At the heart of all business software is always a database. But what once used to be a cumbersome component, something that only developers and system administrators had to deal with, has evolved to become a directly reachable solution of itself. With Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW), the Business Analyst is now able to be the real owner of the database layer. This creates a great opportunity for the various departments to directly tap into data technologies, something that they’ve been, to some extent, forbidden to do. This has become possible with ADW because the myriad of complexities that were once the basics of database technologies no longer apply to the consumer.
As an ADW user, you don’t worry about networking and security, or about managing underlying operating systems and third-party software. You are not concerned about code to move data, or improve the performance, or make sure backups or patches are getting applied. With ADW, all these complexities are managed by Oracle Cloud. As a user of ADW, you are only concerned with your data sets, your business use cases that the data sets can be applied to, and what information you would like to collect and enrich for enabling your business processes. In a nutshell, you spend no time planning for and maintaining the foundation, and instead spend all your available time, strategizing and delivering solutions. And to add, there is zero reliance on technical staff in this process. When coupled with Oracle Analytics, all operations to load and prepare data, enrich it and report on it are purely a business function.
How is Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse different from the rest of Cloud Database Services
The idea of a Cloud Database is not new. There are several options from various technology vendors to choose from. However, Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse is a perfect fit for enterprise business analysts, and here is why:
- Incredibly easy to use as there are no IT skills required to create a Data Warehouse Database and start loading it with data. Since it’s hosted on Oracle Public Cloud, Oracle manages all infrastructure aspects of it. This includes securing the data, security the network communication, and encrypted data transfer back and forth between you and the Data Warehouse. Except for getting access to your sources of data, there is no need to involve a network engineer or a database administrator at any point.
- ADW leverages standard and common SQL, so there is no need to learn new skills.
- Unlike NoSQL databases, ADW is great for running already existing and complex SQL queries.
- Mind you though that the simplicity of ADW is only in how it’s used. With ADW, we still get all the power of the Oracle Database and Exadata, without the need to know anything about them. But if interested, ADW provides a window to look through and see detailed statistics and usage metrics related to sophisticated operations going on within. This is a simple-to-use technology that under-the-hood relies on machine learning to render it autonomous.
- Backups are automatic. And in case you need to restore the whole database from a backup, it’s as easy as clicking a button.
- Automatic scaling enables you to start small, with a lower cost, but also be able to scale up when more computing power is needed. For example, if you start doing machine learning with Oracle Analytics against ADW, you may need more power on the database side. ADW automatically scales up its processing power consumption to meet your needs. Or if you start a single person task but later want to enable access to several other colleagues, ADW scales up easily to accommodate new users and thus avoid an overload.
- Interface with your data and perform data transfer and preparation all while using drag and drop Data Flows and Oracle Analytics. And if you’re savvy in SQL queries, you can also do that through a SQL Client tool.
What’s the Benefit for the Business Analyst?
A Business Analyst may interact with ADW in several ways. These may range from simply uploading data from files and SQL querying to a more user-friendly and SQL-free experience with Oracle Analytics. If you’re in charge of reporting for your department, here are some important capabilities that you can start leveraging:
- Information consolidation is easy when ADW is used with Oracle Analytics. With Data Flow you connect to several source applications (such as SaaS apps, both Oracle and non-Oracle) or other data stores to transfer data over into the same target ADW. Data Flows are visually configured data pipelines that allow you not only to copy data over but also enrich and transform it along the way.
- Have data refreshed automatically into the Autonomous Data Warehouse.
- Take snapshots of your data so you perform historical comparisons with point-in-time reporting.
- Once the data you care about is loaded, you can start reporting on it. With analytics tools, such as Oracle Analytics, this experience is again code-free, since you are able to directly pull data sets onto visualization canvases.
- Start tapping into Machine Learning capabilities against your enterprise data. This allows you to do forecasts, exception detection and gain other deep insights that are not possible with human analysis alone.
Perficient Can Help You Succeed with ADW
If your business is data-driven, I encourage you to consider how ADW can help you succeed in your day-to-day operations as well as your general business decisions. As I mentioned, ADW doesn’t depend on IT and may be run directly by the business department. If you are looking for guidance on getting started, the data warehouse specialists at Perficient can help. Here is how we can help you get going with ADW and ensure you are on a successful track:
- Migrate existing databases onto ADW
- Integrate reporting tools with ADW
- Demos and user training on how to connect to and load data from source applications
- Data transformation and preparation
- Data enrichment and cleansing
- Implement quick-start solutions to address urgent needs and accomplish quick wins for business stakeholders.
For further information on ADW and how we may help, you can reach me with the Leave a Reply section below.
