Gartner on Oracle and Sigma Dynamics deal

Gartner has a three page news analysis of Oracle's purchase of Sigma Dynamics's assets (link to page on Oracle.com). This is the link to the page on Gartner.com. They have a PDF version of the document available for download. The document is sparse on details, but does give some useful background information to people not famililar with the company or how its product is used in Oracle's Analytics offerings.

From Michael's blog

Michael Armstrong-Smith, Discoverer expert par-excellence, an Oracle ACE, publisher of two hugely popular books on Discoverer, has published the first in a series of posts on how to use third party scheduling tools and products with Discoverer. Here is the link to the first post.

More on OpenWorld and BI

To add a few more sessions of interest (in addition to my previous post) in business intelligence:

Paul Rodwick, vice-president of business intelligence product management, has a session titled "Oracle's Business Intelligence Road Map" (session id S282268). While Chris Leone (also a vice-president of product management, but with the applications strategy group) has a session titled "Oracle Analytic Applications Road Map" (session id S281900).

Matt Elumba has a session titled "Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Architectural Overview" (session id S282269).

Specifically to the Maui release (that's the code name for the upcoming release of Oracle BI EE), Dave Granholm has a session titled "What's New in Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 10.1.3.2?" (session id S282281).

In the area of OLAP there are at least two sessions that people may be interested in. The first one is by Matt Bedin on "Seamless Access to Your Oracle OLAP Cubes" (session id S282273). The second one is by Bud Endress along with the Gallup Organization, titled "Oracle OLAP Option: How the Gallup Organization Turbocharged Reporting and Analysis" (session id S282385).

And there are many more. Just use this link to get a list of all "analytics" related sessions.

What about me, the curious may ask... I shall not be travelling this year to OpenWorld.

Oracle Open World and BI

This is a brief post on the different BI sessions at this year's Oracle Open World at San Francisco.

BTW, you can and should use the schedule builder to build a schedule that suits you (link to page on Oracle.com)

• There is an "Extreme Program" titled "Business Intelligence Data Warehousing: Next-Generation Business Intelligence for Actionable Insight to Everyone in the Enterprise, Part 1 & II." It boasts a glittering array of stars from our BI product management, including Aydin Gencler, Kasturi Shekhar, Kurt Wolff, Dave Granholm, Matt Bedin, Krishnan Viswanathan, Mike Reller, Chad Frank, Dan Hilldale, Jim Sarokin, and others. If you haven't, register for X-Treme (link).

Separately, Ed Suen, Vice-President for BI at Oracle, is presenting two best practices papers:

1. "Best Practices for Implementing Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition" (session ID S282275).
2. "Best Practices for Implementing Siebel Business Analytics" (session ID S282028).
   

Mike Durran is presenting a paper on Discoverer, titled "Oracle Discoverer Future: Protect, Extend, Integrate", session ID: S282295.

As you may have heard, the upcoming release of Oracle Business Intelligence (code named "Maui" - for exotic honeymoon locations) will provide direct access to SAP BW InfoCubes. Alan Lee has a session titled "Get More Value from SAP BW with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition" (session ID S282279).

Oracle recently that it has acquired the intellectual property assets of Sigma Dynamics (link). Stefan Schmitz has a session "Enabling More-Intelligent and Profitable Customer Interactions, Using Oracle Business Intelligence Real-Time Decisions" (session ID S282062) where you would be able to see the product and the technology in action.

Phil Bates shall be talking about the integration between Oracle BI and Oracle BPEL in a session titled "Using Embedded Business Intelligence Within Operational Applications" (session ID S282277). This integration, btw, is also one of the many new features in the upcoming release of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition suite.

BI/DW Training at OpenWorld 2006

The Oracle OpenWorld conference is being held, as usual, in San Francisco from Oct 22-26. This year's conference is shaping up to be a very big event with even more activities than last year.

As always there will be hands-on labs. However, this year they have all been brought together under the banner of "XTreme Weekend". This year the labs will be a lot more intense than in previous years and are intended to give delegates as much hands-on time as possible. For example for Warehouse Builder we will be providing a whole day of exercises that work through many of the new features we have added to 10g Release 2. For users more interested in reporting, this will be an excellent opportunity to get some quality time with the new BI Enterprise Edition suite of products. Full details of both tracks are below.

The labs will be staffed by product management, developers, and experienced sales consultants. So this is a great opportunity to get free advice and guidance as well as learn about the products. There will be two BI/DW tracks spread over two days (Saturday 21 and Sunday 22). There are only 75 seats available for each track and both tracks are filling up very rapidly and registration is on a first come, first served basis. Register today to attend the X-Treme program to avoid disappointment

• Oracle OpenWorld attendees: Register now for the X-Treme Weekend program for the discounted rate of $650. Register now.
• Non-Oracle OpenWorld attendees: $950. Register now.

The full details of the two BI/DW tracks are as follows:

The Leading, End-to-end Data-Warehousing Platform with Enterprise ETL, OLAP, and Data Mining Capabilities
The Oracle Database is the best platform for supporting your business intelligence applications. Oracle provides an industry leading ETL (extract, transform, and load) tool, deeply integrated OLAP capabilities, and sophisticated data mining capabilities. Join us for deep-dive BI and DW hands-on workshops that you won't find on the regular OpenWorld agenda. Here you'll learn directly from Oracle experts in the following areas:

• How to design, deploy, and manage a feature rich data warehouse environment using Oracle Warehouse Builder
• How to deliver rapid query-response times and sophisticated analysis with Oracle OLAP
• How to incorporate predictive analytics and advanced data-mining techniques into your business intelligence infrastructure with Oracle Data Mining

Designed for administrators, data architects and database developers of data-warehouse and business-intelligence systems, you will have hands-on experience across all of the key database capabilities for delivering business intelligence.


Next Generation Business Intelligence for Actionable Insight to Everyone in the Enterprise
In this session, you will learn how end users can construct their own queries and build their own dashboards using Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition. Oracle BI Suite EE lets you empower employees at all levels with the information they need to make better business decisions easily and efficiently by creating reports, charts, and performance management dashboards through drag-and-drop interface in a completely self-service, Web-based environment. Oracle BI Suite EE lets you collaborate and share business insight through email, and schedule and deliver your reports to dashboards or even wireless devices. You will also have hands-on experience in administrative tasks for defining the physical, logical, and presentation layers to define how end users will interact with the data using business terms. In this hands-on lab, you will learn how to use the components of Oracle BI EE, including Oracle BI Answers, BI Dashboards, BI Advanced Reporting, BI Delivers, and BI Server Administration. Join us for deep-dive BI hands-on workshops that you won't find on the regular OpenWorld agenda.

For a list of all the XTreme Weekend tracks (Database, Fusion Middleware, Apps) click here to go to the Oracle OpenWorld XTreme Weekend site.