Path: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu!spool.maxwell.syr.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!news.glorb.com!news-out.octanews.net!indigo.octanews.net!authen.yellow.readfreenews.net.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Geoff Muldoon Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.server,comp.databases.oracle.misc,comp.databases.oracle.tools Subject: Re: General Purpose or Data Warehouse? Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 09:18:20 +1100 Message-ID: References: <1138901787.055468.127310@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com> Organization: Southern Cross University MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: MicroPlanet-Gravity/2.60.2060 Lines: 25 NNTP-Posting-Date: 02 Feb 2006 16:18:25 CST X-Trace: DXC=HHF^M7=YROFnEBeZAGh9fMbQ9W\LD0^U@hP6ji5_Ug\I Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu comp.databases.oracle.server:260615 comp.databases.oracle.misc:125005 comp.databases.oracle.tools:70100 g_chime@yahoo.com says... > In the Database Configuration Assistant (Step 2) there are 4 choices: > Custom, Data Warehouse, General Purpose and Transaction Processing. > > I have lots of data, large tables hundreds of columns many millions of > rows. I add data on a regular bases, almost never update or delete. > > I have to perform user created large and complicated queries. > Some result sets can be as large as 10 GB. (That's what the customer > wants.) > > I think what I have is a Data Warehouse but I'm not sure. The size of your database has no direct bearing on whether you would consider it to be a candidate for the data warehouse option. Data warehouses use star schema dimensional modelling as opposed to the standard entity-relationship model. Read up on the concepts. Bert Scalzo - Oracle DBA Guide to Data Warehousing and Star Schemas - spends the whole first chapter of his book explaining what a data warehouse *isn't*, including a great analysis "Data Warehouse vs. Big Database". Geoff M