by Kurt Wolff
When you duplicate a table, you create a new physical table with a new name. If this table is involved in a query, the SQL FROM clause will list this table. If the table does not exist in the database, then an error will occur.
Creating an alias creates a copy of the metadata table object that will be referenced in SQL with a new alias name. The alias name in SQL, as it is for all tables, will be derived its metadata ID.
To see the table IDs in OBIEE metadata, use the Oracle BI Query Repository utility. Here are some physical tables (and aliases) in a repository that I’ve created. It’s the last five digits of the ID that will be used to create the table aliases in SQL.


