Oracle recently announced the Data Lake Edition for Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC). The Data Lake Edition comes with everything that you get in the standard edition of OAC with the added benefit of utilizing data lakes.
In this blog post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about data lakes, including the standard features of OAC and the new features you get with this edition.
What is a Data Lake?
A data lake is a repository for raw and unstructured data. Unlike a hierarchical data warehouse that stores data in files and folders, a data lake stores data in a natural state, using a flat architecture.
Every data element in a data lake has its own unique identifier with a set of metadata tags. These identifiers will help you find the correct data when you build a query, and you drill down to an even smaller data set to help answer your most specific business questions. Data lakes help you better leverage big data to further your organization’s initiatives.
Standard Features of OAC
The Oracle Analytics Cloud allows you to better collaborate with your organization, enabling you to tell stories with your data through easily consumable dashboards and graphics. OAC also ensures you’re connected to accurate data from a relevant data source.
Products available on the OAC platform include:
- Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS)
- Oracle Data Visualization
- Oracle Essbase Cloud
- Oracle Day by Day
The capabilities of the standard OAC platform include:
- More than 40 data sources that include connectivity to SaaS, databases, big data/NoSQL, and generic ODBC/JDBC
- A unified catalog and ability to search across all data
- Self-service data preparation and blending
- Quick data discover, visualization, and storyboarding
- Auto visualization of insights and one-click analytics
- Visualization through the Synopsis mobile app and on your desktop (50 users per OCPU)
- What-if scenario modeling with data visualization and Microsoft Excel-based consumption
Features in OAC Data Lake Edition
The Data Lake edition comes with a built-in layer to Oracle Essbase and Oracle Database Cloud, giving you access to data across your enterprise with interactive visualizations and a governance layer on top of big data.
This new platform even gives you recommendations of visualizations and provides you with an explanation of how to enrich your data — making your end users more productive.
Other features of OAC Data Lake include:
- Provisioning and management with the Oracle Big Data Cloud
- The use of Analytics Cloud Data Flows, making it easy to define data ingestion, preparation, transformation, and persistence.
- Leverage of the Apache Spark functions to transform and enrich your data
- Ability to connect to on-prem data lakes
- Sandboxing and partitions available to external sources for Essbase
To learn more about creating and managing a data lake with OAC, download the presentation...
