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One thing that is for certain is that the cloud is here to stay. With more and more offerings having a cloud component, managing data and applications that are not on-premises will become commonplace. Some applications are optimized for this brave new world we’re living in (Oracle BICS comes to mind), but the old guard […]

June 16, 2016

This blog post is an entry in the ODTUG Kscope16 Cross-Track Blog Hop, an exercise for Kscope expert regulars to take a walk on the wild side, and talk about must-see sessions in a foreign content track. The other Blog Hop entries are: APEX sessions not to be missed, as recommended by EPM expert Cameron Lackpour: http://camerons-blog-for-essbase-hackers.blogspot.com/2016/05/kscope16-apex-sessions-im-interested-in.html […]

May 31, 2016

OBIEE 11.1.1.9.0 is a big step up from the earlier versions, and there are plenty of great things to appreciate about it. However, one thing that I am not that excited about is an error that crops up from time to time in Enterprise Manager. The mystery error looks a little like this: As usual, […]

April 27, 2016

At work last week I lifted the covers on the Red Pill Analytics Slowly Changing Dimension ODI IKM for Oracle. If you haven’t heard about this knowledge module, it was specifically written to take a dimension source table and transform it to a slowly changing dimension target table. Unlike other similar IKMs, this module uses […]

April 25, 2016

In the depths of time before ODI 12c, ODI Studio had a fairly simple canvas to design our interfaces. We dropped on our datastores (tables) and then dragged columns between tables to create joins, and columns to the canvas to make filters. If we needed to use expressions we just typed them on the target […]

April 14, 2016

The Big difference between Oracle BI Applications 7.9.X and 11g is the Integration or ETL tier. 11g no longer uses DAC or Informatica. Instead Oracle Data Integrator replaces those components. This cross-reference I created here is for those thinking of or moving to 11g from 7.9.X. Below, you will find a cross reference guide I […]

April 4, 2016

The snow is melting and Spring is almost here… which sounds like the perfect time to make a trip to Utah. Stewart Bryson, Oracle ACE Director and Red Pill Analytics Founder, is headed there at the end of March for UTOUG Training Days. This annual conference is held by the Utah Oracle User Group on […]

March 16, 2016

A little primer on Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD). Slowly Changing Dimensions are a star schema design principle and design pattern used to reflect how source data field changes are handled in dimension tables. There are basically 5 types that I know of. Of which 2 are the most prevalent and used in OBIA. These 2 […]

March 16, 2016

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the morning radio program today was asking people to name a woman that has influenced them whom they’ve never met. This question got me thinking. What would you say? Who’s influenced you? The responses on the program ranged from Lady Gaga to Hillary Clinton to Mother Teresa. My response would […]

March 15, 2016