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REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Oracle Corp., the world's largest enterprise software company, today announced the general availability of Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4, an enterprise integration tool that successfully manages data throughout the entire lifecycle of business intelligence applications, allowing business users to perform fast, accurate and timely analysis for fact-based decision making. Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4 helps reduce the cost and time associated with data integration by providing a cost-effective, scalable, and easy-to-use extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) tool that enables database administrators and developers to design and build business intelligence applications more quickly and efficiently. "The new release of Oracle9i Warehouse Builder will improve our ability to design, construct and deploy Oracle-based data warehouses in the ABS," said Don Bartley, Director IT Architecture, at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). "When we reach production we will load in excess of 30GB of data each month into our data warehouse. The new release will provide improved support in designing and implementing the ETL processes and will improve our ability to reuse warehouse design and operational metadata in other warehouse tools. This is very important to businesses like ours." Traditionally, ETL solutions used for integrating disparate systems to access and display data have been costly and difficult to use. With Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4, organizations now benefit from a cost-effective and easy-to-use ETL solution that efficiently supports complex data warehouses and operational data stores. Database administrators and developers can use visual models and wizard-driven interfaces to graphically design end-to-end ETL processes including data warehouses and intermediate storage areas. New Features Enhance Openness, Performance and Productivity Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4 is optimized for all versions of the Oracle(R) Database and uses it as its runtime engine, eliminating the need for a separate transformation or staging server. The new release also takes advantage of the ETL capabilities that are built into Oracle's latest database release, Oracle9i Database Release 2, generating optimized code for increased performance and scalability. Additionally, Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4 utilizes the new OnLine Analytical Processing (OLAP) engine that resides in Oracle9i Database Release 2 to design and manage multi-dimensional objects. For complete openness and tight integration with third party products, Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4 also supports the latest industry standards including SQL for data integration routines, Object Management Group's Common Warehouse Meta-Model (OMG CWM) and eXtensible Markup Language Metadata Interchange (XMI) for metadata exchange as well as the new Processing Description Language (XPDL) for process definition. New features that simplify and accelerate the design and management of data, include: -- Data Integration -- In addition to support for mainframes and other databases such as Microsoft, IBM and Sybase, Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4 includes a new SAP Integrator that generates high-performance code to extract data from SAP R/3 systems and populate data warehouses. -- Runtime -- The Runtime Audit Browser helps ensure data quality and accuracy while exposing deployment audit and history information to verify the results of running jobs and reveal errors that may have occurred while loading data. -- Workflow -- The new Process Flow Editor provides a user-friendly interface that allows users to visually create ETL transformations and automatically generate code to integrate these and other business processes within the organization. "Oracle9i Warehouse Builder allows customers to make the most out of their data by quickly and easily consolidating and managing it in an Oracle Database," said John Entenmann, vice president, Business Intelligence products, Oracle. "This new version addresses complex data integration problems with a cost-effective, open and easy-to-use solution enhancing customers' ability to make smart business decisions." Pricing and Availability Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4 is immediately available for free download and evaluation from Oracle Technology Network. Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4 can be purchased for US $5,000 per Named User Plus from the Oracle Store as part of Oracle9i Developer Suite. Oracle9i Warehouse Builder Version 9.0.4 is available on multiple platforms, including Linux, Sun Solaris and Windows.