Summary

3.9 Summary

In this chapter, we looked at several features in the Oracle database specially suited to data warehouses. Partitioning the data improves the availability of your system and keeps it manageable. Parallel execution improves the scalability of your system as the data size grows. Oracle provides several mechanisms to improve query performance, such as bitmap indexes, star transformation, partition-wise join, and partition pruning. Complex aggregation and reporting needs can be met through the new aggregation and analytical functions in the database. Automatic memory management takes the pain out of tuning work area sizes.

A well-designed warehouse making proper use of these features can deliver excellent query performance for large amounts of data. However, this is not all-in the next chapter, we will discuss another indispensable tool for any data warehouse designer: query rewrite with summary tables.