\The Q4 issue of SELECT Journal is now available on the IOUG website. This issue focuses on Business Intelligence, which, as IOUG President Andrew Flower puts it in his message, is the "process of translating data into a meaningful way of connecting the dots to drive business insight." An exciting message from Executive Editor April Sims does a great job of detailing SELECT Journal's newest features, including: Quick Study, a peek into the minds of IOUG volunteers; PowerTips, a sprinkling of useful theme-related tips; and a full list of issue reviewers included in the Table of Contents. April also announces the upcoming journal themes for 2012 and calls for writers on topics that vary from SQL plan management to hardening FMW11g. If you are interested in writing on either of those or any other Oracle-related topic, email select@ioug.org.

In addition to the thrilling journal extras, there are five robust articles relating to the Business Intelligence topic. Abhinav Banerjee kicks off the issue with a feature called "Understanding Oracle BI Components and Repository Modeling Basics." Jim Czuprynski and Marc Fielding delve into the intricate world of Exadata, Ahmed Aboulnaga explains to best way to upgrade to Oracle SOA Suite 11g, and Jonathan Lewis answers the question "How do you access data efficiently if there's no perfect index?" in his article titled "Beating the Optimizer."