Oracle Analytics Server (OAS) is now available on Linux.
OAS is essentially a variant of Oracle Analytics Cloud for customers who want an on-premises installation. So, just like BI Enterprise Edition it is a customer managed download and install. This is not a particularly challenging exercise for those familiar with a BI Enterprise Edition installation and I managed to get the first 5.5 release (so called as it shadows the OAC 5.5 version number) downloaded, installed and running within a day.
What are the differences between OAC and OAS then?
We can reference the documentation to look at these in more depth across the four main pillars.
There is an informative Oracle blog which has links to the documentation and details the feature comparison between OAS and the other ‘family’ members of Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) and BI Enterprise Edition, as well as providing the certification matrix. It is my understanding that enhancements to OAS will be made available on a less frequent basis resulting in bigger leaps of functionality, whereas OAC receives more frequent incremental updates.
Should I move from BI Enterprise Edition to OAS?
Good Question, and one I think that is well answered in the Oracle Blog which I linked to in the first paragraph. Currently, the first release is just on Linux, with Windows to follow next. Essentially with OAS you get most of the self-service analytic capability delivered with OAC but in an on-premises solution. The comparison of features between OAS and OAC is available here which shows an impressive overlap.
The majority of visualisation types are available. Below is the range available in the OAS 5.5 release. The notable difference here is that the Natural Language Generation visualisation is not available in OAS.
OAS includes the new Spacer and Butterfly visualisations which were welcome additions to the portfolio introduced in version 5.5. If you are wondering what the exact differences are between BI EE and OAS then you need to look here. If you’re a user of Scorecarding for example then you do need to pay attention to these differences.
There’s some things to think about, but OAS provides that ‘bridge’ from the older BI Enterprise Edition to the fully cloud based OAC suite. So, if you need to stay on-premises currently but want to take advantage of some of the great developments from OAC and you understand the differences between OAS and BI EE, then OAS really should be evaluated. Please do contact me if you would like to discuss this further.