Hi,

I am cusrious as to how the non-ORACLE OLAP tools work with ORACLE.
When all is said and done, exactly what 'objects' were created in the
ORACLE database when you use Business Objects or Cognos? Do they
create such things as CUBES ,DIMENSIONS or materialized views? I mean
the physical thing, not logical. You can actually create physical CUBE
and DIMENSION objects in ORACLE. I know ORACLE OLAP products use them.
I am not sure about tools from other vendors however.


- John

"John" <jbradshaw777 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

Business Objects universes are stored in the RDBMS, but in both cases, the
cubes are stored externally. Cognos has its own server or desktop based
PowerCubes, while Business Objects microcubes are part of a document, which
can again be server based or local. These look the same regardless of which
database they were sourced from, so the same tools can be used with any
database (one of their strengths compared to tools from Oracle, Microsoft or
IBM which are database-specific).

As for Oracle OLAP products, the long-established OFA and OSA are still
based on Express, which also uses cubes based outside the Oracle database.
Oracle9i OLAP Option AW does have cubes and dimensions hosted inside the
database, but most Oracle products don't yet build or support such cubes and
nor do most third party products (except as vanilla SQL queries).

Nigel Pendse
OLAP Solutions
http://www.olapreport.com