Preface

This preface contains these topics:

• Intended Audience

• Documentation Accessibility

• Related Documentation

• Conventions

Intended Audience

This guide is intended for database administrators, system administrators, and database application developers who design, maintain, and use data warehouses.

To use this document, you need to be familiar with relational database concepts, basic Oracle server concepts, and the operating system environment under which you are running Oracle.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Accessibility standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For more information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

Screen readers may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, some screen readers may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

TTY Access to Oracle Support Services

Oracle provides dedicated Text Telephone (TTY) access to Oracle Support Services within the United States of America 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For TTY support, call 800.446.2398.

Organization

This document contains:

Part 1: Concepts

Chapter 1, "Data Warehousing Concepts"

This chapter contains an overview of data warehousing concepts.

Part 2: Logical Design

Chapter 2, "Logical Design in Data Warehouses"

This chapter discusses the logical design of a data warehouse.

Part 3: Physical Design

Chapter 3, "Physical Design in Data Warehouses"

This chapter discusses the physical design of a data warehouse.

Chapter 4, "Hardware and I/O Considerations in Data Warehouses"

This chapter describes hardware, input-output, and storage considerations.

Chapter 5, "Partitioning in Data Warehouses"

This chapter describes the basics of partitioning in data warehouses.

Chapter 6, "Indexes"

This chapter describes how to use indexes in data warehouses.

Chapter 7, "Integrity Constraints"

This chapter describes how to use integrity constraints in data warehouses.

Chapter 8, "Basic Materialized Views"

This chapter introduces basic materialized views concepts.

Chapter 9, "Advanced Materialized Views"

This chapter describes how to use materialized views in data warehouses.

Chapter 10, "Dimensions"

This chapter describes how to use dimensions in data warehouses.

Part 4: Managing the Data Warehouse Environment

Chapter 11, "Overview of Extraction, Transformation, and Loading"

This chapter is an overview of the ETL process.

Chapter 12, "Extraction in Data Warehouses"

This chapter describes extraction issues.

Chapter 13, "Transportation in Data Warehouses"

This chapter describes transporting data in data warehouses.

Chapter 14, "Loading and Transformation"

This chapter describes transforming and loading data in data warehouses.

Chapter 15, "Maintaining the Data Warehouse"

This chapter describes how to refresh a data warehouse.

Chapter 16, "Change Data Capture"

This chapter describes how to use Change Data Capture capabilities.

Part 5: Data Warehouse Performance

Chapter 17, "Basic Query Rewrite"

This chapter describes basic query rewrite use.

Chapter 18, "Advanced Query Rewrite"

This chapter describes how to use query rewrite in more complex situations.

Chapter 19, "Schema Modeling Techniques"

This chapter describes the schemas useful in data warehousing environments.

Chapter 20, "SQL for Aggregation in Data Warehouses"

This chapter explains how to use SQL aggregation in data warehouses.

Chapter 21, "SQL for Analysis and Reporting"

This chapter explains how to use analytic functions in data warehouses.

Chapter 22, "SQL for Modeling"

This chapter explains how to use the spreadsheet clause for SQL modeling.

Chapter 23, "OLAP and Data Mining"

This chapter describes using analytic services and data mining in combination with Oracle Database.

Chapter 24, "Advanced Business Intelligence Queries"

This chapter illustrates examples of combining business intelligence techniques.

Chapter 25, "Using Parallel Execution"

This chapter describes how to tune data warehouses using parallel execution.

Glossary

The glossary defines important terms used in this guide.

Related Documentation

Many of the examples in this book use the sample schemas of the seed database, which is installed by default when you install Oracle. Refer to Oracle Database Sample Schemas for information on how these schemas were created and how you can use them yourself.

Printed documentation is available for sale in the Oracle Store at

http://oraclestore.oracle.com/

To download free release notes, installation documentation, white papers, or other collateral, please visit the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). You must register online before using OTN; registration is free and can be done at

http://www.oracle.com/technology/membership/

If you already have a username and password for OTN, then you can go directly to the documentation section of the OTN Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation

Note that this book is meant as a supplement to standard texts about data warehousing. This book focuses on Oracle-specific material and does not reproduce in detail material of a general nature. For additional information, see:

• The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball (John Wiley and Sons, 1996)

• Building the Data Warehouse by William Inmon (John Wiley and Sons, 1996)

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

• Conventions in Text

• Conventions in Code Examples

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

[ ]

DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])

{ }

{ENABLE | DISABLE}

|

{ENABLE | DISABLE}
[COMPRESS | NOCOMPRESS]

...

CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery;

SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM employees;

.
 .
 .

SQL> SELECT NAME FROM V$DATAFILE;
NAME
------------------------------------
/fsl/dbs/tbs_01.dbf
/fs1/dbs/tbs_02.dbf
.
.
.
/fsl/dbs/tbs_09.dbf
9 rows selected.

acctbal NUMBER(11,2);
acct    CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;

Italics

CONNECT SYSTEM/system_password
DB_NAME = database_name

UPPERCASE

SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;
SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES;
DROP TABLE hr.employees;

lowercase

SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;
sqlplus hr/hr
CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;