Recently one of

our business clients wanted to have a Business Intelligence System for his

company. Because of availability of many BI platforms, he needed to do a

comparison between MS SQL Server 2000 and Oracle 9i BI platforms. So, I

surfed on various web sites on read many white papers, and ended up with

this document.

Hope this will be useful

for you too.

Business

Intelligence Requirements

• Data warehouse

  databases:

  platform should support both relational and multidimensional data

  warehousing databases.

• OLAP (Online

  Analytical Processing):

  This is the most widely used component to Analysis. Platform should

  provide OLAP support within the databases, OLAP functionalities,

  interfaces to OLAP functionalities, and OLAP build and manage

  capabilities.

• Data Mining:

  platform should include data mining functionalities that offers range of

  algorithms that can operate on data.

• Interfaces: platform should provide interfaces to data

  warehouse databases, OLAP, and data mining.

• Build and Manage

  capabilities:

  platform should support to build and manage data warehouses in their

  data warehouse databases like implementation of data warehouse models,

  the extraction, movement, transformation.

The Leadership

• Microsoft: Microsoft is quantitatively the OLAP leader and its BI

  platform is the equal of any other leaders such as Hyperion, IBM, and

  Oracle. And the pricing and packaging advantages that demonstrated with

  OLAP in SQL 2000 is significant. As a result, Microsoft BI platform

  delivers value that is not approached by the platforms of other leaders

• Oracle: Oracle offers a more technologically consistent BI

  platform by delivering both OLAP and relational capabilities in its

  database. But it's OLAP implementation has not been widely adopted by

  tools and application suppliers, and therefore has not yet achieved

  significant market share.

Build and Manage Capabilities

Microsoft:

• Toolsets: Analysis

  Manager provides comprehensive relational and OLAP build and manage

  capabilities.

• Extraction data

  sources:

  MS SQL Server, Oracle, ODBC, Files, Access 2000, Excel 2000, MS

  Visual FoxPro, dBase, Paradox, MS Exchange Server and MS Active

  Directory.

Oracle:

• Toolsets:

  Oracle 9i Warehouse Builder provides relational build and manage

  capabilities. Oracle Enterprise Manager provides OLAP build and

  manage capabilities.

• Extraction

  data sources: IBM DB2, Informix, MS SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle,

  ODBC, Flat Files.

Packaging and Pricing

• Microsoft: Entire BI platform for $19,999 (SQL Server

  Enterprise Edition - per processor license)

• Oracle: Fee of $40,000 per processor is just charged

  for Enterprise Edition of relational database. Oracle 9i OLAP and Data

  Mining are separately packaged and are priced at $20,000 and $20,000

  consecutively per processor. And Warehouse Builder is priced $5,000 per

  named user. As a result entire Oracle BI platform is priced at about

  $85,000.

OLAP Interfaces

Microsoft: 

• MDX (Multi

  Dimensional Expression):

  This is

  Microsoft native OLAP interface and is an acronym for Multidimensional

  Expression. In many ways, this is very similar to

  Structured Query Language (SQL), but not an extension of SQL

  language. MDX provides Data Definition Language (DDL) syntax for

  managing data structures.

• DSO (Decision

  Support Objects): This library supplies a hierarchical object

  model for use with any development environment that can support

  Common Object Model (COM) objects and interfaces such as MS Visual

  C++, MS Visual Basic. Its objects encapsulate server platform, SQL

  Server databases, MDX functions, OLAP data structures, Data Mining

  models and user roles.

• Pivot Table

  Service:

  This is client-based OLE DB provider for Analysis Service OLAP and

  Data Mining functionalities. This is powerful but heavy client

  interface.

• XML for

  Analysis:

  This is a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)-based XML API that

  has been designed by Microsoft for accessing SQL Server Analysis

  Service data and functionality from the web client applications.

  This makes the SQL Server 2000 BI platform is the first database to

  offer powerful data analysis over the web. And this allows

  application developers to provide analytic capabilities to any

  client on any device or platform, using any programming language.

Oracle:

• OLAP DML:

  This is the native interface to Oracle 9i data and analytic

  functions. Through OLAP DML, application can access, query,

  navigate, and manipulate multidimensional data as well as perform

  analytic functions.

• Java OLAP

  API: Application can connect to multidimensional data and can

  perform navigation, selection and analysis functions but not all

  functions. For a example, Java application must execute OLAP DML

  command when the functionality is not available.

• SQL and

  PL/SQL: By using predefined PL/SQL packages that access OLAP

  command directly or OLAP multidimensional views or accessing table

  functions directly, OLAP data and functionalities can be accessed.

Data Mining Interfaces

Microsoft:

• DSO (Decision

  Support Objects): This library supplies a hierarchical object

  model for use with any development environment that can support

  Common Object Model (COM) objects and interfaces such as MS Visual

  C++, MS Visual Basic. Its objects encapsulate server platform, SQL

  Server databases, MDX functions, OLAP data structures, Data Mining

  models and user roles.

• Pivot Table

  Service:

  This is client-based OLE DB provider for Analysis Service OLAP and

  Data Mining functionalities. This is powerful but heavy client

  interface.

Oracle:

• Oracle 9i

  Data Mining API (java): This is open API and Oracle makes its

  published specification easily available.

Conclusion

Microsoft and Oracle address all of our

business intelligence platform requirements. They provide relational

data warehousing, build and manage facilities, OLAP, data mining, and

application interfaces to relational data warehouses, to OLAP data and

analytic functionality, and to data mining.

• Microsoft

  provides a comprehensive business intelligence platform. Build and

  manage capabilities, OLAP capabilities, and application interfaces

  are its key strengths. Data mining is very new, although data mining

  integration and data mining tools are quite good.

• Oracle provides

  a comprehensive business intelligence platform. While this platform

  has a complete set of components, OLAP and data mining capabilities

  are unproven, data mining tools are low level, and build and manage

  capabilities are not consistently implemented for relational and

  OLAP data.

When consider the price, Microsoft

leaves Oracle behind. Microsoft entire BI platform can be bought at

$19,999 but it is about $80,000 for Oracle before adding $5,000 per user

fees for build and manage capabilities.

I highly appreciate all your comments about

this article.

You can reach me

through

dinesh@dineshpriyankara.com