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Storytelling with Data using Oracle Data Visualization
www.mouritech.com
Storytelling with Data using Oracle Data Visualization
Introduction
This article explains capabilities of Oracle Data Visualization (DV), a business analytics service for
connecting, preparing, visualizing and sharing insights or stories from data.
The objective of this document is to help you understand what Oracle DV offers and how it can support
your organization’s business intelligence (BI) strategy. The intended audience of this document are IT
professionals, who manage organization’s BI platforms, solutions, and tools as well as BI analysts, who
specialize in data modelling, analytics, and presentation.
Oracle Analytics & Data Visualisation - An Overview
Oracle Analytics is the only true analytics
platform which provides capabilities such
as Governed, Self-Service & Augmented
Analytics to serve business needs whereas
other vendors fall into either one or two of
the capabilities i.e., Tableau in Self-Service
Analytics, MicroStrategy in Governed
Analytics.
On one hand, Oracle Analytics provides
traditional BI reporting capabilities such as
ad-hoc reporting, pixel perfect reporting &
dashboards, where business team has a lot of dependency on IT teams for data preparation, building
data warehouse and configuring semantic model for querying.
On the other hand, Oracle Analytics provides Self-Service Analytics through Oracle Data Visualization
which enables business users to easily connect any of their data, explore data through interactive
visualizations that reveal trends in an organisation's data, discover important insights about your
business and share them with team or organization members at any time on any device.
Oracle further embedded its AI, Machine Learning capabilities to provide next generation analytics
called Augmented Analytics. Using Augmented Analytics, one can easily train their data by using in-
built Machine Learning algorithms to predict anomalies or future trends.
Oracle Data Visualization is available as stand-alone named Oracle Data Visualization Desktop (DVD)
and Oracle Data Visualization Cloud Service (DVCS) as a part of Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC). The
individual components and their capabilities of Oracle Data Visualization are further described below.
Fig.1: Landscape of Oracle Analytics
Fig.2: Oracle Data Visualization Components
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Building Blocks of Storytelling in Oracle DV:
1. Connect to any data source:
Oracle Data Visualization, a part of Oracle Analytics provides Self-Service & Augmented Analytical
capabilities for an enterprise with the ability to connect any data, irrespective of data availability (on-
premises, cloud or third-party applications) & type of data (structured or unstructured).
50 + built in Connectors to all types of data
o Relational, NoSQL & Big Data
o Non-Oracle SaaS Applications
o Oracle Cloud, Third Party Clouds & On-Premises
Blend any data together regardless of source or type
Data Preparation/Enrichment capabilities
Smart connectors to Oracle Fusion Applications (ERP, SCM, HCM & CX etc.)
In-built AI & Machine Learning capabilities
One can easily connect to data sources of their choice using available in-built connectors and provide
necessary details in order to establish connection. Once connection established, one can create data
set out of that for further analysis.
Fig.3: Typical data sources that are supported by Oracle Data Visualization
Fig.4: Creating connection to data source
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2. Create and prepare data sets & enrich your data:
Data Set
Data Set is a basic storage unit in Oracle Data
Visualisation which will store data from various
data sources, such as file, subject area (part of
enterprise data modelling) or connection.
Based on the source of data set, data access
property can be enabled to either Live (data
always returned from live source) or Automatic
Caching (data from live source may be cached
for faster performance). Data Sets based on file
source cannot be refreshed automatically.
Data Flow
Data Flow is used to organize and integrate
data to produce a curated set of data (Data
Set) to build analytic content. Data Flows are
powerful, not only allowing users to join
disparate data but also perform some useful
data preparation/transformation activities,
ranging from basic filtering, aggregation and
data manipulation actions to more complex
sentiment analysis, forecasting and even
some machine learning modelling features.
Importantly, Data Flows can be set to output their results to disk, either written to a Data Set or even
to a database table and they can be scheduled for repetitive refresh.
Data Replication
It is a unique feature of Oracle Data Visualization
which allows to source data from various Oracle
SaaS offerings and then replicate data into target
Database/DWH. With data replication, one can
import and transform their data without using
additional ETL/ELT tools.
Sequence
Sequence is the container which can execute
multiple Data Flows and other Sequences
one after another in a specific order.
When Sequence gets executed, it executes
all the Data Flows and/or Sequences
included, one by one in a specific order. In
case Sequence fails during execution then it
reverts all the changes done in the process of
Sequence execution.
Fig.5: Creating Dataset using existing Connections/SA
Fig.6: Transformations available in Data Flow
Fig.7: Data Replications from Source to Target
Fig.8: Creating Sequence for data refresh
Storytelling with Data using Oracle Data Visualization
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3. Explore/Visualize your data & gain quick insights:
In Oracle Data Visualization, Project is an object with one or more data sources containing the data
and visualizations that can help to explore content in productive and meaningful ways. It mainly
consists of three tabs - Prepare, Visualize and Narrate.
Prepare
Data preparation involves cleansing,
standardizing and enriching data set prior
to analysis of the data in a visualization
canvas. Oracle DV’s in-built machine
learning (ML) algorithms facilitate
recommendations based on the nature of
data to the user, further to enhance &
derive new data.
In case the visualization project involves analysing data from more than one data set (it does not
matter, whether those data sets either from same source or from different sources), one can use joins,
data mashup/wrangling based on relationship between data in order to find insights based on those
datasets.
Visualize
Oracle DV supports 30+ visualizations out
of the box ranging from table, pivot, bar
graphs, pie charts, donut, performance tile,
tree map, heat map, tag cloud to advanced
visualizations such as map view, scatter,
boxplot, correlation matrix & tree diagram.
Oracle DV has capability to pick right
visualization based on the selected data
elements. Advanced analytics such as
reference line, trendline, forecast, clusters
and outliers can be applied on top of
visualization for more insights.
One can extend Oracle DV visualizations either by installing third party plugins from Oracle DV library
or using Oracle DV SDK to create custom plugin based on D3.js
Narrate
Oracle DV’s Narrate allows to add
visualizations or canvas to the dashboard
from the canvases which were created. It
allows to write note about findings on
visualization and share with the people.
Fig.10: Creating & Picking Best Visualization
Fig.11: Building story with multiple canvases on Narrate tab
Fig.9: Recommendations & Data Mashups in DV
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4. Share with your organization members & on social media:
Switching to Presentation Mode
One can share the insights about their
findings about the data to friends or
members of organization, by switching
the application to Presentation Mode.
Presentation mode of an application will
remove all the menus & buttons and
focus just on the storytelling.
Share a Project/Folder as an Application
One can share/export DV project with
multiple supported formats such as
pptx, pdf, png (only active sheet/visual),
csv (includes only active sheet) and DVA.
The exported .DVA file includes the
items that you specify such as
associated data sets, the connection
string & credentials, and ALC’s. One can
further email the exported DVA file to
enable other users to work with it.
Import an Application/Project
One can import .DVA file which was
created by another user or can import an
application from an external source such
as Oracle DV library.
The import includes the items which are
specified during export such as associated
data sets, connection string & connection
credentials, ALC’s and stored data.
Integrating DV Projects into BI Dashboards
Option 1: Oracle DV Projects can be
embedded into Oracle Analytics
dashboards directly using ‘Embedded
Content‘ dashboard object. It is possible
to embedded DV Project directly in the
presentation mode. For this,
‘&reportmode= presentation’ parameter
needs to append to the URL of the project.
Option 2: Drag Oracle DV project just like analysis/prompt onto Dashboard and choose which canvas
you want to present (in case more than one canvas exists) to the user.
Fig.12: Presentation Mode of Oracle DV Projects
Fig.13: Exporting Oracle DV Project
Fig.15: Integrating DV Project with Dashboard
Fig.14: Importing .DVA Project
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Share via Social Media:
The project's visualizations, canvases and
stories can share as a file on social media
such as Twitter, LinkedIn & Slack. One
must create app with respect to social
media, get authorized before publishing
app using Client ID, Client Secret which
were created as a part of App creation.
Conclusion:
Oracle Data Visualization offers powerful analytical features which can be used to convert data into
insights and further useful in supporting a culture of data-driven decision making. IT Team can benefit
from easy provisioning of new data sources, fast deployment, and easy integration with existing Oracle
Business Intelligence Dashboards. Business Analysts can leverage powerful analysis capabilities for
easy data discovery, exploration, and visualization. Oracle Data Visualization’s self-service capabilities
make business users no longer need to rely on IT Team for preparing whatever they required. By
adding Oracle DV to your organization’s portfolio, you can make BI available to the people who need
it, when they need it over the web & mobile.
Contact for further details
Appi Reddy DUNDETI
Team Lead – Analytics Oracle
MOURI Tech
Fig.16: Sharing DV Project on Social Media