't be disappointed with the white paper named shortly "Data Warehousing with Oracle". In point of fact, that's not exactly a white paper but eighteen pages of technical information about technology used in Oracle products to satisfy customer needs as efficiently as possible. Beware, beginners have nothing to search for in here, it's the source solely for the advanced users who know more than just the basis of IT and Business Intelligence.

http://www.dba-oracle.com/art_dbazine_oracle_10g_data_warehouse.htm - Burleson Consulting is one of the most widely known companies providing training and support in a wide sense of term, devoted to diverse Business Intelligence areas. Here, right behind the link, is a broad set of useful, practical tips devoted to Oracle Data Warehousing. Even though in fact it's devoted to the previous release of the software (10g, while the currently accessible one is 11g), most of the tips still are actual and worth considering (and trying in practice).

http://www.nyoug.org/Presentations/SIG/DataWarehousing/dw_sig_nov_2002.PDF - a sole presentation without an appropriate commentary cannot be considered a rightful source of knowledge, nonetheless it may be reasonable to take a look at this one. It is a set of over sixty slides (even though saved as a PDF document) of the presentation called "Oracle Data Warehousing Guided Tour", and provided by the Oracle specialists. There is relatively a lot of information included and supplied with interesting illustrations, graphs, and schemes, what makes the presentation worth considering even more.