eRewards(r) Uses Oracle to Deliver Targeted Online Market Research

eRewards, Inc., the leading provider of online market research, relies on an Oracle(r) Database infrastructure to conduct online market research. With an opinion panel of more than three million members, eRewards uses a family of Oracle Database products as the foundation for its online transaction processing (OLTP) and data warehouse systems to achieve a positive member experience and fast, accurate results for clients.
As the industry’s first “by-invitation-only” consumer opinion panel, eRewards uses Oracle Database 10g to power its program which rewards members for the time they spend answering online surveys that have been selected to match their interests, demographics, and life circumstances. Through this program, members earn e-Rewards currency, which can be redeemed for a variety of rewards including dining, entertainment, travel and retail rewards. To process its influx of data, eRewards depends on Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Automatic Storage Management, Oracle Data Guard and Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g.

At the heart of eRewards’ Web site is a powerful OLTP system supported by Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Real Application Clusters for online interaction with eRewards members. Complementing eRewards’ OLTP systems is a multi-terabyte data warehouse also running on Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters. eRewards uses the flexibility of Oracle Data Guard, traditionally a disaster recovery feature, to keep its data warehouse up-to-date with the latest information captured by the OLTP system. The data warehouse is used to manage survey panels and provide valuable real-time analysis and reporting captured from member response data. Additionally, eRewards uses Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g to design, build and populate its data warehouse and business intelligence systems.

“We evaluated competitive offerings and nothing could match the combination of functionality, performance, manageability and the cost structure offered by Oracle,” said Joel Davis, Senior Vice President of Technology, eRewards. “Near real-time synchronization of our data warehouse with our OLTP system enables eRewards to more effectively scale our environment to meet the needs of members, clients, and employees.”

Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture Powers eRewards
Oracle’s Maximum Availability Architecture, a best practices blueprint for implementing highly available systems that scale, is used by eRewards to protect its unique business model. Oracle Real Application Clusters and Oracle Automatic Storage Management efficiently protect and scale servers and storage to meet current and future processing needs. Oracle Data Guard SQL Apply (logical standby) keeps eRewards’ data warehouse and OLTP systems synchronized, isolating eRewards’ Web site from performance overheads of near real-time reporting, data loading, and workflow processes at the core of its business. This also frees the data warehouse from competing with system resources required to support the OLTP system, yielding performance improvements of 50 to 95 percent in most batch processing operations, and making up-to-date information continuously available to support internal operations. Information on Oracle’s Maximum Availability Architecture is available at: http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/htdocs/maa.htm

About eRewards, Inc.
eRewards, Inc., headquartered in Dallas, TX, was launched in 2000 as the first “by-invitation-only” research panel to serve the market research industry. With over 3.6 million panel members, the e Rewards opinion panels provide high quality respondents--enabling researchers to reach and engage targeted consumers and business decision makers. Today, the company provides global online market research services to a majority of the top market research firms in the world. For more information, visit: http://www.e-rewards.com/researchers.

About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world’s largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at: http://www.oracle.com .