One of the most interesting new
features promised with Oracle Warehouse Builder "Paris" is
better support for the creation and maintenance of dimensions.
If you're an existing OWB user, you'll know that support for
dimensions is pretty limited - you can't create snowflake or
parent-child dimensions, you can only create MOLAP dimensions by
first creating a relational implementation and then exporting it
through the OLAP bridge, there's no support for skip-level or
ragged hierarchies, it doesn't by default create the CWM1
metadata required for BI Beans or Discoverer for OLAP use, and
you can't import in definitions of existing dimensions. What
this means is that you generally use OWB to create the first cut
of a dimension, then use tools such as Analytic Workspace
Manager or Oracle Enterprise Manager to finish off the job.
I was particularly interested then to take a look at the new
dimensional modelling features that come with OWB "Paris". If
you've seen any of the advance documentation for "Paris" you'll
probably know that with this new version you can create a
logical model of your dimension, and then at deployment time
choose whether to deploy it relationally or multidimensionally,
and you might also have heard about some of the new features
such as support for slowly changing dimensions and snowflake
schemas.
With this in mind, I've had a play around with the "Paris"
beta and made some notes on
Dimension Building Using OWB "Paris". Feel free to take a
look, and if you have any questions let me know.
