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Converting Oracle Reports to BI Publisher Reports

Dmitry Nefedkin
Oracle ISV Migration Center FMW Consultant
Dmitry.Nefedkin@oracle.com

ISV Migration Center Team

Who we Are ISV Migration Center Team is a team of senior technical consultants
based in Eastern and Central Europe and represents Oracle's technical investment
for partners.
Mission Statement Enable partners to rapidly and successfully adopt and
implement Oracle latest technology
What do we Offer Whether you are selling Oracle technology, building business
solutions, including hosted Internet solutions or providing system integration and
implementation services for Oracle technology, IMC Team can help you succeed.
How can we assist We offer a wide range of free services for partners such as
one2one assistance, webinars, seminars and hands-on workshops.
For more information, visit the IMC website.
ISV Migration Center blog: http://blogs.oracle.com/imc
Contacts:
Ruxandra Radulescu, ISV Migration Center Manager EE&CIS
ruxandra.radulescu@oracle.com

Agenda

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Oracle Reports strategy & support policy
Reporting challenges
Benefits of BI Publisher
Oracle Reports -> BI Publisher Conversion Utility
Demo
Upgrade BI Publisher to 11g
Links to the additional content

Oracle Reports Strategy

Oracle Application Development Tools Statement of
Direction: Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports and Oracle
Designer (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/issuearchive/2010/toolssod-3-129969.pdf )
Oracle Forms and Reports
Oracle has no plan to desupport these products. Furthermore, new
version of Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports will continue to be
released as part of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Forms
11g and Oracle Reports 11g are components of Oracle Fusion
Middleware 11g. In line with our product strategy, future
development activities will be aimed at smoother version-toversion upgrade, integration with features of the platform/
technology stack and product stability.

Lifetime Support Policy for Fusion

Middleware

http://bit.ly/OFMLifetime

Oracle Reports upgrade

Helpful links:
Oracle Reports: Migration from 6i to 10g
(http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/repor
ts/index-092180.html)
Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for
Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer11g
(http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/upgr
ade.1111/e10130/toc.htm )
My Oracle Support ,document ID 1088988.1 Using
the Upgrade Assistant to Upgrade OracleAS 10g
Forms / Reports Services to Oracle Middleware 11g
Rel 1 (video)

Agenda

<Insert Picture Here>

Oracle Reports strategy & support policy
Reporting challenges
Benefits of BI Publisher
Oracle Reports -> BI Publisher Conversion Utility
Demo
Upgrade BI Publisher to 11g
Links to the additional content

Reporting Challenges
Requirements are Diverse

High Fidelity Reports

Partner Reports
Financial Statements
Government forms
Marketing materials
Contracts
Checks, Labels
XML
EFT / EDI
Multiple destinations

Checks

Invoices

Labels

Destinations

Reports

XML / EFT / EDI

Reporting Challenges
Complex Infrastructure
Multiple reporting solutions
Highly-skilled engineers
required to maintain servers
and report formats
Costly
Time consuming
Labels
Complex systems
Expensive maintenance
Labor intensive

Checks
Invoices
Invoice
Server
Label
Manager

Destinations

Check Print
Server
Report
Formatter
Reports

Delivery
Server

Payment
Server

XML / EFT / EDI

Reporting Challenges
Slow Development

Iterate on Report Requirements

Report Requirements

Report files

Report Output

Must be same geometry, font, margin

size, etc.

Reporting Challenges
Difficult to Maintain
Combined query, layout, and translation

Data logic

Layout

1 Query

10 Layouts

Translation
10 Translations

1 Query
10 Layouts
10 Translations
= 100 report files

High development cost

High customization cost
Difficult upgrade

Reporting Challenges
Other Issues
Production Issues
Huge load on the transactional database, shuts down the
operation
Output file size, time to produce the reports
High maintenance, proprietary report programming languages
require expensive specialists and consultants

Global Deployment Issues

Multiple Instances required for different character sets
Insufficient support for Bi-Directional Languages
Dependence on Printer Character sets require language
specific printers

Agenda

<Insert Picture Here>

Oracle Reports strategy & support policy
Reporting challenges
Benefits of BI Publisher
Oracle Reports -> BI Publisher Conversion Utility
Demo
Upgrade BI Publisher to 11g
Links to the additional content

Benefits of BI Publisher
Simplified Report Maintenance

Separate query, layout, and translation

Data Logic
Layout
BI Publisher

Translation
Flexibility
Reduced maintenance

Report
output

Benefits of BI Publisher
Faster Development
Business users create layouts with
familiar desktop tools
IT builds data model

Report Templates
XML

Report Outputs
Multiple Data Sources

Rapid Development

Benefits of BI Publisher
Multiple output formats & delivery destinations
PDF

Oracle 10g,
Oracle BI EE,
Oracle BI Apps
SQL Server

HTML

XSL

Layout Templates
E-Business
Suite,
PeopleSoft,
JDE

Email

Excel
Power
Point

Printer

Flash

BI Publisher

RTF

Fax

CSV

OLAP

Excel
Word
Acrobat Flex
Others
JDev

XML

EDI
EFT

Web Services

Layout Tools

Repository

Output Formats

e-Commerce

Destinations

BI Publisher Benefits
Global Consolidation

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

BI Publisher Benefits
Hot-Pluggable

Pure Java application - any J2EE application server

Rich set of Java APIs for custom application development
Web Services for SOA development
Any data source: JDBC and Web services XML data sources
MDX OLAP Data sources: Essbase, Analysis Servers, SAP/BW
Standard W3C XSL-FO style sheets
Output formats in PDF, PS, RTF, HTML
Delivery Support for

Internet Printing Protocol, CUPS

Internet Fax Protocol
SMTP email protocol
WebDAV, FTP, SFTP

Agenda

<Insert Picture Here>

Oracle Reports strategy & support policy
Reporting challenges
Benefits of BI Publisher
Oracle Reports -> BI Publisher Conversion Utility
Demo
Upgrade BI Publisher to 11g
Links to the additional content

Conversion Utility
Introduction

Data
Template
LOV

.xdo file

RDF XML

Conversion
Utility
RTF Template
Reports 9i or
higher
rwconverter

Oracle
Report RDF
files

.PLS files

Log file

Conversion Utility
Data Template

Conversion Utility
Prerequisites
Oracle Reports 9i or later
Source reports must eventually be in Oracle Reports XML format. Oracle
Reports XML format is supported in Oracle Reports 9i 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.

Setting classpath (all these jars can be found in

<BIP1034_INSTALL_DIR>\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\applications\xmlpserv
er\xmlpserver\WEB-INF\lib)
collections.jar, xmlparserv2.jar, xdocore.jar, aolj.jar, Versioninfo.jar

JDK 1.5 or higher

Conversion Utility
Conversion Steps

Run the conversion Tool from Command Prompt

Load the PL/SQL package into Database
Upload report and template to BI Publisher Repository
View Report
Check Log file for any manual step

Conversion Utility
Command Line Usage
java oracle.apps.xdo.rdfparser.BIPBatchConversion [debug] -source SourceDirectory -target TargetDirectory
[-oraclehome OracleHomePath]
-source (required) Source directory for Oracle Reports files. All reports must
be in the same format - either RDF or XML.
-target (required) Target directory to create Oracle BI Publisher report
objects. This includes the Oracle BI Publisher Report file (.xdo), the layout
template file (.rtf), the PL/SQL package, and log file.
-oraclehome (optional) If your reports are in Oracle Reports XML format do
not specify this parameter. If your reports are not in Oracle Reports XML format,
specify the Oracle home path where Oracle Report Designer (9i or later version)
is installed. BIPBatchMigration assumes that rwconverter is contained in the bin
directory beneath the Oracle Home path.
-debug (optional) To run the utility in debug mode and write debug statements
to the log file.

Conversion Utility
Command Line Usage Examples
XDO_LIB_DIR=<BIP1034_INSTALL_DIR>\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\applications\xmlpserver\x
mlpserver\WEB-INF\lib

Source Report in Oracle Reports RDF File

This example requires you to specify the -oraclehome path.
java.exe -classpath %XDO_LIB_DIR%\xdocore.jar;
%XDO_LIB_DIR%\collections.jar; %XDO_LIB_DIR%\aolj.jar;
%XDO_LIB_DIR%\xmlparserv2.jar;%XDO_LIB_DIR%\versioninfo.jar
oracle.apps.xdo.rdfparser.BIPBatchConversion -source
d:\source\oracle_reports\SRC1 -target d:\reports\output -oraclehome
D:\oracle\BIToolsHome_1 debug

Source Report in Oracle Reports XML Format

Do not specify the -oraclehome parameter in this example.
java.exe -classpath %XDO_LIB_DIR%\xdocore.jar;
%XDO_LIB_DIR%\collections.jar; %XDO_LIB_DIR%\aolj.jar;
%XDO_LIB_DIR%\xmlparserv2.jar;%XDO_LIB_DIR%\versioninfo.jar
oracle.apps.xdo.rdfparser.BIPBatchConversion -source
d:\source\oracle_reports\SRC1 -target d:\reports\output debug

Conversion Utility
Capability Highlights
Layout
Tabular, Form based & Free form reports
Repeating frames
Header & Footer

Data

Single / Multiple Query Reports

Grouping, Sorting
Summary Columns, formula columns, Aggregations
Parameters, Lexical References, PL SQL Functions
Flexfield
Before and After Report Triggers, Before and After Parameter Form
Triggers

Conversion Utility
Important Notes
Currently conversion utility exists for BI Publisher
10.1.3.3 and 10.1.3.4 only;
Conversion utility for BI Publisher 11g is planned for
the future release;
Oracle Reports to BI Publisher 11g conversion is a 2step process now:
Convert Oracle Reports to BI Publisher 10g
Upgrade BI Publisher 10g report files to 11g report files using
Upgrade Assistant tool available with 11g

Agenda

<Insert Picture Here>

Oracle Reports strategy & support policy
Reporting challenges
Benefits of BI Publisher
Oracle Reports -> BI Publisher Conversion Utility
Demo
Upgrade BI Publisher to 11g
Links to the additional content

Demo
DEMONSTRATION

Agenda

<Insert Picture Here>

Oracle Reports strategy & support policy
Reporting challenges
Benefits of BI Publisher
Oracle Reports -> BI Publisher Conversion Utility
Demo
Upgrade BI Publisher to 11g
Links to the additional content

BIP 10g to 11g Upgrade Components

Report Catalog
Data Model (.xdm)

Data Definition
Sample XML
Report (.xdo)
Data Definition

Report (.xdo)

Sample XML
Template (RTF, PDF, etc.)

Template (RTF, PDF, etc.)

Translation Files (XLIFF)

Translation Files (XLIFF)

Report Runtime
Configuration file
(xdo.cfg)

Report Runtime
Configuration file
(xdo.cfg)

BIP 10g to 11g Upgrade Components

Admin Files

Users, Roles, Permissions

Report Data Source
Password encryption
Security Model
Delivery Channels

Scheduler Schema

Quartz Table

Scheduled Jobs
Job History

Quartz Table

Upgrade Assistant
11g Install - Upgrade Chart
RCU
Start

BISHIPHOME
Install

Post Install
Configuration

Upgrade
Required?

Yes

Upgrade
Assistant

No

End

Upgrade Assistant (UA)

Upgrade Steps
Input for UA (10g)

Output from UA (11g)

BI Publisher Repository Upgrade

Repository
BI Publisher Repository
- Reports (Shared/Private)
- Admin Files

Repository
BI Publisher Catalog
- Reports (Shared/Private)
- Data Model (Shared/Private)
Admin Files

BI Publisher Scheduler Schema Upgrade

Quartz Table

Quartz Table

BIP 10g to 11g Upgrade

More information on upgrade:
Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for Oracle Business
Intelligence 11g Release 1
(http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/bi.1111/e16452/toc.htm )

Agenda

<Insert Picture Here>

Oracle Reports strategy & support policy
Reporting challenges
Benefits of BI Publisher
Oracle Reports -> BI Publisher Conversion Utility
Demo
Upgrade BI Publisher to 11g
Links to the additional content

More Information
BI Publisher 10.3.4 documentation:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12844_01/welcome.html
Converting Reports from Oracle Reports to Oracle BI Publisher:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12844_01/doc/bip.1013/e1
2187/T518230T518393.htm

BI Publisher 11g documentation:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/bi.htm

BI Publisher Forum:
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=245

BI Publisher Blog:
http://blogs.oracle.com/xmlpublisher/

Questions

Dmitry Nefedkin
Oracle ISV Migration Center FMW Consultant
Dmitry.Nefedkin@oracle.com
ISV Migration Center blog: http://blogs.oracle.com/imc

2010 Oracle Corporation