Please need some help with Datawarehousing and tools

[DWorERP]

Guys,

I am in dire need to learn something new. It can be either DW or Oracle ERP (since i am an oracle person). I have been out of Job for more than an year and I am partly to blame as I never upgraded my skills.

Any way,

I want to learn some tools for Reporting and ETL.
I am thinking of doing Cognos Powerplay and Impromptu courses. Are they in themselves sufficient or do I require more of Cognos tools to learn.

Also please suggest an ETL tool that would be marketable.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

I am in Canada.

 

[DWorERP]

Guys, I went thru this forum upto the last page and was able to find a lot of useful info to read in the next few days.

How popular is Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB)?

 

[jnicho02]

Oracle Warehouse Builder seems to be increasing in use, and as an Oracle person you probably can't go far wrong if you stay in the fold. As you probably know all too well, job adverts regularly specify that you have experience of particular parts of Oracle. Jeremy Nicholson, Director of

http://www.firstlightassociates.co.uk

a UK-based Java and Data Warehousing consultancy

 

[DWorERP]

So is OWB and ETL tool or a reporting tool or Both?

 

[eashwer]

OWB is currently not so much in demand as Informatica.
Cognos, Informatica, OWB have some functionality of an OLAP tool in conjunction with ETL capabilities.

Only OWB is downloadable free of cost from technet..
as part of the 9i database.

I have been searching for evaluatory copies of Informatica
and Cognos Powerplay , documentum and other workflow tools to no avail.

Thats where the jobs are...

 

[DWorERP]

Thanks again.

I am reading up on books by Kimball. After that I plan to take either OWB/Cognos/Informatica courses. The problem with informatica is that they allow only working people to attend classes.

Do you Guys think that By Reading up well and doing one of

1) OWB or
2) Cognos - DecisionStream, Powerplay, Impromptu or
3) Informatica

One can get at least an entry level Job in this area?

 

[blom0344]

In terms of functionality offered Informatica is top notch for ETL. But with current events, there is a strong tendency for the big players on the market to start offering end-to-end solutions. Informatica has moved beyond ETL and is now offering analytical tools to compete with the tools Cognos and Business Objects are offering. The latter has bought an ETL tool to compete with Informatica.

Sadly, in this type of market you will not find trial versions to experiment with (at least not from the big corps), these tools are often sold by doing a proof-off-concept strategy with a potential buyer.

My experience is , that employer's focus more on someone knowledge of a specific RDBMS (new features,OLAP functions etc)than on whether someone has experience with an ETL or BI tool. Learning these tools is within reach of every intelligent person , but it takes a bit more to be able to think through a good database design.

I am strictly an Informatica/ Business Objects man, but what I have seen of Cognos leads me to believe that it takes little time to pick it up, it takes more time to get to know another RDBMS..........

T. Blom
Information analyst
tbl@shimano-eu.com

 

[DWorERP]

T. Blom,

thanks for you insight.

As I mentioned I have worked on Oracle databse as a programmer mainly for almost 7 years, although I have to learn / brush up what datawarehousing is and how a good database design is arrived at.