Re: Anyone Experience with Oracle Express Server/Tools?

Dieter Leinen wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> we have to introduce a Marketing Information System. We thought about
> buying Oracle Express Server. Because we've only experience with Oracle
> 7.x Servers and (bad!) experience with Developer/Designer 2000. I am
> interessed in any opinion and experience about the Express product
> family (server, objects, analyzer). If would be happy to get any
> experience based information.

I have worked with some of these products; namely PC Express, mdb Express (unix), Sales Analyzer and Financial Analyzer.

Sales Analyzer and Financial Analyzer are GUI applications (written in VB) that use PC Express underneath it as well as mdb express (the unix version).

First off, express is like nothing you've ever seen before. It is *NOT* relational in the least bit. Having said that, learning the tools is not easy, but once you get the hang of them they're quite cool and beneficial if put to the correct use.

I was most impressed with Sales Analyzer. From a user's perspective it's an amazing tool that lets them analyze data (like sales) any which level or dimension they would like, provided the express database has been built with the desired dimensions.

A couple of observations... express is a multidimensional db that eats disk space. Also, loading the db and appending data to it consumes vast CPU cycles. Having the fastest disk drives really helps a LOT.

What gives Sales Analyzer (and financial analyzer) easy and relatively fast reporting abilities is the fact that in the express DB all the data is precomputed at the various desired levels. For instance, in a relational world you would keep your transactional data at the lowest possible level and perhaps have summary tables or summarize data on the fly.

In express you would have data at the higher levels (like product category, geography, market type, time) already precomputed within the DB. That's why it eats disk space and CPU to build the initial DB (and to keep appending data to it).

As far as support goes, it's not as extensive as would be for the other Oracle RDBMS and tools. But, I found World Wide Support helpful nonetheless.

One, more thing... in my experience, I found financial analyzer to be somewhat "flaky". VB error messages were quite frequent. But, I believe Oracle is working hard to make it better.

I could go on... All in all, neat tools well suited for things like sales analyses.

Zoran. Received on Fri May 16 1997 - 00:00:00 CEST