Description: Regular readers of this column will probably know that I work as a developer on the Oracle platform, putting together business intelligence and data warehousing applications using Oracle’s database and application server platforms. In the past, I’ve covered Oracle products such as Warehouse Builder and Oracle 10g. This month, during which I look forward to what Oracle has planned for the OLAP market, I’m going to broaden the remit and look at what Microsoft has in store as well. It’s an interesting story, as these two giants of the database industry have quite distinct and different views on how the OLAP industry will unfold, and each view has its own appeal.
Oracle has recently released version 10g of its database, which now comes with an embedded multidimensional OLAP server known as the OLAP Option. Microsoft, which so famously took the OLAP market by storm with Analysis Services that came bundled with SQL Server 2000, is due to release the long-awaited upgrade, originally code named “Yukon,” but now renamed SQL Server 2005. Oracle and Microsoft are, in their own ways with these new releases, looking to reshape the OLAP industry, and this will have big implications for DBAs who currently look after data warehouses running on traditional relational databases. So what have Oracle and Microsoft got in store, and what impact will this have on your future business intelligence applications?
