Users in Oracle BI Answers can create queries that span multiple subject areas , as long as the subject areas correspond to the same business model.

All metadata for cubes and dimensions is stored in the Oracle database and revealed in the data dictionary views, so that you can query the entire business model in SQL.

MapViewer is shipped as part of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Its main deliverable is a J2EE application that can be deployed to a J2EE container, such as that for Oracle Fusion Middleware. MapViewer includes the following main components:

* A core rendering engine (Java library) named SDOVIS that performs cartographic rendering. A servlet is provided to expose the rendering functions to Web applications.

* A suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow programmable access to MapViewer features. These APIs include XML, Java, PL/SQL, and an AJAX-based JavaScript API.

* A graphical Map builder tool that enables you to create map symbols, define spatial data rendering rules, and create and edit MapViewer objects.

* Oracle Map, which includes map cache and FOI (feature of interest) servers that facilitate the development of interactive geospatial Web applications.

Oracle Maps can be configured now in the map viewer as a built in layer.

Dimensional Modeling - Slowly Changing Dimensions

* Type 1 - Overwrite Original Value

A change does not require tracking

* Type 2 - Add a new record

With Type II SCD, a new version of the dimension record (row) is created, and the existing version is marked as history.

Each row does not correspond to a different instance of an entity but a different “state”, a “snapshot” of the instance at a point in time.

Note: Tracking changes in dimension is referred in datawarehousing as slowly changing dimensions.

In the source system a lot of changes are daily made :

new customers are added,

addresses are modified,

new regional hierarchies are implemented,

or simply the product descriptions and packaging change.

These sorts of changes need to be reflected in the dimension tables and in several cases, the history of the changes also needs to be tracked.

By remembering history, we are then able to look at historical data and compare it to their current situation.

Decrease query response time which will improve performance for Dashboards and Analysis.