An interviewee (yup, we’re hiring!) recently asked me how to get started with Oracle Analytics. Rather than just answering that person, I thought I would turn this into a blog article for everybody.

There are many resources out there to help you get started with Oracle Analytics, but you kind of need to know where to look. So let me share with you some of the free resources that are out there. This is being written in July 2019, so some of this may change in the future, but here’s some of what is available, at least for now:

1. Udemy – Oracle recently added some free Udemy courses. Set up an account for free and get access to free material to get started.

2. OAC Sandbox – This link will allow you to run real OAC demonstrations without having to sign up for a trial Oracle cloud account. You cannot create your own visualizations, but you can experiment with the visualizations that Oracle has created.

3. Download DVD – Want to run Oracle Analytics on your own PC? Simply download Data Visualization Desktop. The software is free (for non-production use; read the license agreement on Oracle’s web site). This is the same software Oracle sells, but configured to run standalone on a desktop computer.

4. OAC trial – See that button in the corner “Try for free”? That gives you 30 days to run full Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) for free. You won’t come close to burning through the $300 in the first 30 days, so go for it. Yes, some Oracle salesperson will call you – just tell them you’re learning it. Just kill the account before your 30 days is up or create a new account with a new email address, but you’ll need to export out your work to take it to a new environment via a “snapshot”.

5. Synopsis – Oracle Analytics runs on your phone! Think of this as an Excel spreadsheet viewer on your phone that gives you insights about the data in a spreadsheet, Simply open spreadsheet files using Synopsis from your email program. Spreadsheets must be formatted with the first row containing the name of each field/column.

6. Oracle Analytics Library – Oracle has created a library of extensions and demos that they freely give away. There are lots of first-class demonstrations out there and many plugins that you can download to your DVD instance or to your OAC instances.

7. Webcasts on OAC Features – I have recorded a new webinar with just about every significant release of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) or Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) since 2011. Want to know when a feature was introduced? Check out the webinar series. Slides are shared and you can watch the videos.

8. Oracle Analytics Web Page – No list would be complete without listing Oracle’s Analytics Sales page. Yup, it’s a bit salesy, but it has good information about the Oracle Analytics offering. It also links to a recently-updated “Statement of Direction” and the recently-recorded Oracle Analytics Summit Live recording that will give you a glimpse of where Oracle is heading.

OK, that wraps up my starter set of links for getting started. There are of course, lots more resources that you can find by googling various terms, and tons of resources you can get from Oracle Education, but those will cost some bucks, or via the Oracle Partner Program (email me at dvlamis at vlamis dot com for information),

If you have a favorite resource, leave it in the comments and I’ll look at adding it as a resource. Happy learning!