Oracle's late data marts - Oracle Corp introduces Oracle Data Mart Suite - Brief Article - Product Announcement

Software Magazine, May, 1997 by Susan Mael

"We're not the first to implement, to announce, a data mart. In fact, we may even be the last one," said Neil Mendelson, senior director of Oracle's data warehousing business, when announcing his firm's two new data mart suites. The Redwood Shores, Calif.- based company says it may be a latecomer, but insists its data mart products are more customer-driven than the competition's solutions.

Some analysts agree. The Oracle Data Mart Suite and The Oracle Data Mart Suite-Sales & Marketing are more complete than current offerings from competitors such as Sybase Inc., Emeryville, Calif., and Informix Software Inc., Menlo Park, Calif., according to Teresa Wingfield, a senior industry analyst with Giga Information Group, Cambridge, Mass.

The Data Mart Suite includes the Data Mart Designer, which provides graphical design tools to create source database systems for the data marts. The suite also offers Data Mart Builder, which designs the mapping and transformations from sources to the data mart. Builder provides a repository for storing metadata and an extraction and transformation load engine that populates the data mart. Included in this suite is the Oracle7 Enterprise Server software, which manages the data mart's information; the Oracle Discoverer 3.0 ad hoc query, reporting and analysis tool; and Oracle WebServer, for server-side support of the data mart's Web-based query tools.

While a data warehouse may be built and managed by corporate IS professionals, a data mart may also be needed for employees in a remote sales office where no one has data management experience. "IS doesn't want to have to go out and install them; they also don't want to manage them over time," notes Mendelson. "They want to be able to give them the information and empower them." To satisfy these customers, the company offers The Oracle Data Mart Suite-Sales & Marketing, which includes all the components of the base suite plus some sales and marketing-specific components. The suite also features a ROLAP option, for performing analysis without replicating the data to a separate database, and a copy of Personal Express, the company's end-user OLAP tool.

Giga Information's Wingfield believes that firms seeking multi- dimensional analysis of their sales and marketing applications will benefit from the integration offered in this suite. She believes, however, that customers should be wary of the lack of ser- vices provided. The base suite costs $39,000 and the Sales & Marketing suite $99,000. Both include extensive training, but no professional services, which Sybase includes in its Quick Start Data Mart. While customers may be able to get away with just the training for the base Oracle Data Mart Suite, Wingfield cautions that firms looking at the Sales & Marketing suite should try to negotiate service into their pricing agreement.