Administration Overview

Because Oracle OLAP is contained in the database and is managed using the same tools, the management tasks of Oracle OLAP and the database converge. Nonetheless, a database administrator or applications developer needs to address management tasks in the specific context of Oracle OLAP. Following is a list of these tasks.

• Database configuration. Permanent and temporary tablespaces must be created to prevent I/O bottlenecks, as described in "Creating Tablespaces for Analytic Workspaces". Initialization parameters must also be set to optimize performance.
• Security. Users of OLAP applications must have database identities that have been granted the appropriate access rights. For users to have access to files, aliases for the directories must be created and the access rights must be granted. Refer to "Setting Up User Names".
• Data maintenance. For data that will be stored in analytic workspaces, stored procedures must be developed in the OLAP DML for copying the data into multidimensional data objects and performing whatever aggregations or other data manipulations are required. Refer to the Oracle9i OLAP Developer's Guide to the OLAP DML.

  These tasks are typically performed during off-peak hours using a batch facility, as described in "Monitoring Performance".

• Data Interfaces. For access by SQL, views of multidimensional objects can be created using table functions, as described in Chapter 3, "Developing OLAP Applications". For access by the OLAP API, OLAP metadata must be defined. Refer to Chapter 5, "Creating OLAP Catalog Metadata".
• Performance. Materialized views must be created for data stored in relational schema. All of the data, whether it is stored in relational tables or multidimensional tables, may require striping and partitioning to gain the best performance. For information about how analytic workspaces are stored in the database, refer to "Understanding Data Storage". For information about striping and partitioning for relational tables, refer to the Oracle9i Data Warehousing Guide.