Oracle Analytics Best Practices Series: Optimal Performance and Usage

The best practice articles in this series are aimed at developers, designers, and administrators using Oracle Analytics. These guidelines describe how to design and configure various aspects of Oracle Analytics, with optimal performance and usage in mind.

Explore best practices for Oracle Analytics

• Business Model Design
  There are many ways to configure the business model (the logical layer) in Oracle Analytics. By following the best practices described in this blog, you can avoid several runtime errors and significantly decrease your maintenance workload.
• Setting Implicit Facts in Subject Areas
  In the Oracle Analytics repository (RPD) you can set an Implicit Fact in the Subject Area. This blog describes a use case.
• Time Dimension Design
  Fact tables often include dates and potentially, many time dimensions. This blog describes the most efficient way to handle and configure your time dimensions in in Oracle Analytics.
• Time Series
  This post describes how to improve the performance of Oracle Analytics reports using time series or filter functions.
• Performance Tuning Multi-Dimensional Database Queries
  When Oracle Analytics uses a multi-dimensional database as a data source, there are additional design considerations that may have a big impact on performance.
• Physical Table Aliases
  In Oracle Analytics you can create aliases of tables in the physical layer. This blog describes when to create tables aliases and why, with some common examples.
• Dimensional Hierarchies, Level Keys and Content Levels
  In Oracle Analytics, dimensional hierarchies, level keys, and content levels together form the basis of navigation. This blog describes dimensional hierarchies and how to set them up to enhance the capabilities of Oracle Analytics.
• IndexCol Function
  You use the IndexCol function when the columns or values in a calculation vary depending on the value of a session, repository, or presentation variable.
• Finding the Oracle SQL_ID
  This blog shows you how to find the SQL_ID by mining the Oracle Analytics Usage Tracking tables and the Oracle database system table V$SQL (or GV$SQL for a RAC database).
• Performance Tuning Relational Database Queries
  The purpose of this blog is to provide some high-level guidelines on how you can analyze and improve the performance of a report in Oracle Analytics.
• Initialization Block Maintenance
  You might experience performance issues if you run lots of (the number depends on your performance requirements) initialization blocks whenever someone signs-in because initialization block queries are executed serially.
• Best Practices for Initialization Blocks and Usage Tracking in Oracle Analytics
  This blog describes how to enable and monitor usage tracking for initialization blocks to better understand their performance.
• Reporting on Catalog Object ACLs
  It’s often useful for administrators to see the permissions assigned to objects in the Oracle Analytics catalog. Catalog permissions are kept in access control lists or ACLs. Administrators can generate ACL reports using Catalog Manager (UI or command line utility).
• Use Prompts before Opening for Faster Dashboards
  A dashboard is a collection of reports, frequently displayed as data visualizations, that are presented together on a single screen or in a series of screens.  A dashboard prompt is an optional component which allows you to specify values to be applied as filters or as part of column formulas, which then selects only the data you want to see.
• Gathering and Analyzing Query Logs
  Query Logging is powerful diagnostic information available to the Admin users to analyze and troubleshoot issues related to query performance, error scenario and wrong results.
• Timestamps in Oracle Analytics Cloud
  In Oracle Analytics, administrators can set the default time zone used for date and time calculations in System Settings, and this default setting applies to all calculations.  If you want to use a different timestamp in your calculations, you can use the method described in this blog.
• Report Totals in Oracle Analytics
  This article describes ways to explicitly assign the aggregation rule for report totals, which helps improve performance, and is intended specifically for technical developers writing reports.
• Case Statements in Oracle Analytics
  This article describes ways to improve performance through the use of enhanced formulations of case statements. It's intended only for technical developers writing formulas for reporting metrics.
• Understanding Application Roles in Oracle Analytics
  This article provides an understanding of the application roles found in Oracle Analytics, especially targeted to administrators.
• Performance Tuning with Excluded Column
  Many customers have unused columns in their analyses. Columns that are no longer required but still selected significantly impact performance and the way to improve performance is very simple.
• Select the best option to render dashboards in Oracle Analytics Cloud
  This post describes how dashboard content is rendered and the advantages of each rendering option.
• Google Big Query as a data source for the repository
  Beginning with the September 2022 Update for Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC), you can import data from Google Big Query sources and model the data in the repository file (.rpd).  This article provides best practices for using this data source.
• Minimizing Impact on Query Performance Due to Network Latency
  Network latency increases when Oracle Analytics Cloud connects to a database on a different data center. You can minimize the negative performance impact from this higher network latency by reducing the number of network roundtrips between Oracle Analytics Cloud and your data source.
• Troubleshooting Data Sources Connectivity for Oracle Analytics Cloud
  This blog describes troubleshooting Private Access Channel connectivity tips & tricks for Oracle Analytics Cloud.
• Speed up Network Troubleshooting with Oracle Cloud Network Path Analyzer
  This blog describes how Network Path Analyzer can quickly diagnose the OAC routing and security policy configuration and tell you if a broken reachability is caused by misconfiguration.
• Real-World Performance Testing for Oracle Analytics Cloud
  Performance testing is an essential step to ensure that OAC can handle the expected workload without compromising its performance.