Oracle Adds Powerful Data Mining and OLAP Functionality Embedded in the Oracle9i Database

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Apr. 18, 2001 - (http://www.oracle.com/tellmemore/?666951) Oracle Corp., the largest provider of software for e-business, today announced that it will formally introduce Oracle9i(tm) Advanced Analytic Services with the availability of the Oracle9i Database, scheduled for the first half of this year. With Oracle9i Advanced Analytic Services, Oracle embeds a powerful OnLine Analytical Processing (OLAP) and data mining infrastructure for customers and partners to build business intelligence applications. Oracle9i Advanced Analytic Services eliminate the need for customers to extract data from the data warehouse and to then process it in specialized, analytical servers. By offering more functionality in the Oracle9i Database, customers and partners can derive accurate and timely business intelligence with less technical complexity and investment.

Customers and industry analysts have long considered managing and analyzing customer and business information to be mission critical. This long-standing business need has given rise to hundreds of niche data analysis technologies that were not built to work together and not built on a single source of data. Thus, companies have typically deployed data analysis technologies for only a few, specialized applications using subsets of data that limited numbers of users could access.

Recognizing the demand for better business intelligence and more widespread access to business data analysis, Oracle has made Oracle9i Advanced Analytic Services a key feature of the Oracle9i Database.

"The new advanced analytic functionality in Oracle9i is in line with a growing and long-anticipated trend of coupling functions to analyze data at the point where the data is managed - with the potential of significant enhancement of overall performance for analytic applications," said Henry Morris, vice president of Applications and Information Access at IDC. "Application providers will seek to leverage these analytic capabilities."

Oracle has incorporated OLAP functionality into the database, which enables users to analyze data in multiple dimensions, and by doing so has overcome the cost, scalability, and performance limitations of previously popular approaches. Oracle9i simplifies the process and reduces the cost of maintaining data while providing the ability to support complex analytical queries and excellent query performance. Oracle9i accomplishes this by both extending the analytical capability of SQL and by offering Oracle9i OLAP with the relational database.

"Oracle's integration of OLAP technology in Oracle9i Advanced Analytic Services is key to the widespread adoption of OLAP," said Dan Vlamis, CEO of Vlamis Software. "Traditionally, customers have had to make trade-offs between the scalability of relational databases and the performance of specialized multidimensional databases. Oracle9i Advanced Analytic Services remove this trade-off."

Oracle has also embedded two data mining algorithms (Naïve Bayes and Association Rules) within the Oracle9i Database. Oracle9i Data Mining adds binning and reverse pivoting data transformation functions to Oracle's already powerful set of data management and data transformation tools. All model-building and scoring functions are available through a Java-based API. Oracle9i delivers a powerful infrastructure for application developers to build integrated business intelligence applications without having to off-load massive volumes of data into a separate engine to mine the data.

Oracle today also announced Oracle Personalization, a real-time recommendation application which utilizes Oracle9i's embedded data mining functionality to dynamically serve personalized recommendations to both anonymous Web visitors and registered customers, enabling improved 1:1 marketing for e-businesses.

"At Lowestfare.com, we are striving to grow our top line by increasing the value of each customer transaction. Lowestfare.com realizes that in order to stay competitive in the online travel industry, we will need to be able to sell our prospects and customers more than discount airline tickets as we move toward our goal of becoming a 'One Stop Shop' for travel," said Andy Cohen, Chief Technology Officer at Lowestfare.com. "Oracle9i's data mining and personalization products help us offer personalized products and services and increase customer satisfaction."

Finally, Oracle9i Database has enhanced data warehousing capabilities to support more data, more users, faster response times, and more efficient Extraction, Transformation, and Load (ETL) functions. Oracle9i Database is a scalable and high-performance single engine for all data warehousing operations, as demonstrated by yesterday's announcement of the world's largest TPC-H data warehouse. (See related press release.)

This integrated approach to advanced analytics and data warehousing provides several unique benefits, including elimination of data movement and separate analytic servers, ease of deployment, and enhanced manageability, thus reducing complexity and total cost of ownership.

"Many companies are looking to investments in technology as a means of growing the bottom line, but they need to strategically invest in IT in order to reap savings through better performance and efficiency," said Rene Bonvanie, Oracle vice president of Oracle9i Marketing. "The key value behind Oracle9i Advanced Analytic Services lies in the database's ability to drive business results at both the top and bottom line. By simplifying the relationship between the database and business analysis tools, Oracle provides a single, complete product that helps customers do more with less investment."

About Oracle

Oracle Corporation provides the software the powers the Internet. For more information about Oracle, please call 650/506-7000.

###

Trademarks

Oracle is a registered trademark and Oracle9I is a trademark or registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.