Oracle updates BI toolkit and adds iOS access

Oracle has updated its core business intelligence platforms to add native iPhone and iPad support, and extend in-memory functionality and real-time decision management features.

The Oracle business intelligence (BI) updates are comprised of improvements to Oracle Business Intelligence 11g, Oracle Business Intelligence Applications and Oracle Real-Time Decisions, the company said on Tuesday.

"These new Oracle Business Intelligence product releases build upon the success of Oracle BI 11g and provide customers [with] a wide range of new capabilities that extend intelligence to the iPad and iPhone, offer more powerful visualisation, interactivity, performance and scalability features to their enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications," Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle Business Intelligence, said in a statement.

Business Intelligence 11.1.1.5 introduces iPad and iPhone support, allowing users to access the platform's full range of features such as dashboards, reports and analysis tools on such devices with no need to rewrite existing functions, Oracle said. The new version also extends support for data sources including Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database, Oracle OLAP, Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services and SAP Business Information Warehouse.

BI Applications platform

Oracle also announced an update to its BI Applications platform — release 7.9.6.3 — which is built upon its BI 11.1.1.5 product. Oracle BI Applications are prebuilt analytical apps that cover a range of vertical industries and work with Oracle and competitor applications, such as those from SAP. Release 7.9.6.3 brings a redesigned user interface with interactive charting and prompting features, including map-linked geospatial data options.

The BI Applications release also includes data-modelling improvements and integrated system management services, which Oracle said help to simplify the configuration, testing, deployment, monitoring and installation of patches.

Rounding off Oracle's BI developments is an update to Oracle Real-Time Decisions 3.1, which introduces a feature called Decision Manager. This helps an application refine, manage and optimise decisions across customer channels, as well as providing role-based access control, versioning and audit trail to ensure operational consistency.

The new version of Oracle Real-Time Decisions is available now, while the other two platform updates will be available before the end of May, Oracle said.

Key Oracle rivals in the BI market, such as SAP, also offer business intelligence and analytics products that feature in-memory processing and are accessible from mobile devices such as the iPad and iPhone.