Preface

This preface includes the following topics:

• Audience

• Conventions

• Related Documents

• Documentation Accessibility

Purpose

Oracle Warehouse Builder is a comprehensive toolset for practitioners who move and transform data, develop and implement business intelligence systems, perform metadata management, or create and manage Oracle databases and metadata. This guide describes how to use Warehouse Builder Oracle MetaBase (OMB) Scripting Language to:

• Create a definition of a data warehouse.

• Configure the definitions for a physical instance of the data warehouse.

• Validate the set of definitions and their configurations.

• Generate a set of scripts to create and populate the data warehouse instance.

• Generate data transformation scripts.

• Deploy and initially load the data warehouse instance.

• Maintain the physical instance by conditionally refreshing it with generated scripts.

• Integrate Warehouse Builder metadata with other Business Intelligence products.

• Populate Oracle Discoverer EULs and OLAP catalogs for analyzing the data warehouse.

Audience

This guide is intended for data warehouse practitioners who want to access Warehouse Builder functionality programmatically:

• Business Intelligence application developers

• Warehouse architects, designers, and developers—especially SQL and PL/SQL developers

• Developers of large-scale products based on data warehouses

• Warehouse administrators

• System administrators

• Other MIS professionals

In order to use the information in this guide, you need to be comfortable with the concepts of Relational Database Management Systems and Data Warehouse design. For information on data warehousing, refer to the Oracle Database Data Warehousing Guide. Also, you need to be familiar with Oracle's relational database software products such as Oracle Database, SQL*Plus, SQL*Loader, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle Workflow.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Accessibility standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For more information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

Screen readers may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, some screen readers may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

TTY Access to Oracle Support Services

Oracle provides dedicated Text Telephone (TTY) access to Oracle Support Services within the United States of America 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For TTY support, call 800.446.2398.

Related Documents

The Warehouse Builder documentation set includes these manuals:

• Oracle Warehouse Builder User's Guide

• Oracle Warehouse Builder Installation and Configuration Guide

• Oracle Warehouse Builder Transformation Guide

• Oracle Warehouse Builder Release Notes

In addition to the Warehouse Builder documentation, you can refer to other documents listed below:

• Oracle Database Data Warehousing Guide

Oracle provides additional information sources, including other documentation, training, and support services that can enhance your understanding and knowledge of Oracle Warehouse Builder.

• For more information on Oracle Warehouse Builder technical support, contact Oracle World Wide Support services at:

  http://www.oracle.com/support

• For the latest information on, and downloads of, software and documentation updates to Oracle Warehouse Builder, visit MetaLink at:

  http://metalink.oracle.com

• You can order other Oracle documentation at:

  http://oraclestore.oracle.com

Conventions

In this manual, Windows refers to the Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP operating systems. The SQL*Plus interface to Oracle Database may be referred to as SQL.

In the examples, an implied carriage return occurs at the end of each line, unless otherwise noted. You must press the Return key at the end of a line of input.

The following conventions are also used in this manual: