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Goal After completing this topic, you should be able to: Define and describe business intelligence Describe the features and functions of Oracle BI Answers Describe the features and functions of Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards Describe the features and functions of Oracle BI Delivers Describe the features and functions of Oracle BI Server The Importance of Oracle Business Intelligence Typically, organizations track and store large amounts of data about products, customers, prices, contacts, activities, assets, opportunities, employees, and other elements. This data is often spread across multiple databases in different locations with different versions of database software. After the data has been organized and analyzed, it can provide an organization with the metrics to measure the state of its business. This data can also present key indicators of changes in market trends and in employee, customer, and partner behavior. Oracle Business Intelligence helps you obtain, view, and analyze your data to achieve these goals.
However, having data is not the same as having information. The challenge is in deriving answers to business questions from the available data. This wealth of data can yield critical information about a business, so that decision makers at all levels can respond quickly to changes in the business climate. Aggregating data into levels at which patterns can emerge, ordering levels into hierarchies to support drilling down and up through the levels, and using analytic functions (such as lag, moving total, and year-to-date) are among the techniques used to transform data into information. This informationcommonly called business intelligencecan provide a significant edge in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Business intelligence provides users with the data and tools they need to answer questions that are important to running the part of the business for which they are responsible. With business intelligence, users are able to interact with information and analyze it. The information and tools help users delve into the data in a meaningful way so that they can answer important business questions, determine causes of good and bad performance, analyze trends, and so on. With this analysis, users can develop plans to take corrective actions and tune the business. Business intelligence provides answers to basic questions such as: "What are my top five products?" "How do my sales this year compare with sales last year?" "What is the three-month moving average of my sales?" Business intelligence can also answer more probing analytical questions such as: "Why are sales down in this region?" "What can we predict for sales next quarter?" "What factors can we alter to improve the sales forecast?" "How will our margins improve if we run this promotion?" Answering these questions requires an analysis of past performance, so that key decision makers can set a course for their businesses that will improve future performance, provide a more competitive edge, and thus enhance profitability.
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Oracle BI EE) is a comprehensive and integrated suite of analytic tools designed to bring greater business visibility and insight to the broadest audience of users, allowing any user in an organization to have Web-based, self-service access to up-to-the-moment, relevant, and actionable intelligence. Oracle BI EE consists of several products that can be used together or independently. This course focuses on the following key components of Oracle BI EE: Oracle BI Answers is a powerful, ad hoc query and analysis tool that works against a logical view of information from multiple data sources in a pure Web environment. Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards are interactive Web pages that display personalized, role-based information to guide users to precise and effective decisions. Oracle BI Delivers is an alerting engine used to capture and distribute notifications via multiple channels in response to predefined business events to speed up decision making. Oracle BI Server is a highly scalable query and analysis server that efficiently integrates data from multiple relational, unstructured, OLAP, and prepackaged application sources, both Oracle and nonOracle. Click here to see an architecture diagram of these and other Oracle BI EE components.
information and easily create charts, pivot tables, reports, gauges, and dashboards, all of which are interactive and drillable and can be saved, shared, modified, formatted, or embedded in your personalized dashboard or on the enterprise portal.
Marketing, Sales, or Inventory. Upon selecting a specific subject area, you see a set of semantic business objects that define the business terms against which you can build queries for calculation or analysis. Oracle BI Answers: Example For example, if you choose the Sales subject area, you may find items such as Gross Revenue, Net Revenue, Net Revenue % Change vs. Last Year, or Net Revenue Rank. You can select these items and transform them into columns in an analysis. For example, selecting objects named Region, Revenue, and Current Month creates a calculation such as "Show me the revenue for each region during the current month." As you select these items, Oracle BI Answers builds a query. This query is referred to as logical SQL, because it expresses the logical content of the request. This logical query is sent to Oracle BI Server, which interprets the logical query and creates subsequent physical queries to the underlying data sources where the data is stored. The results are returned to you for analysis and interpretation.
Oracle BI Answers features enable you to view, analyze, and share data. Data Storage Independence Oracle BI Answers eliminates the need for you to understand how the physical data is stored. For example, you can easily build queries for revenue data for a specific month without knowing in what table the revenue data for the current month is stored. Measures can be selected with a single click even if the information is stored in two separate physical databases. Oracle BI Answers also eliminates the need for you to understand business rules, for instance, how revenue is calculated. Measures are precalculated in the underlying business model. Data Visualization Oracle BI Answers enables you to view data in several ways, including tables, charts, gauges, or pivoted tables, and to combine multiple views in a compound view layout. Sharing Analysis Analyses, once constructed, can be saved for personal use or published for use by a wider audience. Saved analyses can be modified without limit. Saved Analysis Measures, descriptive attributes, filters, sorting patterns, subtotals, charts, and pivot table views can be added, deleted, or changed. After you make the changes, you can save the new analysis and share it with a group of users. Ad hoc Analysis Because the analytic process is often iterativeselect measures, add filters, examine results, add new columns, change filters, delete columns, and so onOracle BI Answers does not impose a prescribed order in which calculations are defined, such as measures first, attributes second, and filters third. Personalization
Oracle BI Answers automatically filters and personalizes information for a user based on the users identity or role.
Oracle BI Dashboards are easy to build and use. You can build Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards without any involvement from an information technology specialist and without any programming. You create dashboard pages and select and organize content using a Webbased dashboard editor. To add content to a Web page, you simply drag content from a Web catalog in the left panel of the editor. The Web catalog is a listing of all saved content: prompts, analyses, and dashboard pages. After a dashboard is built, you and other users interact with the dashboard by selecting prompted values and filtering data; clicking charts or tables to drill down to more detail; changing the sort order or sort direction of columns; clicking to move within context to a different analysis by passing constraints automatically with the click; or even selecting different columns to display.
Dashboards are flexible information containers. In addition to business intelligence content created with Oracle BI Answers, you can embed a corporate portal, a Web page or image on the Internet or intranet, a Word document, or even an Excel workbook.
Dashboards can be saved and distributed for offline use as Briefing Books or Reports. Data on dashboards can be downloaded to Excel. Saved Selections Users can modify analyses on dashboards and save the modifications for their own use. Dashboard specifications are stored in a secure catalog on a Web server. Changing Styles Dashboards follow cascading style sheet standards. It is possible to modify dashboard styles by changing these style sheets, even providing different styles or skins to different groups of users.
You can receive notifications and alerts from the business intelligence infrastructure that is monitoring your organization and can take action quickly and effectively.
Is completely insulated from changes in source tables and database platforms Immediately becomes aggregate aware Automatically takes advantage of the built-in security and connection pooling of Oracle BI Server Can use all the measures and columns of a subject area as if they were stored in a single simple database schema
modify Oracle BI requests. Oracle BI Answers provides answers to business questions. It allows you to explore and interact with information, and present and visualize information using charts, pivot tables, and reports. You can save, organize, and share the results. You can also integrate Oracle BI Answers' requests with other content in Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards.
When you click a subject area in the workspace to create a request, the selection pane changes to show the columns and filters for that subject area that you can include in a request, and the workspace displays the tabs for working with requests.
Criteria
Provides access to the columns selected for the request, and buttons to select the most common view types Enables you to work with the results of the request
Results
Prompts Enables you to create prompts to filter the request Advanced Enables advanced users to work with the XML and logical SQL for the request Each tab contains on-screen information and buttons to help you create, access, and manage requests.
Creating a Request
To create a new request, click a subject area on the Answers start page, or click the New Request button located at the top of the Catalog tab in the selection pane, and when you are working with a request, in the upper-right corner of the workspace. Creating a new request clears any previous request from the workspace, and allows you to continue working with the same subject area. The subject area for the request appears in the selection pane, together with its columns. Columns are typically organized into folders that are meaningful to your users. Expand the folders and click the column names to add them to a request. In this example, the Orders subject area is selected. It contains four folders: Customers, Periods, Products, and Sales Facts. The Customers and Sales Facts folders are expanded to display the columns. Four columns are added to the request: the Region column from the Customers folder and the Dollars, Units Ordered, and Units Shipped columns from the Sales Facts folder.
Changing the
Saving a Request
Requests are saved in folders and folders are either personal or shared. To save a request, click the Save Request button.
In the Save Request dialog box, select a personal or shared folder to save the request in. To create a new folder, click the Create Folder button. In the Name field, enter a name for the request. In the Description field, enter a description, which appears when users move the cursor over the saved request in Answers. Click OK to save the request.
When a request is saved in one of the personal folders, only the owner can access it. When it is saved in a shared folder, any user with permission to access that folder can access it. The top-level personal folder is called My Folders. Every user with a unique username has a folder called My Folders.
When you make a selection from the selection pane, such as clicking a saved request, your selection appears in the workspace so you can work with it. To view saved requests organized by dashboard, click the Dashboards tab in the selection pane. To search for a saved request, enter all or part of its name in the Search text box, and then click the Search button. Search results are listed in the workspace.
The Column Properties button enables you to edit the format for a column, such as the table and column headings, the number of decimal places, the alignment, and so on. The Edit Formula button also enables you to change the table and column headings as well as any formula that was applied to the column. Formulas are functions and conditional expressions that present search results in a variety of ways. The Add Filter button enables you to create a filter for the column. The filter is translated into a WHERE clause in the SELECT statement that will be issued to Oracle Business Intelligence Server. The Remove Column button deletes the column from the request. The Order By button specifies the order in which results should be returned, ascending or descending. You can order results by more than one column. If you choose more than one column, a different image appears on the icon indicating primary and secondary sorting.
Sorting Columns
You can specify the sort order for one or more columns that appear in a request. When you click the Order By button, it shows a new image to indicate the sort order that the selected column will apply to the results. The image of two arrowsone pointing up, the other pointing downindicates that the selected column will not be used to sort the results. The image of an up arrow indicates that the results will be sorted in ascending order, using the items in the selected column.
A number that appears on an Order By button indicates that the column is not the primary sort column applied to the results. The number corresponds to when the sort order is applied. In this example, which shows an up arrow with the number 2, the column is used as the second sort order column. The up arrow indicates that the results are sorted in ascending order, using the items in the selected column. The image of a down arrow indicates that the results will be sorted in descending order, using the items in the selected column. A number that appears on an Order By button indicates that the column is not the primary sort column applied to the results. The number that appears corresponds to when the sort order is applied. In this example, which shows a down arrow with the number 2, the column is used as the second sort order column. The down arrow indicates that the results are sorted in descending order, using the items in the selected column.
Your selections apply only to the contents of the column for the request with which you are working, unless you save the changes as the systemwide default for the column object or the data type.
You also can control the interaction for column headings and values, such as drill down to next level values, and navigation to other requests. Your selections apply only to the contents of the column for the request with which you are working unless you save the changes as the systemwide default for the column object or the data type.
formats.
For example, you can show below-quota sales figures in a certain color, or display an image such as a trophy next to the name of each salesperson who exceeds quota by a certain percent. Click here to see an example.
For detailed explanations of an available function, click the Function button and select the desired function in the Insert Function dialog box. Syntax and a description are displayed.
To apply a function to an expression in the Column Formula window, select the expression in the Column Formula field before applying the function using the Insert Function dialog box. Click the Filters button to build column filters in your formula. You can create filters on a column by selecting them in the selection pane on the left. Click the Column button to quickly access columns that are already included in your request criteria for use in your formula. You can also select columns from the Answers selection pane to add them to your formula.
Defining Variables
You can call variables or declare Presentation variables in your column formulas. Click the Edit Formula button for a column to open the Edit Column Formula dialog box,
To call a session or repository variable, click the Variable button, select Session or Repository, and enter the name of the variable. You must know the name of a Session or Repository variable. A drop-down list is not provided. To declare a Presentation variable, click Variable > Presentation and enter a variable name and optional default value.
Server. The WHERE clause is used to limit the rows returned to those that fit the specified constraints. Advanced users can include SQL expressions and presentation, session, and repository variables to define or limit the value. To reference a variable, use the following syntax: @<variable_name>. Filters can be grouped (a capability called parenthetical filtering) to create complex filters without requiring you to know SQL. The filter is translated into a WHERE clause in the SQL SELECT statement that is issued to Oracle Business Intelligence Server. The WHERE clause is used to limit the rows returned to those that fit the specified constraints. Advanced users can a SQL statement for a filter directly. Filters can be saved to be used with other requests. Click here to see an example.
. . . you see data for the sales districts in the central region:
This topic describes the following Oracle BI Enterprise Edition architecture components and their relationships: Oracle Business Intelligence Clients Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Catalog Oracle Business Intelligence Server Oracle Business Intelligence Repository Oracle Business Intelligence Scheduler Data Sources
Oracle Business Intelligence clients enable users to access, modify, and analyze business intelligence information. In earlier lessons, you learned about Answers, Dashboards, and Delivers. This lesson introduces two new clients: Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool and Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration.
Issuing SQL Reloading files and metadata Note that Answers, Delivers, Dashboards, and Presentation Services Administration are all examples of clients that provide access to business intelligence information via a Web browser. The Administration Tool is a Windows application.
Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services generates the user interface in Oracle Answers and Interactive Dashboards used to visualize the data from Oracle BI Server. It interacts with Oracle BI Server as an ODBC client and provides a number of important services: Generates the Answers and Dashboards user interface Responds to user selections, generates logical SQL for Oracle BI Server, and caches logical SQL statements and their results Records the specifications the user makes about how data should be presented and interacts with the charting engine to create charts Pivots and aggregates data after Oracle BI Server generates the
result set For example, when a user's Answers session begins, Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services submits the user's identity (either username/password or some other token) to Oracle BI Server; authenticates the user; and then requests Oracle BI Server to provide the "databases," "tables," and "columns" that the user is entitled to use. These objects are displayed in the Answers' user interface as subject areas, folders, and columns. Oracle BI Server also provides metadata information to Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services about column properties such as data types, aggregation rules, and whether or not the user can drill on the column. Each of these elements also affect how data is displayed in the user interface.
Pure Web Environment Oracle BI Presentation Services provides a rich interactive user experience within a 100% pure Web environment based on HTML, DHTML, and JavaScript. No client downloads, plug-ins, Active-X controls, or applets are required. This allows you to define new analyses and create new queries by clicking a logical model of information you see in your browser.
Logical SQL Generation Oracle BI Presentation Services enables you to visually define queries within the Answers and Dashboard interfaces by presenting a visual picture of the query as you select and manipulate columns and add filters to the query. After you submit the query, Oracle BI Presentation Services sends logical SQL to Oracle BI Server. User Interface Personalization When you personalize the structure of your Answers or Dashboard user interface, including defining views, layout specification, properties of individual charts, tables, and pivot tables, Oracle BI Presentation Services stores these personalization definitions in a metadata catalog called Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Catalog as an XML Schema that includes metadata about the user interface and security information such as users, groups, and roles. Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Catalog Administration Oracle BI Presentation Services provides a pure browser-based administration tool to administer an Oracle BI Presentation Catalog. Administrators can control which users can access what dashboards; set user privileges; create and manage groups and roles; change group membership lists; rename or delete catalog folders and saved analyses, and view and manage sessions. Web Services Interface Oracle BI Presentation Services offers a programming interface using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The SOAP API can be used to build a custom user interface or to embed Oracle BI functionality within existing applications. This API can be used to start and manage Web sessions; retrieve results from Oracle BI Presentation Services in XML format; embed Oracle BI Presentation Services results in third-party, dynamic Web pages and portal frameworks, including Oracle Portal and any other JSR-168/WSRP compliant portals; merge report parameters and logical SQL to create analyses and return results; and navigate and manage Oracle BI Presentation Catalog. Performance and Scalability Oracle BI Presentation Services enables Web servers to be clustered for scalability. If Web server processing capacity becomes a bottleneck to system performance, an administrator can configure multiple Analytic Web
and HTTP servers. A variety of load-balancing facilities are supported to distribute user sessions and maintain session affinity with the HTTP server it selected for that session.
Presentation Catalog
The Presentation Catalog holds the content created with Oracle BI Answers, Oracle BI Delivers, Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards, and other Analytics-based applications. Content is organized into folders that are either shared or personal. Types of content that can be stored in the catalog include requests and results from Oracle BI Answers, dashboard prompts, and items created using Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards Editor, such as HTML content, plain text, and links to other images, documents, and sites.
Oracle BI Server
Oracle BI Server is the core server behind Oracle Business Intelligence. It is an optimized query engine that receives analytical requests, intelligently accesses multiple physical data sources, generates SQL to query data in the data sources, and then structures the results to satisfy the requests. It also handles requests from a variety of front ends, including Oracle BI applications as well as third-party tools. Oracle BI Server enables a single information request to query multiple data sources, providing information access to members of the enterprise and, in Web-based applications, to suppliers, customers, prospects, or any authorized user with Web access. Oracle BI Server serves as a portal to structured data that resides in one or more data sources: multiple data marts, an enterprise data warehouse, an operational data store, transaction system databases, personal databases, and so on. Transparent to both end users and query tools, Oracle BI Server functions as the integrating component of a complex decision support system by acting as a layer of abstraction and unification over the underlying databases. This offers users a simplified query environment in which users can ask business questions that span information sources across the enterprise and beyond. At a simplified level, the internal layers of Oracle BI Server have two primary functions: (1) compiling incoming query requests into executable code, and (2) executing the code. Clients of Oracle BI Server see a logical schema view independent of the source physical database schemas. Oracle BI Server clients submit simplified logical SQL, which ultimately gets translated by Oracle BI Server to some combination of physical SQL sent to the back-end databases, in addition to intermediate processing within the Oracle BI Server execution engine. In addition, Oracle BI Server also has necessary server infrastructure such as session and query management,
Oracle BI Repository
Oracle BI Server uses metadata stored in a central repository to direct its processing. This provides a centralized, consistent definition of Oracle BI metadata objects for all users. Should the definition of a metadata object change, it needs to be changed only in one place and all analyses automatically use the new definition. Repository files have an .rpd extension and are stored by default in the \Oracle BI\server\Repository directory where the Oracle BI software is installed. From this directory, repository files are loaded by Oracle BI server, or they can be opened for editing. To open repository files for editing, you can double-click the file in this directory or open the file using the Administration Tool. A repository can be opened in the Administration Tool in two modes: offline or online.
Offline Mode
Opening a repository in offline mode means that Oracle BI Server is not started and the repository is not loaded into its memory. Offline mode is typically used for development. The repository is modified, saved, and then loaded at the next Oracle BI Server startup. It is possible to use multiuser checkout for projects with many developers.
Online Mode
Opening a repository in online mode means that Oracle BI Server is started and the repository is loaded into its memory. Because Oracle BI Server may be processing queries while you are editing the repository in online mode, you must check out objects before editing them. After the objects have been edited, you can check them in again. When you have finished editing and checking in the changes, you can save the changes by saving the repository file and the changes become active. Users can still access the repository while changes are being made in online mode. For a repository to be loaded into memory on Oracle BI Server startup, it must be identified in the repository section of the NQSConfig.ini file.
Oracle BI Server administrators use Oracle BI Administration Tool to build, manage, and maintain repositories. The Administration Tool has a graphical user interface that exposes an Oracle BI repository into three separate panes called layers. Click each layer for more information.
Oracle BI Server administrators use the Administration Tool to: Import metadata from databases and other data sources into the Physical layer Simplify and reorganize the imported metadata into business models in the Business Model and Mapping layer Structure the business model for presentation to users who request business intelligence information via Oracle BI clients, such as Oracle BI Answers and Intelligence Dashboards, in the Presentation layer Each layer has a tree structure of metadata objects. You can expand a higher-level object to see the objects it contains. You can double-click an object to view its properties. These layers are not visible to the end user.
Data sources are the physical sources where the business data is stored. They can be in any format, including transactional databases, online analytical processing databases, text files, XML for Analysis (XMLA), spreadsheets, and so on. A connection to the data source is created and then used by Oracle BI Server. The data source connection can be defined to use native drivers or ODBC. SQL is generated by Oracle BI Server against the data sources using the data source connection, information from the repository, and database-specific parameters stored in a DBFeatures.ini file. Thus, Oracle BI Server is not just a SQL generator. It figures out the best source and the optimal way to access data. In some cases, Oracle BI Server takes on operations that are more efficient for it to do rather than the host data source.
Oracle BI Scheduler
Oracle BI Scheduler is an extensible scheduling application for scheduling reports to be delivered to Oracle BI users at specified times. Scheduler is the engine behind the iBots feature of Oracle BI Delivers and is used by the Job Manager feature of Oracle BI Server Administration Tool. The primary purpose of Oracle BI Scheduler is to manage and schedule jobs. Scheduler activities are linked with the activities of Oracle BI Presentation Services and Oracle BI Server. Scheduler is configured through the Analytics Server Administration Tool. Messages to and from Scheduler pass through Oracle BI Presentation Services.
1. User views a dashboard or submits a request. 2. Oracle BI Presentation Services makes a request to Oracle BI Server to retrieve the requested data.
3. Oracle BI Server, using the repository file, optimizes functions to request the data from the data sources. 4. Oracle BI Server receives the data from the data sources and processes as necessary. 5. Oracle BI Server passes the data to Oracle BI Presentation Services. 6. Oracle BI Presentation Services formats the data and sends it to the client.
dashboard.
2. In the Activities section, click the Manage Interactive Dashboards link. The Manage Dashboards page appears.
3. Click Create Dashboard. The Create Dashboard page appears. Enter a shared folder location and name for the dashboard, and the name of the user or group that can modify the dashboard.
4. Click Finished. The dashboard appears in the list of dashboards for the assigned folder.
5. Click Finished, exit Oracle BI Presentation Services Administration, and navigate to Oracle BI Dashboards. The name of the new dashboard appears at the top of the screen.
such as the width in pixels or as a percentage of the dashboard page, cell and border properties, and so on. To add a new column to a dashboard, perform the following steps: 1. Click the Add Column button near the top of the Dashboard Editor. The column is added to the dashboard page.
2. To set the properties of a column, click the Properties button and set column properties as desired:
Link or Image
You can add text links and image links to a dashboard, and specify what should happen when a user clicks them. For example, you can direct users to another Web site or dashboard, open documents, launch applications, or perform any other action that your browser supports. You can also add an image or text only, without any links.
Embedded Content
Embedded content is any content that appears within a window (called a frame) inside the dashboard, as opposed to content that is accessed by clicking a link. Content that you may want to embed includes reports, Excel charts, documents, Web sites, tickers from Web sites, and so on.
Folder
You can add a view of a Presentation Catalog folder and its contents, such as saved requests, to a dashboard. For example, if you have a collection of saved requests that you run frequently, you can open the folder in the dashboard, navigate to a saved request, and click it to run it.
Briefing Book
If your organization licensed Oracle BI Briefing Books, you can store a static snapshot of dashboard pages or individual requests in one or more briefing books. You can then download and share briefing books for viewing offline. Briefing Book navigation links are for use with briefing books in Mobile Oracle BI. For dashboard pages that are saved in briefing books, use the Briefing Book navigation link object to include navigation links to other requests or dashboard content for use in offline analysis.
You can add content that you or someone else has already saved in a shared folder or dashboard, such as saved filters and requests. To locate the content, you can browse by either the Presentation Catalog folder it is stored in or the dashboard it appears on.
Controlling Display of
Drill Results
You can control how results display when a user drills on request results in a dashboard. When a user drills on a report, you can show the new results in one of the following ways: Show the new results directly in the dashboard, replacing the original report. This is the default behavior. The area occupied by the original report resizes automatically to hold the new results. Replace the entire dashboard with the new results. This is controlled by the Drill in Place option. This option is set at the section level, which means that it applies to all drillable reports within the section. The user can click the browser's Back button to return to the original report or the dashboard. To control how results display when a user drills, perform the following steps: 1. Click the Properties button for the section. 2. To show the new results directly in the dashboard, click Drill in Place to select it. A check mark appears next to this option when it is selected. This is the default behavior.
3. To show the new results in a new window, click Drill in Place again to remove the check mark.
settings include: Hiding the dashboard Setting a default style Providing a description of the dashboard Hiding dashboard pages Renaming, deleting, or reordering pages Controlling access to pages
When you are done, click the Finished button to return to the Dashboard Editor.
Saving a Dashboard
To save changes to a dashboard page, you can click the Save button you are working on in the Dashboard Editor. or leave the page
For example, your changes to a dashboard page are saved if you add or edit another page, change dashboard properties, or modify another object, such as a filter or a request. When you use the Save button to save your changes, you automatically leave the Dashboard Editor and are returned to the dashboard where you can verify your work:
Topic Summary
This topic introduced you to some of the key components of Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboard, which is a page in an Oracle BI application that is used to display the results of Oracle BI requests and other kinds of content. Click here to see the sample dashboard created by all of the steps in this lesson. Click here to see a demonstration of the steps. Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards provide personalized views of corporate and external information. A dashboard consists of one or more pages, which appear as tabs across the top of the dashboard. Pages can display anything that you can access or open with your Web browser, such as saved Oracle BI requests, alerts from Oracle BI Delivers, images, charts, tables, text, and links to Web sites and documents.
In this topic, you should have learned how to: Describe the role of Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard as an integrated component of the Oracle Business Intelligence solution Create, view, modify, and save an Interactive Dashboard
are software-based agents driven by schedule or events that can access, filter, and perform analytics on data based upon defined criteria. iBots provide proactive delivery of real-time, personalized, and actionable intelligence throughout the business network. iBots provide intelligence from data spanning operational and analytical sources. The result is information that is timely, complete, and in context. Upon detection of a problem or opportunity, iBots can determine the appropriate individuals to notify and deliver information to them through a wide range of devices (such as e-mail, pager, PDA, mobile phones, and so on). Content and capabilities are automatically optimized for each recipient's device. iBots can also pass information and context to other iBots and applications, allowing automation of multistep, multiperson analytic processes. An alert is the personalized and actionable content delivered as a result of iBot activities. Close
example, content sent to a pager might include only a telephone number, and content sent to a Blackberry device might include an e-mail with more detailed information such as a chart. You may be automatically subscribed to some iBots, and iBots created by others may be available for you to subscribe to. You can also create your own iBots if you have the appropriate permissions and responsibilities. Depending on the level of authority you have, you can selectively share iBots with others or make iBots available for all users. To handle more complex requirements, iBots can trigger other iBots, scripts, or applications. Results can be passed between iBots, and to other applications or services through XML, HTML, or plain text. For example, an iBot may run a request to identify all current product orders over a specified dollar amount that cannot be filled from a regional warehouse. The results can be passed to another iBot that runs a request to locate alternative sources for these products. A final iBot may be triggered to feed information into a corporate customer relationship management (CRM) system, and notify the appropriate account representatives of the alternative sourcing.
Workspace The workspace is located to the right of the selection pane. It initially shows the links that you can use to create new iBots, edit your Delivers account by customizing delivery devices and profiles, and review iBots that you own, or are the recipient of. When you make a selection from the selection pane, such as clicking a saved iBot, your selection appears in the workspace so you can work with it. When you click an iBot link in the workspace, the workspace displays tabs for working with iBots.
Creating an iBot
To create a new iBot, click the Create New iBot link on the Delivers start page.
The links on the Overview page correspond to the Delivers tabs near the top of the screen. You can click the links or the tabs to set the iBot properties. Each tab is discussed in detail on the pages that follow.
You can set the priority to low, normal, or high. The priority works with the delivery profile for a user to determine the destination for alerts of different priorities. There are two data visibility options that affect the personalization of the delivery content: Personalized (individual data visibility) and Not personalized (use the Run As user's data visibility).
Selecting a Request
to Trigger an iBot
Use the Conditional Request tab to select a request to trigger the iBot. You can further refine the request by using subqueries.
The results of the request determines whether the iBot sends its delivery content and initiates any subsequent actions: If the request does not return any rows, the iBot is not triggered. If the request returns at least one row, the iBot sends its delivery content and initiates any subsequent actions. You can chain requests together to create complex conditional logic. For example, you might have a request that determines what the 10 best-selling products were last year, and a second request that determines, for these products, the change in sales this year in each region, and then reports any products with a negative change. To select the request, click the Select/Replace Condition button to select the request, and then complete the dialog box that appears.
Scheduling an iBot
Use the Schedule tab to determine when the iBot runs, how often it runs, and
iBots can execute based on a specified schedule. You can define a starting date and time for the iBot, a recurrence schedule, and an ending date. You can also create a nonscheduled iBot. This is useful when you want to create an iBot that runs only as part of an iBot chain, or an iBot that is initiated by an external process. Note: The dates and times you specify are for use by the Oracle BI Delivers server (the Scheduler) in scheduling the iBot. If the machine where the Scheduler resides is located in a different time zone, the dates and times used are those in the Scheduler's time zone, and not your time zone. Consult your Oracle BI administrator for the time zone of the machine running the Scheduler.
You can use the Send content as drop-down list to specify the delivery format for the content, such as HTML, PDF, text, and so on.
You can include a short, descriptive headline to include with the content. The headline appears as the subject when the iBot is delivered. You can add a text message to provide context for an iBot attachment. You can also personalize a headline or text message by using a repository
variable or a session variable. If the delivery content is blank (no records are returned), you can add an explanation for this condition. You can specify the following delivery content choices for an iBot: The results of the conditional request A narrative text description of the conditional request Dashboard pages from My Dashboard Dashboard pages from public (shared) dashboards Briefing Books Saved requests (shared and private)
Saving an
iBot
To save your iBot, click the Save button different tabs at any point in the process. located on the
Provide a name and description for the iBot and save to the default folder or create a new folder.
Your devices and delivery profiles control how Oracle BI Delivers will reach you when an alert is triggered by an iBot. After you add one or more devices, you can create delivery profiles, and specify which delivery profile should be your active profile for receiving alerts. When you click the Edit My Account link, the My Account Page opens. Click here to see an example of a My Account Page.
When Delivers is enabled, you can add an Alerts section to any dashboard page. When alerts are present, the Alerts! link appears
Topic Summary
This topic introduced you to Oracle Business Intelligence Delivers, which is the interface used to create alerts based on business intelligence results. Oracle Business Intelligence Delivers enables you to detect specific results and immediately notify the appropriate person or group through Web, wireless, mobile, and voice communications channels. Oracle BI Delivers uses intelligence agents or Bots, called iBots. iBots are softwarebased agents driven by schedule or events that can access, filter, and perform analytics on data based upon defined criteria. iBots provide proactive delivery of real-time, personalized, and actionable intelligence throughout the business network. iBots provide intelligence from data spanning operational and analytical sources. In this topic, you should have learned how to: Describe the role of Oracle BI Delivers as an integrated component of the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Use Oracle BI Delivers to create, modify, save, and deliver alerts