Advanced Analytics in Oracle Data Visualization Desktop

Oracle Data Visualisation Desktop has the feature of being able to include some advanced analytics. In a previous blog post I showed you how to go about installing Oracle R Distribution on your desktop/client machine. This will allow you to make use of some of the advanced analytics features of Oracle Data Visualization Desktop.

The best way to get started with using the advanced analytics features of Oracle Data Visualization Desktop, is to ignore that these features exist. Start with creating your typical analytics, charts etc. Only then you can really look at adding some of the advanced analytics features.

To access the advanced analytics features you can select the icon from the menu bar for advanced analytics. It is the icon with the magnifying glass.

When you have listed on this icon the advanced analytics menu opens displaying the 5 advanced analytics options available to you.

With your chart/graphic already created then you can click on one of the advanced analytics options and drag it onto your char or onto the palette for the chart. For example in the following diagram the Outlier option was selected and dragged into the Color section. This will then mark Outlier data on your chart with a different color.

You can follow a similar approach with all the other advanced analytics options. Click and drag. It is that simple. As you add each advanced analytics option, the chart will be updated automatically for you.

An alternative to clicking and dragging from the chart options palette, you can right click on the chart (or click on the wheel on the top right hand corner of the chart window), and then select the advanced analytics feature you want from the menu.

or what I prefer doing is to select Properties from the menu above. When you do this you get a new window opening and when you click on the icon with the magnifying glass you get to add and customize the advanced analytics features.

WARNING

I would urge caution when you are reading other demonstrations about Oracle Visualization Desktop that are showing examples of predictive analytics. There are a few blog posts out there and also some videos too.

What they are actually showing you is the embedded R execution feature of Oracle R Enterprise. Oracle R Enterprise is part of the Oracle Advanced Analytics Option, which is a licensed option.

So if you follow these blog posts and videos, thinking that you can do this kind of advanced analytics, you could be getting into license issues. This confusion is not helped with comments like the following on the Oracle website.

"Predictive Analytics: Analytics has progressed from providing oversight to offering insight, and now to enabling foresight. Oracle Data Visualization supports that progression, delivering embedded predictive capabilities that enable anyone to see trend lines and other visuals with a click, and extend their analysis using a free R download."

Personally I find this a bit confusing. Yes you can perform some advanced and predictive analytics with Oracle Data Visualization, but you need to ensure that you are using the client side R installation, for your analytics.

As with all licensing questions, you should discuss them with your Oracle Sales representative.

Oracle Data Visualisation Desktop : Enabling Advanced Analytics (R)

Oracle Data Visualization comes with all the typical features you have with Visual Analyzer that is part of BICS, DVCS and OBIEE.

An additional install you may want to do is to install the R language for Oracle Data Visualization Desktop. This is required to enable the Advanced Analytics feature of the tool.

After installing Data Visualisation Desktop when you open the Advanced Analytics section and try to add one of the Advanced Analytics graphing option you will get an errors message as, shown below.

In Windows, click on the Start button, then go to Programs and then Oracle. In there you will see a menu item called install Advanced Analytics i.e. install Oracle R Distribution on your machine.

When you click on this menu option a new command line window will open and will proceed with the installation of Oracle R Distribution (in this case version 3.1.1, which is not the current version of Oracle R Distribution).

By accepting the defaults and clicking next, Oracle R Distribution will be installed. The following images will step you through the installation.

The final part of the installation is download and install lots and lots of supporting R packages.

When these supporting R packages have been installed, you can now use the Advanced Analytics features of Oracle Data Visualisation Desktop.

If you had the tool open during this installation you will need to close/shutdown the tool and restart it.

Oracle Data Visualisation : Setting up a Connection to your DB

Using Oracle Data Visualisation is just the same or very similar as to using the Cloud version of the tool.

In this blog post I will walk you through the steps you need to perform the first time you use the Oracle Data Visualization client tool and to quickly create some visualizations.

Step 1 - Create a Connection to your Oracle DB and Schema

After opening Oracle Data Visualisation client tool client on the Data Sources icon that is displayed along the top of the screen.

Then click on the 'Connection' button. You need to create a connection to your schema in the Oracle Database. Other options exist to create a connection to files etc. But for this example click on 'From Database.

Enter you connections details for your schema in your Oracle Database. This is exactly the same kind of information that you would enter for creating a SQL Developer connection. Then click the Save button.

Step 2 - Defining the data source for your analytics

You need to select the tables or views that you are going to use to build up your data visualizations. In the Data Sources section of the tool (see the first image above) click on the 'Create Data New Data Source' button and then select 'From Database'. The following window (or one like it) will be displayed. This will contain all the schemas in the DB that you have some privileges for. You may just see your schema or others.

Select your schema from the list. The window will be updated to display the tables and views in the schema. You can change the layout from icon based to being a list. You can also define a query that contains the data you want to analyse using the SQL tab.

When you have select the table or view to use or have defined the SQL for the data set, a window will be displayed showing you a sample of the data. You can use this window to quickly perform a visual inspection of the data to make sure it is the data you want to use.

The data source you have defined will now be listed data sources part of the tool. You can click on the option icon (3 vertical dots) on the right hand side of the data source and then select Create VA Project from the pop up menu.

Step 3 - Create your Oracle Data Visualization project

When the Visual Analyser part of the tool opens, you can click and drag the columns from your data set on to the workspace. The data will be automatically formatted and displayed on the screen. You can also quickly generate lots of graphics and again click and drag the columns on the graphics to define various element.

Oracle Data Visualization Desktop - now available

After a bit of a long wait Oracle have finally release Oracle Data Visualization for the desktop. The desktop version of this tool is only available for Windows desktops at the moment. I'm sure Oracle will be bringing out versions of other OS soon (I hope).

To get you hands on the Oracle Data Visualization to to the following OTN webpage (click on this image)

After downloading has finished, you can run the installer.

When the Oracle Installer opens you will be prompted to enter the required details or to accept the defaults, as outlined below.

• Installation Location : Decide where you are going to have the Oracle Data Visualization tool installed on your desktop. The default location is C:\Program Files\Oracle Data Visualization Desktop . Click Next
• Options : There are 2 check boxes for 'Create desktop shortcut' and 'Deploy samples'. Leave both of these checked, as you will probably want these. Click Next.
• Summary : Lists a summary of the installation. There is nothing really for you to do here, so on the Install button.

• Progress : You can ten sit back and monitor the progress of the installation. The installation tool about 4 minutes on my small Windows VM

When the installation is complete you can now fire up Oracle Data Visualization and enjoy. If you have just installed the tool it will automatically be started for you.

When the tool has finished all the configurations that it needs to do, the tool will open with the following window and shows a sample projects for you to get an idea of some of the things that are possible.

For more details on the tool and on the Oracle Cloud hosted version click on the following image to get to the Oracle webpage for the product.