The world of modern data and analytics continues to evolve and is very exciting. The change really began in earnest about 10 years ago with the introduction of Hadoop and big data processing. Suddenly corporations could analyze much larger data sets than before and could extract insignts from data that could transform companies and industries. While this explosion of data use cases started on premises, it is most certainly migrating to the Cloud as the primary platform.
Oracle already had a world class database. Over the last several years Oracle has upgraded its Oracle Cloud infrastructure. They started from scratch and rebuilt their Cloud improving on the lessons learned from other public cloud providers. They also quietly built out a robust set of services to support any and all use cases related to data and analytics.
Outlined below are the Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know about Data and Analytics in the Oracle Cloud:
1. Full Data Lake Capability – Either Hadoop-based or Object Storage-based – it is easy to quickly provision a data lake in the Oracle Cloud using either Hadoop/HDFS or Object Storage as the primary storage mechanism.
Oracle Big Data Service – click here for more information about setting up a Hadoop-based data lake on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
Object Storage-based Data Lake – this is a recent Youtube video from Oracle demonstrating how to set up a data lake on OCI using object storage
2. Data Catalog – Oracle provides a data catalog service to allow easy access to all your data – regardless of location. Whether it is in a data lake or a data warehouse, structrured or unstructured, in a relational database, in object storage or in Hadoop, the data catalog can help you keep track of your data assets.
OCI Data Catalog – this is a recent Youtube video from Oracle describing use cases for the OCI Data Catalog and how to set up OCI Data Catalog
3. Support for Streaming Data – the Oracle Cloud supports streaming data use cases via the OCI Streaming Service and Kafka Connect. Perhaps you want to stream data from social media to perform sentiment analysis or you want to take in machine sensor data in real time to perform diagnostics and run machine learning models for predictive maintenance or you are a financial services company that wants to analyze high volume transactions in real time for fraud detection – OCI Streaming and Kafka Connect support these use cases and many more. The OCI Streaming Service is fully managed so companies don’t have to worry about the complexity and operational burden of running all their data streams.
OCI Streaming Service and Kafka Connect – excellent Oracle blog on use cases, set up and benefits of OCI Streaming Service and Kafka Connect
Demo of Setting up OCI Streaming – short, recent youtube video explaning OCI Streaming with a demo on how to set it up (non Oracle video)
4. Serverless Spark Service – OCI Data Flow is a fully managed, serverless Spark service that lets you that lets you run Apache Spark applications with no infrastructure to deploy or manage. You can run Spark jobs against your data in Hadoop or Object storage without worrying about provisioning a server and only pay for what you use.
OCI Data Flow Service – recent youtube video explaining OCI Data Flow Service
5. Big Data SQL Cloud Service Allows SQL Query Access Regardless of Underlying Storage – perhaps you have data in an object storage based Data Lake, some data in Hadoop/HDFS, some data in a NoSQL database and some data in a relational data warehouse and you want to use SQL to query across all those data sets using SQL -Oracle Big Data SQL Cloud Service will support that.
Oracle Big Data Cloud SQL – this is Oracle documentation on using the Big Data Cloud SQL service
6. World Class Cloud Data Warehouse – you have almost certainly heard of Snowflake (if only for its recent IPO) and you may have heard that Cloud data warehouses are a hot technology category. You may not be aware that Oracle has a world class cloud data warehouse called ‘Autonomous Data Warehouse’ (ADW). It is a full blown Oracle autonomous database that has been optimized for analytic workloads. For instance the data is stored in a columnar manner on disk to support high performance analytic processing. ADW can be provisioned easily, you pay for what you use, it runs on Exadata machines and supports autoscaling.
Autonomous Data Warehouse Technical Deep Dive – recent Oracle youtube video discussing the technical differentiators of ADW
7. Machine Learning Capability built into the Database – Oracle’s autonomous database includes 30+ machine learning algorithms that can be modified using Python or R. Oracle’s mantra in this area is “move the algorithms, not the data”. Previously, it was necessary to separately purchase the ‘Advanced Anaytics’ option to access the maching learning capabilities of the Oracle database, but now that is not necessary – all the machine learning, data mining and advanced analytics capabilities come with the base license/subscription for the Oracle database.
Machine Learning in the Oracle Database – recent youtube video from Oracle explaning how machine learning works in the database – including how to use the built in notebook feature
Machine Learning in the Oracle Database – Short Summary – this is a 3 minute youtube video that quickly summarizes the basics of Oracle Machine Learning in the database
8. Data Science Platform for Professional Data Scientists – Does your company have an in-house team of professional data scientists whose job it is to extract value from the vast amount of data in the data lake and data warehouses? The Oracle Cloud includes a data science platform with the tools and platforms most used by professional data scientists. This platform also focuses on deploying and operationalizing ML models including ongoing tuning of the models.
OCI Data Science Platform – this is a playlist of 5 short videos explaning how to set up and use OCI Data Science platform
9. Oracle Data Integrator is Free in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace – Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) is a top-rated data integration and ETL platform. It is used by some of the largest companies for their most complex ETL tasks. ODI is on Oracle’s strategic roadmap and continues to be enhanced and supported. ODI is currently free on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. There is no license or subscription cost. You will pay only for the Oracle Cloud compute that ODI consumes (and compute is very inexpensive in the Oracle Cloud – e.g., running a standard VM with 2 OCPU’s for 10 hrs/day will cost about $40/month or about $480 per year).
Oracle Data Integrator on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace
10. Prebuilt Analytics Leveraging Oracle Cloud SaaS Applications – this is a differentiator between Oracle and the other public cloud providers. Unlike the other public cloud providers, Oracle has top-rated Cloud applications for ERP, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Human Capital Management (HCM) and Customer Experience (CX). Oracle has developed “Fusion Analytics Warehouse” (FAW) which is a set of prebuilt analytic applications that run in the Oracle Cloud and work with Oracle’s Cloud SaaS applications. Oracle has prebuilt a data pipeline to extract data from the Cloud SaaS applications into a Cloud-based data warehouse and has prebuilt KPI’s, reports and dashboards. Fusion ERP Analytics was one of the first modules of FAW that was released and it works with Oracle’s Cloud ERP SaaS application. For more information on Fusion ERP Analytics please see my blog titles “Best Practices for Implementing Fusion ERP Analytics”.
What is Fusion Analytics Warehouse – this is a youtube video from Oracle that introduces and explains Fusion Analytics Warehouse
Perficient’s Oracle Analytics practice is a team of seasoned, dedicated and passionate data and analytics professionals. They have worked with numerous clients to successfully extract value from their data and transform them into data-driven organizations.
