BI PUBLISHER AReporting Tool

Veda

Presentation PathIntroduction to BI publisher.

BI Publisher Reporting Architecture.

Installation and configuration of BI Publisher.

Why BI Publisher.

Process flow.

Migration of Oracle reports to BI Publisher.

BI Publisher Features.

BI Publisher Benefits.

For your Exploration.

Q & A.

Session Objectives Overview of XML/BI Publisher

How to use XML/BI Publisher to create reports.

Understand how Templates and Data Definitions are used to declaratively build reports.

Generate multiple report output formats which includes RTF and PDF.

Highlighting the Significances of BI Publisher over other reporting tools

Introduction to BI publisherOracle BI Publisher provides a new approach to report design and publishing by integrating familiar desktop word processing tools with existing E-Business Suite data reporting.

It is a template-based publishing solution delivered with the Oracle E-Business Suite.

The flexibility of BI Publisher is a result of the separation of the presentation of the report from its data structure.

The collection of the data is still handled by the E-Business Suite, but you can design and control how the report outputs will be presented in separate template files.

At runtime, BI Publisher merges your designed template files with the report data to create a variety of outputs to meet a variety of business needs

Current version of BI Publisher is 5.10.199

Data Sources

Warehouse

Data Marts/Cubes

ReportingE

TL

/ Da

ta F

low

10%

20%

30%

40%

Impact per module for a Solution Architec-

ture Change

Data Sources

Warehouse

Data Mart/CubesReporting

Typical BI Solution Architecture

Primary Components

• Metadata BackboneThe metadata backbone would contain the complete information regarding how the application is structured. It will contain the details for the reports such as the number, name and type of fields in a report. What is the mapping between them and fields in the warehouse etc.

• Dynamic Extract , Transform and Load (ETL) frameworkThe ETL framework uses the metadata base to get complete data flow information such as which tables to pull. Which are the columns and what are their data types? Is there a sequence to pull the data? What is the frequency of the execution etc.

• Dynamic Reporting frameworkThe reporting framework uses the metadata base to obtain all information regarding its reports. All these information is then absorbed by the reporting framework to be displayed on the on screen reports. This can be implemented using SQL Server Reporting Services and Report Builder where the framework can dynamically create RDLs.

• Extensible relational database structuresThe database structures which are stored in the database should be extensible. The ER should be strongly structured. It should facilitate the addition of new database objects and schema. Such as instead of having direct key relationships between tables, have a single repository of relationships in the metadata base.

BI Architecture Components

BI Architecture Benefits• Easy and quick absorption of changes to solution• Automation of change management of the solution• Enabling business users to realize real-time reporting enhancements

Installation and Configuration of BI Publisher

• BI server is installed using the oracle installer• BI client can be install in three versions

o Desktop version called the Template Builder. This is the add-in to Word (2000,2003 & 2007) or Adobe (4.0,5.0 & 6.0) that allows you to build the templates.

o Enterprise version of the desktop BI Publisher from OTN (current version is 10.1.3.4)

o E-Business Suite embedded version as long as you don’t need to use pivot tables.

Why BI Publisher

BI Publisher Process Flow

BI Publisher ComponentsMain Components are

Data Definition : It is source of the data that will be merged with your template layout to create your published report.

Template : It is used to define template layout file , you must assign it a data definition that already exists in the Template Manager. This associates the two at runtime. Multiple templates can use the same data definition.

Administration : Used to customize the behavior of XML Publisher by setting properties in the Administration interface. The Administration interface allows you to:

• Set configuration properties. Create a temporary directory by setting a value for the Temporary directory property.• Define font mappings.• Upload font files.• Define currency formats.

Design and Register Concurrent Program For Generating XML report

• Navigate as Application Object Library >Concurrent->Program->Define • Set Output Format to XML and save• Run the report.• Click on output and save the XML output to a file

Generate .XML Output file

Formatting Tags And Their Usage for-each loop

Define groups to notify XML Publisher to loop through repeating information •Insert the following tag before the first element <?for-each:XML group element tag name?> •Insert the following tag after the last element <?end for-each?> •E.g. The XML group element

Data fields Placeholders map the template field to the XML data field Syntax -< ?XML element tag name?>

Page header/footer• Enclose the body area of the report within the following tags

<?start:body?> <?end body?>

Page numbering• Use Microsoft Word page numbering

Sorting •Insert sort tag within the group •<?sort:element name?>, for example to sort by transaction number –Enter the following after the <?for-each:G_INVOICE?> <?sort:trx_number?> •No end tag •Sort on multiple elements possible, use multiple sort tags –Example: <?sort:trx_number?><?sort:trx_date?>

Page breaksJust before the <?end for-each?> tag either… –Insert a Microsoft Page Break•<Ctrl> + <Enter> •<?split-by-page-break:?>

Calculated fields•Use field names and operand(s)•Example <?field1 + field2?>

Extended functions• Some SQL functions can be used in template eg : RPAD, LPAD, REPLACE etc• Usage is <?xdofx:function_name(params)?>

Conditional logicSupport for IF and CASE statements •IF–<?if:boolean_test?> <?end if?>

• CASE <?choose?> <?when:boolean_test?><?end when?><?otherwise?><?end otherwise?><?end choose?>

Images/logos• Use a table for complete control of image behavior • Static Images

• Paste the image directly into layout template • URL

• Dummy image on template • Specify URL in alternative text section • Double click on image, go to web tab, alternative text field • url:{‘www.myspace.com/xml_example/myimage.gif’}

Dynamic data columns• Dynamic data columns • Dynamic Column Header :<?split-column-header:group element name?> • Dynamic Column Data :<?split-column-data:group element name?>

Template Design In RTFUsing BI plug-in XML tags Ms- Word to design the Template Navigate to DataLoad XML data. Using .xml file generate using the concurrent program you registered.

Navigate to InsertField / Table /Form to map the data

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Design the Layout

Register Data Definition

Register Template

Submitting XML /BI publisher report.Navigate to the responsibility in which you have attached the report.Submit the report : Invoice Register to XML

You have two options when creating the form fields in Adobe:

1. Create the fields with your own “friendly” names. If you choose this option, you must map them to the XML elements in your concurrent request’s XML file. 2. Create fields with the same names as the XML elements in your concurrent request’s output XML file. For this option mapping is not required.

For those PDF templates that do not contain fields, you must use the full Adobe Acrobat product to add the fields.

Registering a template in the Template Manager

You can upload multiple templates for different language/territory combinations. For PDF templates, the Template Manager provides the option to enable mapping of the template fields to the data. The mapping page presents you with a list of the template field names and a drop down list of the data source field names from which to choose the appropriate element from the XML file

Design Template In PDF

PDF Documents

• Custom-ready PDF documents such as financial statements, marketingmaterials, contracts, invoices, and purchase orders utilizing colors, images, fontstyles, headers and footers, and many other formatting and design options.

• Filled-out" third-party provided PDF documents. You can download a PDFdocument, such as a government form, to use as a template for your report. Atruntime, the data and template produce a "filled-out" form

• PDF template is appropriate for forms that will have a fixed layout, such as invoices or purchase orders

Adobe Form Fields Embedded In The Document

XML Publisher provides a mapping facility to map these fields to the XML elements in your concurrent request data. When you register a PDF template in the Template Manager you are given the option to Enable Mapping for the template.

For those PDF templates that do not contain fields, you must use the full Adobe Acrobat product to add the fields

Registering a template in the Template Manager

Migrating Oracle reports to BI Publisher

Pre-requisites

1. During the conversion process, the source reports must eventually be in Oracle reports xml format.Oracle reports xml format is supported in oracle reports9i and above.

If your source reports are not in Oracle Reports XML format the conversion utility will do this conversion automatically. However , this requires Oracle reports designer 9i or later on the same machine where you will do the conversion so that the oracle BI Publisher conversion utility can call the rwconverter executable to get the reports into Oracle Reports XML format

If you are an EBS11i customer your oracle reports will be version 6i these need to be converted to at least the 9i version. So you will need to install 9i or above somewhere on your system that is accessible

2. Conversion libraries added to the classpath- collections zip- xml parserv2-904.jar-xdocore.jar-aolj.jar

These can all be found on your BI server install under&j2ee_home/applications/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/WEB_INF/lib

3 . JDK version The documentation states that you need at at least JDB 1.1.8 . Use the version you have installed with your J2EE container.

Convert The Oracle Report To XML Report By Using Utility In Oracle Reports 9i

Using Conversion.bat File To Generate Objects

Now we have either our rdf file or the converted xml file. We can run the converter. The converter can process multiple report files, it just needs to be pointed to a directory that contains the reports and it will process all of them in a batch. Looking at the batch file above

Line1 : Calls the java executable this should be the java.exe in the jdk used for the the j2ee container in which you are running the bip server

Line2 : This sets the Classpath parameter to the libraries mentioned in the pre-requisities. Here I have relative paths because i copied the libraries into a lib directory under the directory where the rdf file is located

Line3 : Is the call to the provided conversion class

Line4: This defines the source directory for the rdf or rdf xml files

Line 5 : This defines the output directory for the generated BIP files. Each processed report will have its own directory

Line 6: This specifies the directory location of the oracle reports home. this is not requiredif you have already converted the rdf files to the rdf xml it finishes with a debug flag.

Executing The Conversion.bat File

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Files Generated After Conversion

.RTF File Generated After Conversion.

Modifying Using BI Plug-in Ms-Word Features And XSL-FO Language

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Using Enterprise Version Can Define The Data Template

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Using Enterprise Version Define The Template

Generate The Output

BI Publisher Features• The majority of all BI Publisher templates are RTF templates.

• Very popular because end users can change the format in Microsoft Word.

• An Microsoft-Word Add-On - the Template Builder for Word is available in the BI Publisher Desktop application.

• PDF forms can be modified to map XML data fields to PDF form fields.

• Government forms are often provided as PDF forms and can be easily filled out with BI Publisher.

• Adobe Flash templates can be used to format data in an interactive attractive way.

• BI Publisher converts RTF documents into XSL-FO style sheets and allows to insert XSL-FO commends into RTF templates. Hence there is less need to code the complete stylesheet manually.

• Third party XSL-FO editor can be used to create XSL-FO style sheets for BI Publisher

BI Publisher Benefits• Create ONE template for any of 185 languages and 244 territories• Single Global Instance – Translated User Interface• BI Publisher ships with full set of Unicode Fonts• No need for expensive language-specific printers• BI Publisher is alone in supporting Chinese, Japanese, Korean• Bidirectional Languages• Unicode• Multiple Language Support.

For your Exploration• XML Technologies such as XML, XSD, XSL, XPATH.• Multi-Language/Translation Support Architecture.• BI Publisher Java Developer.

Q & A

Thank You!