ORACLE ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR XML-BASED METADATA STANDARD

Oracle Corp, one of the largest providers of software for e-business, announced its support for the XML-based metadata standard that was ratified and publicly unveiled by the Object Management Group (OMG). Oracle, a primary originator and contributor to the Common Warehouse Metamodel, unveiled its plans for a new set of metadata management tools -- called OneMeaning -- and a Common Warehouse Metamodel-enablement kit for its independent software vendors (ISVs). Oracle has already taken major steps toward metadata sharing between their own products as part of the Oracle Intelligent Webhouse, including Oracle Warehouse Builder.

The Common Warehouse Metamodel standard is an important industry advancement for exchanging e-business information and accelerating a company's ability to move from "data to decision." It defines a metadata format for interoperability of all data warehouse, business intelligence and enterprise portal products. By reducing both the software compatibility testing time and the costs associated with standard warehouse implementations, the Common Warehouse Metamodel standard helps ensure that mission critical data required for business decision making can be shared among all internal and external systems including the Internet.

"I am delighted that the Object Management Group has ratified the Common Warehouse Metamodel specification. This is a major step towards the realization of a robust, extensible and widely accepted common language for the exchange of data warehouse metadata," said Dave Buch, principal, IT Futures Data Warehouse Practice of Capital One Services. "An integrated metadata architecture remains the largest restraint to effectively managing complex, distributed warehouse environments. I applaud Oracle's hard work in gaining ratification of the Common Warehouse Metamodel specification and its efforts in building support for its use by other major data warehouse tool vendors."

Using the Common Warehouse Metamodel standard, Oracle customers can, for example, aggregate fragmented customer data for more holistic business analysis, which is imperative for customer retention, cross-selling and upselling in today's competitive business environment. As an example of sharing metadata within Oracle products, Oracle Warehouse Builder provides data integration and metadata access from a number of disparate sources like ERP applications -- such as Oracle E-Business Suite and SAP R/3 -- e-commerce clickstream data. It also enables metadata sharing with Oracle Business Intelligence Tools possible through metadata bridges.

"The Polk Company commends Oracle's leadership activity in developing Common Warehouse Metamodel, a comprehensive metadata interchange standard," said Mark Hensley, IT manager, The Polk Company. "This standard will facilitate integration of metadata across applications, which is critical to leveraging its full value. We strongly encourage other data warehousing vendors to implement this ratified standard. This action would strengthen all corporate transformation to an e-business, open systems architecture."

To advance the use of the Common Warehouse Metamodel standard, Oracle is developing metadata management suite, called OneMeaning, which leverages Common Warehouse Metamodel, the Oracle Repository and Oracle8i. Scheduled to be available in beta this Fall, Oracle OneMeaning technology is expected to consist of a comprehensive set of metadata management features for integrating, documenting, browsing, searching and querying metadata within a data warehouse. Using Oracle OneMeaning, business analysts will have better insight into lineage of the data on which they are performing the analysis. For example, a business analyst viewing a spreadsheet on sales data would be able to generate a data lineage report which contains information on where the data originated from, what aggregations were performed and when the data in the warehouse was last refreshed. This additional information reduces the possibility of misinterpretation of the data, leading to better, more accurate decisions.

For integration between Oracle and non-Oracle products, Oracle is making available to its 25,000 ISV partners a Common Warehouse Metamodel-enablement kit. Bridges developed by these ISVs using the kit are expected to easily link to Oracle's Intelligent Webhouse Solution, enabling holistic business analysis through shared metadata. The kit is planned to be available this summer via download from the Oracle Technology Network.

"It is essential for e-businesses to have a unified view of their customers," said Michael Howard, vice president, Oracle's Data Warehouse Program Office. "Oracle was instrumental in the development of the Common Warehouse Metamodel standard and now issues a call-to-action for vendors to adopt and implement this standard. Metadata standardization allows organizations to consolidate and distribute consistent customer information and therefore gain further market advantage through the power of fact-based decision-making. Common Warehouse Metamodel-based solutions unlock black boxes of information -- an action critical to companies in the Internet Age."

The Common Warehouse Metamodel standard is based on other open standards, including XMI (an XML-based metadata interchange standard) and UML (Unified Modeling Language) as the modeling language. Marking a critical step in the establishment of an industry-wide metadata interchange solution, the ratified Common Warehouse Metamodel standard provides a powerful object model with a set of APIs, interchange formats and services that span the spectrum of metadata relating to the extraction, transformation, transportation, loading, integration and analysis phases within data warehousing. The Common Warehouse Metamodel standard resolves potential integration issues by enabling users to extend the model to meet their specific needs.

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Contact Kristin Kryway of Oracle Corporation, 650-506-6338, kkryway@us.oracle.com