Oracle Warehouse Builder is Primarily a tool to build, deploy, and run ETL (Extract, Transform, Load), relational and dimensional modeling, data quality, data auditing, and full lifecycle management of data and metadata. OWB powers ETL and data quality integrated with the Oracle Database.
Recent versions of Oracle have come with built-in extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) features, and it is possible to build an Oracle data warehouse using just these features, and SQL*Plus
OWB General – Applicability
- Small and Large installations
- DBAs are commonly charged with helping business understand their data
- Build a reporting area, with some report writing tools
- Custom SQL scripts, SQL*Ldr, replication and imp/exp
- Difficulties arise in enrichment, transformation (ie, turning DATA->information)
- IDEAL SOLUTION FOR THESE DBAs!
OWB Product Architecture
Oracle Warehouse Builder is a GUI tool used for building Oracle data warehouses and data marts. Written in Java and currently now at version 10, versions are generally provided for Microsoft Windows, Intel Linux, and Solaris/HP-UX/AIX/Tru-64. OWB is licensed as part of the 10g Developer Suite, though as versions are generally released more frequently than updates to 10gDS, it’s best to check on the OTN download site to obtain the latest version.
OWB10g consists of two main components: the design environment, which is concerned with working with metadata (abstract representations of warehouse objects, together with business rules), and the runtime environment, which takes this metadata and turns it into physical database objects and process flows.
The design environment consists of the OWB client and a number of utility programs used for setting up the runtime environment, reporting on the repository, and providing a command-line interface for OWB.
Some of the features of OWB
- Improved UI
- ETL/Pluggable Mappings
- Data Profiling
- Real Time BI (right time BI, and CDC)
- Experts
- Impact Analysis
New OWB – Improved UI
The new improved UI of OWB has the following features Dockable Panels, Small Fonts, Drag and Drop from palette, Tree with existing Objects, Properties Panel is HUGE labor savor and Birds Eye View
Below image shows the following features Aggregator, filter, joiner, set op, TABLES always used. Pivot, Unpivot, Match-Merge are often overlooked by powerful. Table Function Operator is new Flat Files, Tables, Views, Materialized Views Name and Address Cleansing
New OWB – ETL/Pluggable Mappings
Further Reading
DBAs and developers looking to find out more information on OWB10g should first check out the OTN Oracle Warehouse Builder homepage which has an extensive collateral library with white papers on OWB10g’s architecture and components. Also, readers might be find the archive of OWB postings on my Oracle weblog useful, which contains a number of tips on working with OWB gathered from several years of working with the product.
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Tags: data warehouse, ETL, Extract Loand Transform, oracle warehouse builder, OWB
