Data Enrichment and Obfuscation in OAC 18.3.3

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The new (September 2018) version of Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) now includes data enrichment functionality. To show a snippet of this in action, we have a small excel file with made up credit card details, a name and an address. We can use both obfuscation and enrichment to enhance and secure this data and then perform some visualisation on the enhanced data.

Firstly, load up the data into a data set.

Let us start by clicking on the credit card number. A list of options in context then appears; in this case ‘Obfuscate’ and ‘Delete’. This is of course a completely made up number as you can guess, but it is recognised as following the correct format of a credit card number (which I believe is the Lunn Algorithm).

Click on ‘Obfuscate’ and then press the ‘tick’ button to select it.

This has the immediate effect of hiding the content of the field whilst retaining the size.

Now click on ‘Forename’ and we see that we can add gender.

Selecting this has the effect of adding a new column called ‘Forename_gender’ which is set to MALE. This is a useful facility for an “indicative” analysis of data should there be a requirement to create an initial binary segregation of genders (so far as that can be achieved by the only reference point being a forename).

Now let us turn our attention to the ‘City’ element of the data we have. This is particularly impressive in terms of the scope of enrichment that can be applied, even so far as Population and Elevation.

We will select the ‘Lat’ and ‘Long’ options which give us the Latitude and Longitude for the town and also the ‘Country’. You can see the Preparation Script being dynamically built up on the left hand side.

Here I have run the ‘Apply Script’ and then created a new project. ( I also went and renamed the initial spreadsheet to something more appropriate).

I will also toggle the Longitute and Latitue columns to be Attributes not Measures so that I can use them in a map.

OK; Let’s select the City and the Lat/Lon and create a map.

Here we see that the Lat/Lon have indeed been calculated and we have ‘Altrincham’ on the map.

Let’s bring in some the other enriched data so we can see that too.

This capability is a really exciting addition to the already powerful capabilities of the OAC suite by adding additional value to the data. It’ll be interesting to see how this capability develops in future releases.

Mark Daynes

Mark's first experience of Oracle was back in the 80's building applications using very early versions of Oracle Forms at Staffordshire University. Upon graduating in 1990 with a First Class B.Sc.(Hons) in Information Systems, he joined Oracle UK's consultancy team working on some of the first Oracle Applications implementations across the UK, eventually working for Oracle Local Government. Over the subsequent years to 2006 he worked in a mainly technical/functional capacity across sectors such as Corporate Banking, Utilities and Public Sector, solely on projects underpinned by Oracle technology. In 2006 he became a founding Director of Beyond Systems where he has honed the focus of the company to be one of enabling public sector customers to achieve excellence with Oracle Business Intelligence, especially Oracle BI Applications sourced from Oracle E-Business. Mark has presented at many joint Oracle/Beyond events as well as contributing his perspectives on the technical/strategic business usages of Oracle to various magazines, the first appearing in ODTUG back in 1995. Outside of business, Mark is a keen musician and plays lead guitar in a covers band and also enjoys sports, especially skiing and golf.