Oracle Ana­lyt­ics has presen­ted the latest edi­tion of Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Server (OAS) 2024, a sig­ni­fic­ant advance­ment in their ana­lyt­ics offer­ing. It’s worth not­ing that sev­eral fea­tures included in this release have been avail­able to Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Cloud (OAC) users for over a year. OAC, being a cloud-based ser­vice, bene­fits from reg­u­lar updates, whereas OAS, a solu­tion tailored for on-premises deploy­ment, only gets updated once a year, and OAS users have to install these updates into their infra­struc­ture manu­ally. This shows how import­ant it is for OAS users to keep up with new releases and to plan their updates accord­ingly, so that they can access the new­est fea­tures and enhancements.

It is always good to see Oracle rolling out an update, provid­ing us with fresh ways to improve our daily work whilst also enhan­cing data ana­lysis and decision-mak­ing in our sec­tor. Here at ClearPeaks we have been fol­low­ing the release sched­ules from Oracle Ana­lyt­ics for both OAC and OAS, and in this art­icle we’ll high­light the sim­il­ar­it­ies and dif­fer­ences between the two offerings.

On-premises users can check out these references:

We’ve already explored and tested the most inter­est­ing fea­tures now avail­able in OAS, and we’d like to share our insights with you!

1.  Para­met­ers

This new OAS release intro­duces a com­pre­hens­ive suite of enhance­ments to the many para­met­ers that had pre­vi­ously been released in OAC. Oracle had already included the abil­ity to cre­ate and employ fixed para­met­ers across a wide range of applic­a­tions, sub­sequently enhan­cing them to allow changes to the ini­tial value of a para­meter. The intro­duc­tion of an SQL val­id­a­tion but­ton facil­it­ates dynamic data retrieval based on spe­cific cri­teria by check­ing the query’s cor­rect­ness. Bind­ing a para­meter to list fil­tersselect­ing a data column for para­meter val­uescon­trolling the val­id­a­tion of para­meter val­ues in work­books, and bind­ing para­met­ers to rel­at­ive time fil­ters all ensure that the para­meter value matches one of the avail­able options. User-defined cal­cu­la­tion in para­meter gen­er­a­tion enables cus­tom cal­cu­la­tions for gen­er­at­ing parameters.

2.  Con­di­tional Formatting

Con­di­tional format­ting is a fea­ture that helps with the visual ana­lysis of data, allow­ing users to set vari­ous rules on spe­cific numer­ical val­ues, meas­ures, or match­ing text. It is a valu­able tool for busi­nesses, as it improves the vis­ib­il­ity and inter­pret­a­tion of the data that we have high­lighted for reas­ons such as rel­ev­ance, out­liers, or inform­a­tion reques­ted by the cli­ent. Con­di­tional format­ting sim­pli­fies decision-mak­ing pro­cesses, thereby redu­cing time and effort com­pared to tra­di­tional methods.

Oracle Ana­lyt­ics has con­sist­ently enriched its con­di­tional format­ting cap­ab­il­it­ies with each update: over the past year, sig­ni­fic­ant addi­tions include fea­tures like Con­di­tional Format­ting and Rule Blend­ing, enabling users to blend rules, with, for example, one rule to col­our a cell and another to modify the font. Moreover, Con­di­tional Format­ting on Maps provides users with the abil­ity to apply con­di­tional format­ting dir­ectly to geo­graph­ical data visu­al­isa­tions, and the intro­duc­tion of Con­di­tional Format­ting (rule-based) Annota­tions greatly enhances ana­lyt­ical cap­ab­il­it­ies by allow­ing users to annot­ate data based on spe­cific format­ting rules.

3.  Improve­ments to Tile Visualisations

Tile visu­al­isa­tions are a dash­board and homepage fea­ture to provide users with a quick over­view of the most valu­able inform­a­tion, offer­ing a clear and effect­ive way to ana­lyse data by facil­it­at­ing a visual under­stand­ing of trends and dis­crep­an­cies. These visu­al­isa­tions can con­tain dif­fer­ent types of inform­a­tion, such as num­bers, text, images, or col­ours, depend­ing on the data­set and the inten­ded message.

Let’s explore the key updates to this fea­ture in Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, as seen in the most recent Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Server release.

In the July 2023 release of OAC, Oracle intro­duced Spark charts to tile visu­al­isa­tions. Spark charts are com­pact visu­al­isa­tions that effect­ively present data trends or pat­terns in a con­densed format, allow­ing users to select from vari­ous chart types, includ­ing line with area, bar chart, and area chart. Some other updates were Adding Descrip­tion to Tiles, let­ting users add addi­tional inform­a­tion or descrip­tions of the data, Cre­at­ing Data Actions to make the tiles more inter­act­ive, and Improved Tile Visu­al­isa­tion.

4.  Format­ting Options

Over the last few months we’ve seen sig­ni­fic­ant enhance­ments in the format­ting options, so now let’s delve into the key updates to these in OAC that are now avail­able in the latest OAS release.

In the Janu­ary 2024 OAC release map cus­tom­isa­tion was improved by the intro­duc­tion of options to adjust region col­ours and line thick­ness. There was also a new default set­ting for region and bor­der line styles, enhan­cing the poten­tial for per­son­al­isa­tion even further.

In the same release, format­ting neg­at­ive y‑axis val­ues greatly improved the visual inter­pret­a­tion of data. What’s more, in March 2024, fur­ther enhance­ments sim­pli­fied the format­ting of neg­at­ive num­bers in red. These improve­ments offer users imme­di­ate visual indic­at­ors, help­ing them to promptly identify areas of con­cern or devi­ations from anti­cip­ated values.

Some other updates added the abil­ity to format large num­bers and cur­rency in reports by using abbre­vi­ations such as thou­sands (K), mil­lions (M), bil­lions (B), or tril­lions (T).

5.  Print All Pages in Clas­sic Dashboards

This edi­tion of OAS boasts a new fea­ture to print all dash­board pages as a PDF, whereas before we could only print one page within a dash­board. This fea­ture allows the con­veni­ent phys­ical present­a­tion of data, espe­cially use­ful when reques­ted by the client.

The first step is to open a dash­board and then to nav­ig­ate to the top-right corner of the tab where you will find the Page Option but­ton: click on it, then select the Print option. After click­ing on Print there are three options to choose from, as shown in the screen­shot below:

Select the new fea­ture Entire Dash­board as PDF to down­load the entire dash­board in PDF format (before, only one page was possible).

The screen­shot below shows a sample PDF file down­loaded from the OAS instance and on the left-hand side you can see the list of pages down­loaded from the dashboard:

6.  Semantic Modeler

With this OAS March 2024 release, we can now access one of Oracle’s most valu­able fea­tures, the Semantic Modeler. This fea­ture was fully imple­men­ted in the May 2023 update, with a pre­view avail­able as of July 2022, and in the blog post we just ref­er­enced you’ll find a con­cise sum­mary explain­ing the neces­sary steps for an effect­ive implementation.

Today we’d like to emphas­ise the sig­ni­fic­ance of this enhance­ment, as it dir­ectly affects work effi­ciency and con­sequently stream­lines the pro­cess of updat­ing envir­on­ments. With the Semantic Modeler, mul­tiple indi­vidu­als can develop and apply changes to the desired envir­on­ment without unne­ces­sary delays. This devel­op­ment is undoubtedly great news for Oracle’s future!

Con­clu­sion

This latest release really demon­strates Oracle’s com­mit­ment to its Oracle Ana­lyt­ics users, with many new fea­tures reflect­ing the company’s respons­ive­ness to com­munity feed­back, as we can see in the new abil­ity to print all the pages of a dash­board. The addi­tion of the Semantic Modeler is sure to be well-received by many users too, and while some fea­tures may out­shine oth­ers, this is still a sub­stan­tial release packed with valu­able func­tion­al­it­ies that sim­plify report­ing and diver­sify data manipulation.

The pro­gres­sion of OAS show­cased in this release is another step in the right dir­ec­tion, match­ing or even exceed­ing com­pet­it­ors such as Power BI and Tableau. Each release unveils a new suite of innov­at­ive fea­tures that we’d expect from a mod­ern BI report­ing tool.

Here at ClearPeaks, our seasoned team of Oracle spe­cial­ists remains at the fore­front of new devel­op­ments, con­tinu­ously innov­at­ing on top of them. To keep up to date with Oracle’s latest products and our insights, or to dis­cover the wide vari­ety of tech­no­lo­gies we work with, simply con­tact us and see what we can do for you and your organisation!