Re: Datawarehousing help

I worked on a project with an Oracle 7.3.4 database and a SAS OLAP tool. SAS built a datacube using the Oracle database but then the OLAP queries went against the datacube. It worked but we had some very knowledgeable SAS users.

                                                                                           
                    Yechiel Adar                                                           
                    <adaryechiel         To:     Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L      
                    @hotmail.com>        <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>                            
                    Sent by: root        cc:                                               
                                         Subject:     Re: Datawarehousing help             
                                                                                           
                    05/07/2002                                                             
                    08:58 AM                                                               
                    Please                                                                 
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                    ORACLE-L                                                               
                                                                                           
                                                                                           

Hello Rachel

I am working with SAS on the mainframe (os390) and it works fine.

We published a RFP for ETL tool and they are one of the candidates. Their tool looks good on paper but we are still evaluating papers and do not have hands on experience.

We do have a SAS/oracle application on NT but I was not involved in the programming side.
I checked with the programmer and he told me that in the little testing he did ( system still in test) SAS worked quickly and nicely with oracle, including graphs. SAS has a nice graph generating option.

Yechiel Adar
Mehish
----- Original Message -----
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com> Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 4:13 PM

>
>
> Yechiel,
>
> have you used their tools? We are trying to decide whether or not to use
them,
> so if anyone has had recent experience with them, I'd appreciate your
thoughts
> on ease of use, understandability, quality of the product, etc
>
> Thanks
>
> Rachel
>
>
> |--------+----------------------->
> | | |
> | | |
> | | adaryechiel_at_h|
> | | otmail.com |
> | | |
> | | 05/05/2002 |
> | | 07:23 AM |
> | | Please |
> | | respond to |
> | | ORACLE-L |
> | | |
> |--------+----------------------->
> >----------------------------------------------------|
> | |
> | To: ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com |
> | cc: (bcc: Rachel Carmichael) |
> | Subject: Re: Datawarehousing help |
> >----------------------------------------------------|
>
>
>
>
> Hello Dennis
>
> SAS has progressed a little in the last years and now offer a complete
> DW solution, including ETL tools.
>
> You can use their tools also to populate and query oracle.
>
> Yechiel Adar
> Mehish
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
> Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2002 2:48 AM
>
>
> > Rachel - I always find it helpful to understand something if I know the
> > origins. I worked with SAS several years ago. At that time it was a
> > statistical analysis package. A scientist or engineer could load a set
of
> > test data into it and perform various arithmetic and statistical
analyses.
> > Today most of that can be done with Oracle or MS Excel. My point is
that
I
> > would expect it to be heavily biased toward mathematical capabilities.
> Like
> > Data Mining, which is all statistics. Learn what that term means.
> > To learn Data Warehousing, I would encourage you to just do some
> > "Googling" and find good tutorials. An excellent newslist is dwlist.
> > Instructions:
> >
> > For help with list commands, send a message
> > to <mailto:dwlist-request_at_datawarehousing.com> with the
> > word "help" in the body of the message.
> >
> > The magazine http://www.intelligententerprise.com/ has some excellent
> > information. I would search for "Ralph Kimball". He is one of the
leading
> > figures in the DW arena. Look for some of his earliest columns on the
> > magazine site. He also answers questions on dwlist from time to time.
> >
> > The main change you need yourself is to forget normalization. DBAs that
> > can't get past that point don't last long in the DW field. In the early
> days
> > the DW people would patiently explain the reasons to a DBA, but today
> there
> > are enough DBAs that have made the leap that a hard-headed
normalization
> > bigot just isn't tolerated. It is much easier to just ask for a
> replacement
> > DBA.
> > The reason normalization isn't adhered to in DW is that users will
> > be creating their own queries and they can't understand 10-table joins
> with
> > outer joins, etc. A DW is usually loaded and then queried. Our DW is
> loaded
> > each weekend and then queried all week. So a DW is deliberately
> denormalized
> > and contains redundant data for ease of use.
> > OLTP databases have no concept of "time". A DW is all about time. To
> > reconstruct what the situation is at various points of time, the DW has
> > loads of historical data. For example, marketing people need to be able
to
> > reconstruct the amount of business they did with a customer over a
period
> of
> > time last year and compare it with the same period this year.
> > So between denormalization and tons of detailed historical data, DWs
> > are normally BIG! Fortunately they are usually read-only.
> > For Oracle, you want Enterprise Edition with the partitioning
> > option. And study Oracle Materialized Views.
> > In schema, a DW is usually a central fact table and 4-6 dimension
> > tables. Less than 4 dimensions and you don't need a DW. More than 6 and
> > marketing people can't understand the model. Normally the fact table is
> much
> > larger than the others, but not always. One of Wal-Mart's dimension
tables
> > is each person in the U.S. Just size each of those tables, and you've
got
> > your size. Growth is easy to predict. Ralph Kimball warns that often
> people
> > will get the grain wrong. They will size it for data summarized at the
> > weekly level, then after it is built they will realize that isn't going
to
> > cut it and need a daily level. You must start almost from scratch and
get
> 7
> > times the disk capacity. That is the fun side of being a DW DBA. Your
> > cynical instincts will still serve you well, just get them away from
> > normalization and worry about getting the grain right.
> > Okay, I've rambled along here too long. Hope that gets you off on
> > the right foot.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > [mailto:Rachel_Carmichael_at_Sonymusic.com]
> > Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 5:08 PM
> > To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Okay, my background is OLTP, but we are looking at a data warehousing
> > project
> > here....
> >
> > any and all help appreciated! Specifically:
> >
> > 1) does anyone have any experience with a product called "SAS
> > Datawarehousing
> > Administrator" (or SAS)?
> > 2) how do I go about doing rough estimates of sizing needs, assuming I
> will
> > get
> > rough numbers of information being collected, growth rates, length of
> > history to
> > keep, etc.
> >
> > help?
> >
> > Rachel
> >
> >
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Author: Yechiel Adar
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