Patent Publication Number: US-11640406-B2

Title: System and method for data analytics with an analytic applications environment

Description:
CLAIM OF PRIORITY 
     This application claims the benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR USE OF SCHEMAS WITH AN ANALYTIC APPLICATIONS ENVIRONMENT AND DATA WAREHOUSE”, Application No. 62/841,093, filed Apr. 30, 2019; and U.S. Provisional Patent Application titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING AN ANALYTIC APPLICATIONS ENVIRONMENT”, Application No. 62/885,118, filed Aug. 9, 2019; each of which above applications are herein incorporated by reference. 
    
    
     COPYRIGHT NOTICE 
     A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. 
     TECHNICAL FIELD 
     Embodiments described herein are generally related to computer data analytics, and computer-based methods of providing business intelligence data, and are particularly related to systems and methods for providing an analytic applications environment that enables the development of software analytic applications, for use with enterprise software application or data environments. 
     BACKGROUND 
     Generally described, within an organization, data analytics enables the computer-based examination or analysis of large amounts of data, in order to derive conclusions or other information from that data; while business intelligence tools provide an organization&#39;s business users with information describing their enterprise data in a format that enables those business users to make strategic business decisions. 
     Increasingly, there is an interest in developing software applications that leverage the use of data analytics within the context of an organization&#39;s enterprise software application or data environment, such as, for example, an Oracle Fusion Applications environment or other type of enterprise software application or data environment; or within the context of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) or cloud environment, such as, for example, an Oracle Analytics Cloud or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure environment, or other type of cloud environment. 
     SUMMARY 
     In accordance with an embodiment, an analytic applications environment enables data analytics within the context of an organization&#39;s enterprise software application or data environment, or a software-as-a-service or other type of cloud environment; and supports the development of computer-executable software analytic applications. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, a data pipeline or process, such as, for example, an extract, transform, load process, can operate in accordance with an analytic applications schema adapted to address particular analytics use cases or best practices, to receive data from a customer&#39;s (tenant&#39;s) enterprise software application or data environment, for loading into a data warehouse instance. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, each customer (tenant) can additionally be associated with a customer tenancy and a customer schema. The data pipeline or process populates their data warehouse instance and database tables with data as received from their enterprise software application or data environment, as defined by a combination of the analytic applications schema, and their customer schema. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG.  1    illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
         FIG.  2    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
         FIG.  3    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
         FIG.  4    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
         FIG.  5    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
         FIG.  6    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
         FIG.  7    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
         FIG.  8    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
         FIG.  9    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
         FIG.  10    illustrates a flowchart of a method for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     As described above, within an organization, data analytics enables the computer-based examination or analysis of large amounts of data, in order to derive conclusions or other information from that data; while business intelligence tools provide an organization&#39;s business users with information describing their enterprise data in a format that enables those business users to make strategic business decisions. 
     Increasingly, there is an interest in developing software applications that leverage the use of data analytics within the context of an organization&#39;s enterprise software application or data environment, such as, for example, an Oracle Fusion Applications environment or other type of enterprise software application or data environment; or within the context of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) or cloud environment, such as, for example, an Oracle Analytics Cloud or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure environment, or other type of cloud environment. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, an analytic applications environment enables data analytics within the context of an organization&#39;s enterprise software application or data environment, or a software-as-a-service or other type of cloud environment; and supports the development of computer-executable software analytic applications. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, a data pipeline or process, such as, for example, an extract, transform, load process, can operate in accordance with an analytic applications schema adapted to address particular analytics use cases or best practices, to receive data from a customer&#39;s (tenant&#39;s) enterprise software application or data environment, for loading into a data warehouse instance. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, each customer (tenant) can additionally be associated with a customer tenancy and a customer schema. The data pipeline or process populates their data warehouse instance and database tables with data as received from their enterprise software application or data environment, as defined by a combination of the analytic applications schema, and their customer schema. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, a technical advantage of the described systems and methods includes that the use of a system-wide or shared analytic applications schema or data model, maintained within an analytic applications environment (cloud) tenancy; together with tenant-specific customer schemas, maintained within customer tenancies; enables each customer&#39;s (tenant&#39;s) data warehouse instance, or database tables, to be populated or otherwise associated with live data (live tables), as received from their enterprise software application or data environment, on an automated or a periodic, e.g., hourly/daily/weekly, or other basis, and reflecting best practices for particular analytics use cases. Examples of such analytics use cases can include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Human Capital Management (HCM), Customer Experience (CX), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), or other types of analytics use cases. The populated data warehouse instance or database tables can then be used to create computer-executable software analytic applications, or to determine data analytics or other information associated with the data. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, a computer-executable software analytic application can be associated with a data pipeline or process, such as, for example, an extract, transform, load (ETL) process, or an extract, load, transform (ELT) process, maintained by a data integration component, such as, for example, an Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) environment, or other type of data integration component. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the analytic applications environment can operate with a data warehouse environment or component, such as, for example, an Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW), Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud (ADWC), or other type of data warehouse environment or component adapted to store large amounts of data; which can be populated via a star schema sourced from an enterprise software application or data environment, such as, for example, an Oracle Fusion Applications, or other type of enterprise software application or data environment. The data made available to each customer (tenant) of the analytic applications environment can be provisioned in an, e.g., ADWC, tenancy that is associated with, and accessible only to, that customer (tenant); while providing access to other features of a shared infrastructure. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, the analytic applications environment can include a data pipeline or process layer that enables a customer (tenant) to ingest data extracted from their Oracle Fusion Applications environment, to be loaded into a data warehouse instance within their ADWC tenancy, including support for features such as multiple data warehouse schemas, data extract and target schemas, and monitoring of data pipeline or process stages; coupled with a shared data pipeline or process infrastructure that provides common transformation maps or repositories. 
     INTRODUCTION 
     In accordance with an embodiment, a data warehouse environment or component, such as, for example, an Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW), Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud (ADWC), or other type of data warehouse environment or component adapted to store large amounts of data, can provide a central repository for storage of data collected by one or more business applications. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, the data warehouse environment or component can be provided as a multi-dimensional database that employs online analytical processing (OLAP) or other techniques to generate business-related data from multiple different sources of data. An organization can extract such business-related data from one or more vertical and/or horizontal business applications, and inject the extracted data into a data warehouse instance that is associated with that organization, 
     Examples of horizontal business applications can include ERP, HCM, CX, SCM, and EPM, as described above, and provide a broad scope of functionality across various enterprise organizations. 
     Vertical business applications are generally narrower in scope that horizontal business applications, but provide access to data that is further up or down a chain of data within a defined scope or industry. Examples of vertical business applications can include medical software, or banking software, for use within a particular organization. 
     Although software vendors increasingly offer enterprise software products or components as SaaS or cloud-oriented offerings, such as, for example, Oracle Fusion Applications; while other enterprise software products or components, such as, for example, Oracle ADWC, can be offered as one or more of SaaS, platform-as-a-service (PaaS), or hybrid subscriptions; enterprise users of conventional business intelligence (BI) applications and processes generally face the task of extracting data from their horizontal and vertical business applications, and introducing the extracted data into a data warehouse—a process which can be both time and resource intensive. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the analytic applications environment allows customers (tenants) to develop computer-executable software analytic applications for use with a BI component, such as, for example, an Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (OBIA) environment, or other type of BI component adapted to examine large amounts of data sourced either by the customer (tenant) itself, or from multiple third-party entities. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, when used with a SaaS business productivity software product suite that includes a data warehouse component, the analytic applications environment can be used to populate the data warehouse component with data from the business productivity software applications of the suite. Predefined data integration flows can automate the ETL processing of data between the business productivity software applications and the data warehouse, which processing might have been conventionally or manually performed by the users of those services. 
     As another example, in accordance with an embodiment, the analytic applications environment can be pre-configured with database schemas for storing consolidated data sourced across various business productivity software applications of a SaaS product suite. Such pre-configured database schemas can be used to provide uniformity across the productivity software applications and corresponding transactional databases offered in the SaaS product suite; while allowing the user to forgo the process of manually designing, tuning, and modeling the provided data warehouse. 
     As another example, in accordance with an embodiment, the analytic applications environment can be used to pre-populate a reporting interface of a data warehouse instance with relevant metadata describing business-related data objects in the context of various business productivity software applications, for example, to include predefined dashboards, key performance indicators (KPIs), or other types of reports. 
     Analytic Applications Environment 
       FIG.  1    illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     As illustrated in  FIG.  1   , in accordance with an embodiment, an analytic applications environment  100  can be provided by, or otherwise operate at, a computer system having a computer hardware (e.g., processor, memory)  101 , and including one or more software components operating as a control plane  102 , and a data plane  104 , and providing access to a data warehouse, or data warehouse instance  160 . 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the components and processes illustrated in  FIG.  1   , and as further described herein with regard to various other embodiments, can be provided as software or program code executable by a computer system or other type of processing device. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, the components and processes described herein can be provided by a cloud computing system, or other suitably-programmed computer system. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the control plane operates to provide control for cloud or other software products offered within the context of a SaaS or cloud environment, such as, for example, an Oracle Analytics Cloud or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure environment, or other type of cloud environment. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, the control plane can include a console interface  110  that enables access by a client computer device  10  having a device hardware  12 , administrative application  14 , and user interface  16 , under control of a customer (tenant)  20  and/or a cloud environment having a provisioning component  111 . 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the console interface can enable access by a customer (tenant) operating a graphical user interface (GUI) and/or a command-line interface (CLI) or other interface; and/or can include interfaces for use by providers of the SaaS or cloud environment and its customers (tenants). 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, the console interface can provide interfaces that allow customers to provision services for use within their SaaS environment, and to configure those services that have been provisioned. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the provisioning component can include various functionality to provision services that are specified by provisioning commands. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, the provisioning component can be accessed and utilized, via the console interface, by a customer (tenant) to purchase one or more of a suite of business productivity software applications, together with a data warehouse instance for use with those software applications. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, a customer (tenant) can request the provisioning of a customer schema  164  within the data warehouse. The customer can also supply, via the console interface, a number of attributes associated with the data warehouse instance, including required attributes (e.g., login credentials), and optional attributes (e.g., size, or speed). The provisioning component can then provision the requested data warehouse instance, including a customer schema of the data warehouse; and populate the data warehouse instance with the appropriate information supplied by the customer. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the provisioning component can also be used to update or edit a data warehouse instance, and/or an ETL process that operates at the data plane, for example, by altering or updating a requested frequency of ETL process runs, for a particular customer (tenant). 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the provisioning component can also comprise a provisioning application programming interface (API)  112 , a number of workers  115 , a metering manager  116 , and a data plane API  118 , as further described below. The console interface can communicate, for example, by making API calls, with the provisioning API when commands, instructions, or other inputs are received at the console interface to provision services within the SaaS environment, or to make configuration changes to provisioned services. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data plane API can communicate with the data plane. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, provisioning and configuration changes directed to services provided by the data plane can be communicated to the data plane via the data plane API. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the metering manager can include various functionality that meters services and usage of services provisioned through control plane. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, the metering manager can record a usage over time of processors provisioned via the control plane, for particular customers (tenants), for billing purposes. Likewise, the metering manager can record an amount of storage space of data warehouse partitioned for use by a customer of the SaaS environment, for billing purposes. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data plane can include a data pipeline or process layer  120  and a data transformation layer  134 , that together process operational or transactional data from an organization&#39;s enterprise software application or data environment, such as, for example, business productivity software applications provisioned in a customer&#39;s (tenant&#39;s) SaaS environment. The data pipeline or process can include various functionality that extracts transactional data from business applications and databases that are provisioned in the SaaS environment, and then load a transformed data into the data warehouse. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data transformation layer can include a data model, such as, for example, a knowledge model (KM), or other type of data model, that the system uses to transform the transactional data received from business applications and corresponding transactional databases provisioned in the SaaS environment, into a model format understood by the analytic applications environment. The model format can be provided in any data format suited for storage in a data warehouse. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data pipeline or process, provided by the data plane, can including a monitoring component  122 , a data staging component  124 , a data quality component  126 , and a data projection component  128 , as further described below. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data transformation layer can include a dimension generation component  136 , fact generation component  138 , and aggregate generation component  140 , as further described below. The data plane can also include a data and configuration user interface  130 , and mapping and configuration database  132 . 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data warehouse can include a default analytic applications schema (referred to herein in accordance with some embodiments as an analytic warehouse schema)  162  and, for each customer (tenant) of the system, a customer schema as described above. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data plane is responsible for performing extract, transform, and load (ETL) operations, including extracting transactional data from an organization&#39;s enterprise software application or data environment, such as, for example, business productivity software applications and corresponding transactional databases offered in a SaaS environment, transforming the extracted data into a model format, and loading the transformed data into a customer schema of the data warehouse. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, each customer (tenant) of the environment can be associated with their own customer tenancy within the data warehouse, that is associated with their own customer schema; and can be additionally provided with read-only access to the analytic applications schema, which can be updated by a data pipeline or process, for example, an ETL process, on a periodic or other basis. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, to support multiple tenants, the system can enable the use of multiple data warehouses or data warehouse instances. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, a first warehouse customer tenancy for a first tenant can comprise a first database instance, a first staging area, and a first data warehouse instance of a plurality of data warehouses or data warehouse instances; while a second customer tenancy for a second tenant can comprise a second database instance, a second staging area, and a second data warehouse instance of the plurality of data warehouses or data warehouse instances. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, a data pipeline or process can be scheduled to execute at intervals (e.g., hourly/daily/weekly) to extract transactional data from an enterprise software application or data environment, such as, for example, business productivity software applications and corresponding transactional databases  106  that are provisioned in the SaaS environment. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, an extract process  108  can extract the transactional data, whereupon extraction the data pipeline or process can insert extracted data into a data staging area, which can act as a temporary staging area for the extracted data. The data quality component and data protection component can be used to ensure the integrity of the extracted data. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, the data quality component can perform validations on the extracted data while the data is temporarily held in the data staging area. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, when the extract process has completed its extraction, the data transformation layer can be used to begin the transform process, to transform the extracted data into a model format to be loaded into the customer schema of the data warehouse. 
     As described above, in accordance with an embodiment, the data pipeline or process can operate in combination with the data transformation layer to transform data into the model format. The mapping and configuration database can store metadata and data mappings that define the data model used by data transformation. The data and configuration user interface (UI) can facilitate access and changes to the mapping and configuration database. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, based on the data model defined in the mapping and configuration database, the monitoring component can determine dependencies of several different data sets to be transformed. Based on the determined dependencies, the monitoring component can determine which of several different data sets should be transformed to the model format first. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, if a first model dataset includes no dependencies on any other model data set; and a second model data set includes dependencies to the first model data set; then the monitoring component can determine to transform the first data set before the second data set, to accommodate the second data set&#39;s dependencies on the first data set. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data transformation layer can transform extracted data into a format suitable for loading into a customer schema of data warehouse, for example according to the data model as described above. During the transformation, the data transformation can perform dimension generation, fact generation, and aggregate generation, as appropriate. Dimension generation can include generating dimensions or fields for loading into the data warehouse instance. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, dimensions can include categories of data such as, for example, “name,” “address,” or “age”. Fact generation includes the generation of values that data can take, or “measures.” Facts are associated with appropriate dimensions in the data warehouse instance. Aggregate generation includes creation of data mappings which compute aggregations of the transformed data to existing data in the customer schema  164  of data warehouse instance. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, once any transformations are in place (as defined by the data model), the data pipeline or process can read the source data, apply the transformation, and then push the data to the data warehouse instance. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, data transformations can be expressed in rules, and once the transformations take place, values can be held intermediately at the staging area, where the data quality component and data projection components can verify and check the integrity of the transformed data, prior to the data being uploaded to the customer schema at the data warehouse instance. Monitoring can be provided as the extract, transform, load process runs, for example, at a number of compute instances or virtual machines. Dependencies can also be maintained during the extract, transform, load process, and the data pipeline or process can attend to such ordering decisions. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, after transformation of the extracted data, the data pipeline or process can execute a warehouse load procedure  150 , to load the transformed data into the customer schema of the data warehouse instance. Subsequent to the loading of the transformed data into customer schema, the transformed data can be analyzed and used in a variety of additional business intelligence processes. 
     Horizontally and vertically integrated business software applications are generally directed to capturing of data in real time. This is a result of horizontally and vertically integrated business software applications being generally used for daily workflow, and storing data in a transactional database, which means that only the most current data is generally stored in such databases. 
     For example, while a HCM application might update a record associated with an employee when the employee transfers offices, such HCM application would generally not maintain a record of each office that the employee had worked in during their tenure with a company. As such, a BI-related query seeking to determine employee mobility within a company would not have adequate records within the transaction database to complete such a query. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, by storing historical, in addition to current data, generated by the horizontally and vertically integrated business software applications, in a context that is readily understandable by BI applications, the data warehouse instance as populated using the above technique provides a resource for BI applications to process such queries, using an interface provided, for example, by a business productivity and analytics product suite, or by a SQL tool of the customer&#39;s choice. 
     Data Pipeline Process 
       FIG.  2    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     As illustrated in  FIG.  2   , in accordance with an embodiment, data can be sourced, e.g., from a customer&#39;s (tenant&#39;s) enterprise software application or data environment ( 106 ), using the data pipeline process as described above; or as custom data  109  sourced from one or more customer-specific applications  107 ; and loaded to a data warehouse instance, including in some examples the use of an object storage  105  for storage of the data. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data pipeline or process maintains, for each customer (tenant), an analytic applications schema, e.g., as a star schema, that is updated on a periodic or other basis, by the system in accordance with best practices for a particular analytics use case, e.g., human capital management (HCM) analytics, or enterprise resource planning (ERP) analytics. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, for each customer (tenant), the system uses the analytic applications schema that is maintained and updated by the system, within an analytic applications environment (cloud) tenancy  114 , to pre-populate a data warehouse instance for the customer, based on an analysis of the data within that customer&#39;s enterprise applications environment, and within a customer tenancy  117 . As such, the analytic applications schema maintained by the system enables data to be retrieved, by the data pipeline or process, from the customer&#39;s environment, and loaded to the customer&#39;s data warehouse instance in a “live” manner. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the analytic applications environment also provides, for each customer of the environment, a customer schema that is readily modifiable by the customer, and which allows the customer to supplement and utilize the data within their own data warehouse instance. For each customer of the analytic applications environment, their resultant data warehouse instance operates as a database whose contents are partly-controlled by the customer; and partly-controlled by the analytic applications environment (system); including that their database appears pre-populated with appropriate data that has been retrieved from their enterprise applications environment to address various analytics use cases, e.g., HCM analytics, or ERP analytics 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, a data warehouse (e.g., an Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, ADWC) can include an analytic applications schema and, for each customer/tenant, a customer schema sourced from their enterprise software application or data environment. The data provisioned in a data warehouse tenancy (e.g., an ADWC tenancy) is accessible only to that tenant; while at the same time allowing access to various, e.g., ETL-related or other features of the shared analytic applications environment. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, to support multiple customers/tenants, the system enables the use of multiple data warehouse instances; wherein for example, a first customer tenancy can comprise a first database instance, a first staging area, and a first data warehouse instance; and a second customer tenancy can comprise a second database instance, a second staging area, and a second data warehouse instance. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, for a particular customer/tenant, upon extraction of their data, the data pipeline or process can insert the extracted data into a data staging area for the tenant, which can act as a temporary staging area for the extracted data. A data quality component and data protection component can be used to ensure the integrity of the extracted data; for example by performing validations on the extracted data while the data is temporarily held in the data staging area. When the extract process has completed its extraction, the data transformation layer can be used to begin the transformation process, to transform the extracted data into a model format to be loaded into the customer schema of the data warehouse. 
     Extraction, Transformation, Load/Publish 
       FIG.  3    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     As illustrated in  FIG.  3   , in accordance with an embodiment, the process of extracting data, e.g., from a customer&#39;s (tenant&#39;s) enterprise software application or data environment, using the data pipeline process as described above; or as custom data sourced from one or more customer-specific applications; and loading the data to a data warehouse instance, or refreshing the data in a data warehouse, generally involves three broad stages, performed by an ETP service  160  or process, including one or more extraction service  163 ; transformation service  165 ; and load/publish service  167 , executed by one or more compute instance(s)  170 . 
     Extraction: in accordance with an embodiment, a list of view objects for extractions can be submitted, for example, to an Oracle BI cloud connector (BICC) component via a ReST call. The extracted files can be uploaded to an object storage component, such as, for example, an Oracle Storage Service (OSS) component, for storage of the data. 
     Transformation: In accordance with an embodiment, the transformation process takes the data files from object storage component (e.g., OSS), and applies a business logic while loading them to a target data warehouse, e.g., an ADWC database, which is internal to the data pipeline or process, and is not exposed to the customer (tenant). 
     Load/Publish: In accordance with an embodiment, a load/publish service or process takes the data from the, e.g., ADWC database or warehouse, and publishes it to a data warehouse instance that is accessible to the customer (tenant). 
     Multiple Customers (Tenants) 
       FIG.  4    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     As illustrated in  FIG.  4   , which illustrates the operation of the system with a plurality of tenants (customers) in accordance with an embodiment, data can be sourced, e.g., from each of a plurality of customer&#39;s (tenant&#39;s) enterprise software application or data environment, using the data pipeline process as described above; and loaded to a data warehouse instance. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the data pipeline or process maintains, for each of a plurality of customers (tenants), for example customer A  180 , customer B  182 , an analytic applications schema that is updated on a periodic or other basis, by the system in accordance with best practices for a particular analytics use case. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, for each of a plurality of customers (e.g., customers A, B), the system uses the analytic applications schema  162 A,  162 B, that is maintained and updated by the system, to pre-populate a data warehouse instance for the customer, based on an analysis of the data within that customer&#39;s enterprise applications environment  106 A,  106 B, and within each customer&#39;s tenancy (e.g., customer A tenancy  181 , customer B tenancy  183 ); so that data is retrieved, by the data pipeline or process, from the customer&#39;s environment, and loaded to the customer&#39;s data warehouse instance  160 A,  160 B. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the analytic applications environment also provides, for each of a plurality of customers of the environment, a customer schema (e.g., customer A schema  164 A, customer B schema  164 B) that is readily modifiable by the customer, and which allows the customer to supplement and utilize the data within their own data warehouse instance. 
     As described above, in accordance with an embodiment, for each of a plurality of customers of the analytic applications environment, their resultant data warehouse instance operates as a database whose contents are partly-controlled by the customer; and partly-controlled by the analytic applications environment (system); including that their database appears pre-populated with appropriate data that has been retrieved from their enterprise applications environment to address various analytics use cases. When the extract process  108 A,  108 B for a particular customer has completed its extraction, the data transformation layer can be used to begin the transformation process, to transform the extracted data into a model format to be loaded into the customer schema of the data warehouse. 
     Activation Plans 
       FIG.  5    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, activation plans  186  can be used to control the operation of the data pipeline or process services for a customer, for a particular functional area, to address that customer&#39;s (tenant&#39;s) particular needs. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, an activation plan can define a number of extract, transform, and load (publish) services or steps to be run in a certain order, at a certain time of day, and within a certain window of time. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, each customer can be associated with their own activation plan(s). For example, an activation plan for a first Customer A can determine the tables to be retrieved from that customer&#39;s enterprise software application environment (e.g., their Fusion Applications environment), or determine how the services and their processes are to run in a sequence; while an activation plan for a second Customer B can likewise determine the tables to be retrieved from that customer&#39;s enterprise software application environment, or determine how the services and their processes are to run in a sequence. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, activation plans can be stored in the mapping and configuration database and are customizable by the customer via the data and configuration UI. Each customer can have a number of activation plans. Compute instances/services (virtual machines) which execute the ETL process for various customers, according to their activation plans, can be dedicated to a particular service for the use of an activation plan, and then released for use by other services and activation plans. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, based on a determination of historical performance data recorded over a period of time, the system can optimize the execution of activation plans, e.g., for one or more functional areas associated with a particular tenant, or across a sequence of activation plans associated with multiple tenants, to address utilization of the VMs and service level agreements (SLAs) for those tenants. Such historical data can include statistics of load volumes and load times. 
     For example, in accordance with an embodiment, the historical data can include size of extraction, count of extraction, extraction time, size of warehouse, transform time, publish (load) time, view object extract size, view object extract record count, view object extract time, warehouse table count, count of records processed for a table, warehouse table transform time, publish table count, and publish time. Such historical data can be used to estimate and plan current and future activation plans in order to organize various tasks to, such as, for example, run in sequence or in parallel to arrive at a minimum time to run an activation plan. In addition, the gathered historical data can be used to optimize across multiple activation plans for a tenant. In some embodiments, the optimization of activation plans (i.e., a particular sequence of jobs, such as ETLs) based upon historical data can be automatic. 
     ETL Process Flow 
       FIG.  6    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     As illustrated in  FIG.  6   , in accordance with an embodiment, the system enables a flow of data, controlled by a data config/management/ETU/status services  190  within an (e.g., Oracle) managed tenancy, from each customer&#39;s enterprise software application environment (e.g., their Fusion Applications environment), including in this example, a BICC component, via a storage cloud service  192 , e.g., OSS, and from there to a data warehouse instance. 
     As described above, in accordance with an embodiment, the flow of data can be managed by one or more services, including for example, an extract service, and a transform service as described above, and with reference to an ETL repository  193 , that takes the data from the storage cloud service, and loads the data into an internal target data warehouse (e.g., an ADWC database)  194 , which is internal to the data pipeline or process and is not exposed to the customer. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, data is moved in stages into the data warehouse, and thereafter into database table change logs  195 , from where the load/publish service can load the customer data into a target data warehouse instance associated with and accessible by the customer, within its customer tenancy. 
     ETL Stages 
       FIG.  7    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     In accordance with an embodiment, the extracting, transforming and loading data from enterprise applications to a data warehouse instance involves multiple stages, and each stage can have several sequential or parallel jobs; and run on different spaces/hardware, including different staging areas  196 ,  198  for each customer. 
     Analytic Applications Environment Metrics 
       FIG.  8    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     As illustrated in  FIG.  8   , in accordance with an embodiment, the metering manager can include functionality that meters services and usage of services provisioned through the control plane, and provide provisioned metrics  142 . 
     For example, the metering manager can record a usage over time of processors provisioned via the control plane, for particular customers, for billing purposes. Likewise, the metering manager can record an amount of storage space of data warehouse partitioned for use by a customer of the SaaS environment, for billing purposes. 
     Analytic Applications Environment Customization 
       FIG.  9    further illustrates a system for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     As illustrated in  FIG.  9   , in accordance with an embodiment, in addition to data that can be sourced, e.g., from a customer&#39;s enterprise software application or data environment, using the data pipeline process as described above; one or more additional custom data  109 A,  109 B, that is sourced from one or more customer-specific applications  107 A,  107 B, can also be extracted, transformed, and loaded to a data warehouse instance, using either: the data pipeline process as described above, including in some examples the use of an object storage for storage of the data; and/or a custom ETL or other process  144  that is mutable from the customer&#39;s perspective. Once data has been loaded into their data warehouse instance, customers can create business database views that combine tables from both their customer schema and the software analytic application schema; and can query their data warehouse instance using an interface provided, for example, by a business productivity and analytics product suite, or by a SQL tool of the customer&#39;s choice. 
     Analytic Applications Environment Method 
       FIG.  10    illustrates a flowchart of a method for providing an analytic applications environment, in accordance with an embodiment. 
     As illustrated in  FIG.  10   , in accordance with an embodiment, at step  200 , an analytic applications environment provides access to a data warehouse for storage of data by a plurality of tenants, wherein the data warehouse is associated with an analytic applications schema. 
     At step  202 , each tenant of the plurality of tenants is associated with a customer tenancy, and a customer schema for use by the tenant in populating a data warehouse instance. 
     At step  204 , an instance of the data warehouse is populated with data received from an enterprise software application or data environment, wherein data associated with a particular tenant of the analytic applications environment is provisioned in the data warehouse instance associated with, and accessible to, the particular tenant, in accordance with the analytic applications schema and the customer schema associated with the particular tenant. 
     In accordance with various embodiments, the teachings herein may be conveniently implemented using one or more conventional general purpose or specialized computer, computing device, machine, or microprocessor, including one or more processors, memory and/or computer readable storage media programmed according to the teachings of the present disclosure. Appropriate software coding can readily be prepared by skilled programmers based on the teachings of the present disclosure, as will be apparent to those skilled in the software art. 
     In some embodiments, the teachings herein can include a computer program product which is a non-transitory computer readable storage medium (media) having instructions stored thereon/in which can be used to program a computer to perform any of the processes of the present teachings. Examples of such storage mediums can include, but are not limited to, hard disk drives, hard disks, hard drives, fixed disks, or other electromechanical data storage devices, floppy disks, optical discs, DVD, CD-ROMs, microdrive, and magneto-optical disks, ROMs, RAMs, EPROMs, EEPROMs, DRAMs, VRAMs, flash memory devices, magnetic or optical cards, nanosystems, or other types of storage media or devices suitable for non-transitory storage of instructions and/or data. 
     The foregoing description has been provided for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of protection to the precise forms disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to the practitioner skilled in the art. 
     For example, although several of the examples provided herein illustrate operation of an analytic applications environment with an enterprise software application or data environment such as, for example, an Oracle Fusion Applications environment; or within the context of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) or cloud environment such as, for example, an Oracle Analytics Cloud or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure environment; in accordance with various embodiments, the systems and methods described herein can be used with other types of enterprise software application or data environments, cloud environments, cloud services, cloud computing, or other computing environments. 
     The embodiments were chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the present teachings and their practical application, thereby enabling others skilled in the art to understand the various embodiments and with various modifications that are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope be defined by the following claims and their equivalents.