BI Publisher: Technology and Architecture

Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you should be able to describe the following elements of BI Publisher:
Components Architecture Technology

In addition, you should be able to describe the advantages of using BI Publisher.

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Revisiting BI Publisher
BI Publisher is a Java-based web application that is available:
As a stand-alone product As part of Oracle BI EE With Oracle applications products, including E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards

BI Publisher provides:
A template-based, easy-to-use reporting and publishing solution Tools to rapidly develop and maintain reports A rich set of Java APIs and web services for custom solutions

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

BI Publisher Functional Components

BI Publisher consists of the following functional components: BI Publisher Server Data Model Editor Layout Editor (online) Template Builder (MS Word Add-In) Excel Analyzer Layout templates

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

BI Publisher Layout Templates

Industry-standard templates in various formats can be created by using the following: Desktop applications
Adobe Professional MS Word (Template Builder) MS Excel (Excel Analyzer) Text editors (XSL)

Layout Editor (online)

XPT files

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

BI Publisher Multitier Architecture

Client Middle Tier Data Tier

Browser Template Builder MS Word MS Excel Adobe Acrobat (for viewing reports in PDF format)

WebLogic Server Oracle BI Publisher Enterprise

Databases: Oracle, DB2,SQL Server, MySQL, and Sybase Other Data Sources: Essbase, web services, RSS feeds, and so on

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

BI Publisher Enterprise Server Architecture

Design data models. Administer the server. View and schedule reports. Office integration. Build report layouts. Company portal, SAP, MSFT CRM, Oracle EBS-PSFT-JDE-CRM

DHTML - AJAX Interface

Web Services Interface

Output Formats

Data Sources
Oracle DB, Oracle BI EE, SQL Server, DB2, Essbase, RSS,

Caching Services

Core Engine Data Modeling, Extraction Security Layout Creation, Rendering

PDF, HTML, RTF, Flex/Flash

Document Delivery

MS Excel, EFT, EDI, XML, PS

Scheduling/Archiving

Delivery Channels

Report Repository
J2EE Container: WebLogic, Oracle, WebSphere, Tomcat, ... Printer, fax, email, WebDAV, FTP, B2B Security SSO, OID, LDAP, Oracle BI, EBS, JNDI interface Report Repository Oracle DB, XML DB, or file system Scheduling and Archiving Any DB: Oracle, DB2, SQL Server,

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

BI Publisher Document Generation Process

XML Data 1. Main Flow
RTF/XPT Template

2. eText Flow
eText Template

3. Others
PDF/FLASH MS Excel Template

RTF/XPT Template Processor

XSL-FO Stylesheet

eText Template Processor XSLT Engine FO Processor

XSL Stylesheet

XSLT Engine

Specialized Template Processor

PDF/FLASH MS Excel Document

PDF Document RTF Document HTML Document Text Document

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

BI Publisher Supported Data Sources

Oracle, Essbase, others

Any database or multiple databases

Distributed queries

BI Publisher data engine

PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel

Any enterprise resource planning (ERP) system Any XML data server
Oracle BI Discoverer DB packages in SQL or XML

Java, C++, PERL, etc.

Web services

Any XML web service

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

BI Publisher Underlying Technology

Open-standards technologies: W3C XSLFO implementation Pure Java Pluggable data in XML Output formats in PDF, RTF, HTML, interactive Support for Internet Printing Protocol, WebDAV, Internet Fax Protocol, and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

BI Publisher Bursting Overview

Bursting is the process of generating multiple documents from a batch report and delivering each document to a different destination.

BI Publisher

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Downloading Government Forms

Business data: Human Resources Procurement

PDF
BI Publisher
Government

Human Resources: W2, W4 1099

Procurement: sf26, sf33, sf1449 OF347

Government

Download PDF forms from the government web site. Return the exact form filled with data.

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Performance and Scalability

Stream-based implementation: Reduces memory footprint Handles large XML input files Is the fastest XSL-FO implementation

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Internationalization and Language Support

No need for expensive language-specific printers Full set of Unicode fonts supplied with BI Publisher Scalable fonts embedded with CID mapping tables Communication with partners around the world Templates created for any language or territory

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

BI Publisher Output Formats

BI Publisher supports the following formats: Rich text format (RTF) Portable document format (PDF) eText (used with EDI and EFT)

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Summary
In this lesson, you should have learned how to describe the following elements of BI Publisher: Components Architecture Technology In addition, you should have learned how to describe the advantages of using BI Publisher.

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Quiz: Overview
This quiz examines your knowledge of the concepts discussed in the lesson.

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Quiz
BI Publisher is a pure Java-based web application that is available both as a stand-alone product and as part of Oracle BI EE and Oracle applications products. a. True b. False

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Quiz
The Template Editor is a design tool to create and publish report layouts from within the BI Publisher interface. a. True b. False

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Quiz
BI Publisher provides a closed-loop process for downloading government forms and delivering the required information to the appropriate agency. a. True b. False

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Copyright 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.