New Features for OWB 9.2

Question

Mark Van De Wiel mentioned yesterday in this forum that OWB 9.2 is now available at http://otn.oracle.com/software/products/warehouse/content.html . From the version number it would appear that this is a major new release, and it's a separate install rather than a patch on OWB9.0.4.
Would Mark, Igor or Shauna be able to give us some background on the new features in this new release? From quickly looking at the release notes they would appear to be;
- Correlated Commit (committing changes across all targets uniformly)
- Ability to create public database links
- Direct PEL (removes the need for temporary tables when exchanging partitions)
- Enhanced Flat File Support
- Mapping Debugger
- Incorporation of ETL functionality previously found in standalone Pure*Integrate
- Metadata change management using the OWB GUI rather than using OMB*Plus
- Multiple Name and Address Software Providers
- Name/Address Wizard
- New Public API for OWB
- Better support for Real Application Clusters
- Advanced Repository Security and Audit options
- Support for MITI metadata bridges to third-party products
It would be good to know the thinking behind these and what areas they think will be particularly of interest to us. Also, has anything been removed or changed that we've got used to using?
Also, any day now (fingers crossed) the patch to make the OLAP functionality in OWB9.0.4 work (the 9i 9.2.0.3.x patch?) should be out - will this work with OWB9.2 as well?
Many thanks
Mark Rittman
[email protected]

Answer 1

Hi Mark,
While I'm not in your list of people to respond I figure I give it a go anyways :-)
The list of features you mentioned is a nice summary. One of the main release themes is data quality as you noticed. Apart from changes to the name&address functionality we also added the advanced matching and merging into this release. So you can use custom rules to match and merge data. This also allows you to do things like householding for customer data records. In essence we have now completed the integration of Pure*Integrate into Warehouse Builder.
The mapping debugger is another big thing. This allow you to walk through your mappings and see in detail what happes to the data.
The metadata change management is now in the UI. THis means there is now object level version management in Warehouse Builder via the UI. You can also compare versions and get a difference report.
As you mentioned there are a number of smaller and bigger features next to this. The idea for this release is to make OWB a top Data Quality product and allow you to do your ETL and DQ in one tool. Apart from that we have added usability features (debugger, N&A wizard) and we have added some features to solve specific problems.
Especially the corelated commit is interesting in that respect. You can now, in a map with multiple targets control the commit, and choose to either commit all targets or none, or commit them individually (current behavior).
As usual there is a lot more, as this is indeed a major release. Keep an eye on OTN for more collateral regarding the new features. We are currently updating the site to reflect the new stuff.
On the OLAP patch, both 9.0.4 and 9.2 will work equally well with the OLAP patch (when it is available). In 9.2 we added some small thing around composites. More about that when there is an OLAP patch to test this one on in a customer site.
I hope this answered the question, if not let me know.
Jean-Pierre