Getting Started with Oracle Business Intelligence

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.

What Is Business Intelligence?

In the information age, corporations have at their disposal massive amounts of data collected in transactional systems. These systems are designed for the efficient selection, storage, and retrieval of data, and are essential for businesses to keep track of their affairs.

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 information—commonly called business intelligence—can provide a significant edge in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Getting Answers with Business Intelligence

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 Tools

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 non-Oracle.

Click here to see an architecture diagram of these and other Oracle BI EE components.

Oracle BI Answers: Overview

Oracle BI Answers provides end users with true ad hoc query and analysis capability. It is a pure Web-based environment that is designed for users who want to create new analyses from scratch or modify and change existing analyses that appear on a dashboard page.

Oracle BI Answers enables you to interact with a logical view of the

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.

Using Oracle BI Answers

Oracle BI Answers Is Easy to Learn

You can quickly learn how to use Oracle BI Answers to build queries. In the Oracle BI Answers user interface, you work entirely with understandable models of information expressed in familiar business terminology.

You begin by choosing a subject area, such as

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

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 iterative—select measures, add filters, examine results, add new columns, change filters, delete columns, and so on—Oracle BI Answers does not impose a prescribed order in which calculations are defined, such as measures first, attributes second, and filters third.

PersonalizationOracle BI Answers automatically filters and personalizes informationfor a user based on the user’s identity or role.

Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard: Overview

You access business intelligence information primarily through Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards. Interactive Dashboards run within a pure Web architecture and provide you with a rich, interactive user experience by providing information that is filtered and personalized to your identity or role; making information intuitive and easy to understand; and guiding you to precise and effective decisions.

Within a dashboard, you can work with live reports, prompts, charts, tables, pivot tables, graphics, and tickers. Dashboards provide the ability to quickly and easily navigate to the information you need; drill in place for further analysis; modify calculations; and interact with results.

You also have the ability to quickly and easily aggregate structured data from relational databases; legacy data from mainframe and other systems; and unstructured content from a wide variety of sources, including the Internet, shared file servers, and document repositories.

Using Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards

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 Web-based 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.

Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard: Features

Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard features enable you to view, analyze, and share data.

Full Analytics Power

Dashboards provide a powerful central analytic environment for you, precluding the need for you to access additional query and analysis tools toperform complex analysis and calculations.

Sharing Information Online

Dashboards can be published as online work centers, enabling groups of users to share information easily with each other.

Personalization

Dashboards can be personalized to automatically show different results based on a user’s identity or role.

Data Filtering

Dashboards can be set up so that the analyses shown are determined bydata and data threshold values set by the user.

Sharing Information Offline

Dashboards can be saved and distributed for offline use asBriefing 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 StylesDashboards 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.

Oracle BI Delivers: Overview

Oracle BI Delivers is a proactive intelligence solution that provides the ability to:

Monitor business information Identify patterns to determine whether specific problems are occurringFilter data based on other data and time-based rulesAlert users via multiple channels, such as e-mail, dashboards, and mobile devicesAllow users to take action in response to the alerts they have received

Alerts can be chained together. By passing contextual information from one alert to another, it is possible to execute a multistep, multiperson, and multiapplication analytical workflow. Furthermore, Oracle BI Delivers can dynamically determine recipients and personalized content to reach the right users at the right time with the right information.

Using Oracle BI Delivers

You can use Oracle BI Delivers to design and deliver alerts. Oracle BI Delivers provides a Web-based self-service alert creation and subscription portal where you can choose delivery options by creating individual delivery profiles. For example, you might define a specific delivery profile to be used when you are out of the office. Within a profile, the delivery options can be varied according to the urgency of the alert. Alerts can be sent to individuals or groups.

You can save analyses designed in Answers, schedule them to run automatically, set data thresholds, and specify whom you want to be alerted when thresholds are exceeded. An example is notifying a technical support manager automatically when the number of critical service requests exceeds 10 for an important customer.

Oracle BI Delivers also enables you to manage your organization by exception. You can receive notifications and alerts from the business intelligence infrastructure that is monitoring your organization and can take action quickly and effectively.

  Oracle BI Delivers: Features

Oracle BI Delivers features enable you to create, publish, and subscribe to proactive alerts and conditions.

Create and Subscribe to Proactive Alerts

Oracle BI Delivers presents an intuitive mechanism that helps you to

create, publish, and subscribe to proactive alerts and conditions. You can select and schedule published requests to be executed and delivered to other users via a multitude of devices. You can define alert conditions on data-driven thresholds on specific analytic measures and on time-driven conditions.

Actionable iBots

Oracle BI Delivers provides the ability for any user (not just administrators) to very easily define their own processes, called iBots, which watch for user-defined conditions and or thresholds and then notify the user. Further, Oracle BI Delivers can take actions based on a predefined decision tree. A simple example can be the following: “If supplies of Product A drop below 10,000 units, send an e-mail to me, the warehouse, and the supplier."

Composite/Complex Conditions

Oracle BI Delivers enables you to create bots that watch for very complex conditions combining data-driven and time-based conditions on real-time and historical data.

Multiple Delivery Channels and ProfilesYou can personalize how you want to be notified (e-mail, pager, palm, phone call, and so on) at various times of day or week. Delivery profiles can be matched to individual alerts to which you subscribe.

Oracle BI Server: Overview

Oracle BI Server is a highly scalable, highly efficient query and analysis server that provides services that enable the other components of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, such as Answers, Dashboards, Delivers, Reporting,

and Analytic Applications.

Oracle BI Server exposes its services through a standard ODBC 2.0–compliant interface. 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 the server to some combination of physical SQL sent to the back-end databases, in addition to intermediate processing within Oracle BI Server Execution Engine. Oracle BI Server also has necessary server infrastructure such as session and query management, cancellation, statistics logging, monitoring, and other server administration functions.

  Oracle BI Server Repository

Oracle BI Server defines and stores all the elements of analytic calculations as metadata in a central repository. This provides a centralized, consistent definition of measures for all users. Should the definition of a measure change, it needs to be changed only in one place and all analyses automatically use the new definition.

The repository is the output file of Oracle BI Administration Tool. The repository is read into memory by Oracle BI Server upon startup and it provides the hints and rules to optimize the SQL generated by Oracle BI Server.

Accessing Oracle BI Server Information

Oracle BI Server presents itself to other applications as an ODBC 2.0 data source. This means that virtually any ODBC-capable report writer or query tool can use Oracle Analytics as if it were a database. When it does, the query/reporting tool:

Does not need connectivity to underlying data sourcesIs completely insulated from changes in source tables and database platformsImmediately becomes aggregate awareAutomatically 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

Using Oracle BI Answers to Build Requests

Goal

The goal of this topic is to introduce Oracle Business Intelligence Answers and its role as an integrated component of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.

After completing this topic, you should be able to:

Describe the role of Oracle BI Answers as an integrated component of the Oracle BI EE Describe the capabilities of Oracle BI Answers that enable users to perform ad hoc queries and analyze business dataUse Oracle BI Answers to create, view, modify, and save requestsUse the drilling, graphing, and filtering features of Oracle BI Answers to analyze data

The Importance of Oracle BI Answers

Oracle BI Answers is the Oracle Business Intelligence interface used to query your organization's data. The Oracle BI Answers user interface provides a set of graphical tools that enable you to build, view, and 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.

Starting Oracle BI Answers

To start Oracle BI Answers, select Start >

Programs > Oracle Business Intelligence > Presentation Server.

Log in with your username and password, and then click the Answers link.

Oracle BI Answers Start Page

The Answers start page is the first page you see when you open Oracle BI Answers. The start page provides access to subject areas and saved content. What you see in Answers depends on the permissions granted to your user ID.

Click here to learn more about the Answers start page.

  Selecting a Subject Area

After accessing the Answers start page, the next step to create a request is to select a subject area.

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.

Accessing Answers Workspace Tabs

The Answers workspace displays the following tabs for working with a request:

Criteria Provides access to the columns selected for the request, and buttons to select the most common view types

   Results Enables you to work with the results of the

request   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 Column Order for a Request

After you have added columns to a request, it is easy to rearrange the column order. Just drag a column to a new location in the request criteria to reorder the columns.

 

 

Displaying Request Results

After you have constructed a request by selecting columns, click the Results tab or the Display Results button to view the results.

When you run a request, associated SQL statements are executed and the results are displayed, by default, in a Compound Layout format.

The Compound Layout format consists of a Title view and a Table view. You can use the Title view to manually enter a title for the request, or set up the Title view to automatically use the name of the request when you save it.

Modifying the Results Layout

It is easy to change how your request results are displayed. You can use the result view drop-down lists, the Add View link, or toolbar buttons to select from a variety of views to

control the appearance of the results.

Click here to see an example of a Chart view.

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.

Viewing Saved Content

Saved requests are saved in the Presentation Catalog and are displayed in folders in the Catalog tab in the selection pane on the Answers start page.

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.

Modifying Request Criteria

To modify request criteria, use the column buttons to control the use of each column in the request.

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 arrows—one pointing up, the other pointing down—indicates 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.

Modifying Column Style

The default appearance of column contents in results is based on cascading style sheets and XML message files.

You can use the Style tab of the Column Properties dialog box to override several default settings, such as the font style, font size, cell colors and alignment, border colors and style, column height and width, and so on.

Click the Column Properties button for a column to open the Column Properties dialog box, and then click the Style tab.

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.

Modifying Column Format

You can use the Column Format tab of the Column Properties dialog box to override several default settings, such as column visibility, table and column headings, and display of duplicate data.

Click the Column Properties button for a column to open the Column Properties dialog box, and then click the Column Format tab.

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.

Modifying Column Data Format

You can use the Data Format tab of the Column Properties dialog box to override the default data display characteristics. The selections that you see vary based on the data type.

Click the Column Properties button for a column to open the Column Properties dialog box, and then select the Data Format tab. You can override numeric, text, and date data formats.

Modifying Column Conditional Format

You can use the Conditional Format tab of the Column Properties dialog box to direct attention to a data element if it meets a certain condition.

Click the Column Properties button for a column to open the Column Properties dialog box, and then select the Conditional Format tab.

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.

Modifying Column Formulas

Formulas support a wide variety of functionality. Using the elements available in the Calculation Builder, you can create complex logic for the column you are modifying in your request.

Click the Edit Formula button for a column to open the Edit Column Formula dialog box, and then click the Column Formula tab.

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, and then click the Variable button.

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.

Using Filters in Requests

A filter is used to limit the results that appear when a request is run. Based on the filter criteria that you define, Oracle BI Answers shows only those results that match your criteria.

Click the Add Filter button for a column to open the Create/Edit Filter dialog box. You use the Create/Edit Filters dialog box to create and edit filters. A column filter consists of the following elements:

A column to filterAn operator that determines how the value is appliedA value to use when applying the filter

Together with the columns you select for a request, a filter determines what your results will contain. Filters are applied on a per-column basis. 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 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.

Drilling and Filters

If you drill down on a column value on the Results page, your results are automatically filtered to include only the results for the selected value. In this example, if you drill down on the central region by clicking Central in the table . . .

. . . you see data for the sales districts in the central region:

If you return to the Criteria page, you see the filter that was created when you drilled:

Exploring Oracle BI Architecture

Goal

The goal of this topic is to introduce some of the key components of the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Oracle BI EE) architecture.

After completing this topic, you should be able to:

Identify and describe some of the key components of the Oracle BI EE architecture Identify and describe the three layers of an Oracle Business Intelligence repository, and how the layers relate to each other Identify and describe the relationship between the Oracle Business Intelligence architecture components, and the objects and data displayed in Oracle Business Intelligence user interfaces

Importance of Understanding the Oracle BI Architecture

This topic provides a high-level overview of some key Oracle BI architecture components and their relationships to the Oracle BI components discussed earlier in this course. It is important to understand how these architecture components provide the infrastructure that supports the Oracle BI objects and data displayed in Oracle BI Answers, Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards, and Oracle BI Delivers.

Oracle BI Architecture Components

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

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.

Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool

Oracle BI Administration Tool is a Windows application that is used by an Oracle BI Server administrator to create and edit an Oracle BI repository. A repository stores the business intelligence metadata that is rendered inside of the Answers, Dashboards, and Delivers clients.

Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services AdministrationThe Oracle BI Presentation Services Administration page is the interface used to administer Oracle BI Presentation Services activities such as:

Managing catalog groups and users Managing the presentation catalog Managing interactive dashboards Managing sessions Managing iBot sessions Managing advanced reporting Managing device types 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 BI Presentation Services: Overview

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.

Oracle BI Presentation Services: Features

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,

cancellation, statistics logging, monitoring, and other server administration functions.

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 Administration Tool

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.

Oracle BI Data Sources

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.

Sample Request Processing

This is a simplified example of how an Oracle BI Answers request is processed.

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.

  Using Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards

Goal

The goal of this topic is to introduce Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboard and describe its role as an integrated component of Oracle Business Intelligence.

After completing this topic, you should be able to:

Describe the role of Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard as an integrated component of the Oracle Business Intelligence solutionCreate, view, modify, and save an Interactive Dashboard

The Importance of Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard

An Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard is a page in an Oracle BI application that is used to display the results of Oracle BI requests and other kinds of content.

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.

Click here to view an example of a simple Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard. In the topics that follow, you learn how to construct this

dashboard.

Creating a New Dashboard

The ability to create a new dashboard is reserved for users with the appropriate privileges. Privileges are defined by an Oracle BI Server administrator.

To create a new, empty dashboard:

1. Log in to Oracle BI and select Settings > Administration. The Oracle BI Presentation Services Administration page appears:

 

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.

 

 

Opening the Dashboard Editor

You use the Dashboard Editor to lay out and add content to an Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard. The ability to edit a dashboard is reserved for users with the appropriate privileges, which are defined by an Oracle BI Server administrator.

To access Oracle BI Dashboard Editor:

1.Log in to Oracle BI and navigate to the Dashboards page. At the top of the page, click the name of a dashboard you want to edit. The dashboard appears. In the upper-right corner of the dashboard, select Page Options > Edit Dashboard.

 

2.The Dashboard Editor appears.

 

 

Adding Pages to a Dashboard

A newly created dashboard contains one blank page, called page1 by default. Dashboards that contain only one page do not display the page name as a tab at the top of the dashboard. Dashboard page names appear at the top of a dashboard only when the dashboard contains multiple pages.To add a new page to a dashboard, click the Add Dashboard Page button near the top of the Dashboard Editor. The Add Dashboard Page appears. Enter a name and a description for the dashboard page and click OK.

Adding Columns to a Dashboard

Columns are used to align content on a dashboard. (Sections within columns hold the actual content.) You can add or remove columns, and set column properties,

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:

 

 

Adding Sections to a Dashboard

Sections are used within columns to hold the content of a dashboard. Sections are aligned vertically by default. You can use the Properties dialog box for a section to change the alignment to horizontal.

You can drag as many sections as you need to a column. If you drag content to a column without first adding a section to hold the content, a section is created automatically.

If you drag a section from one column to another column, any content in that section is also included.

To add a section to a column, drag a Section object from the Dashboard Objects area to the column. The column is highlighted when you are at an appropriate location in the column to add the section.

Adding Dashboard Objects to a Dashboard

Adding dashboard objects to a dashboard is simple. In the Dashboard Editor, you drag the desired object from the Dashboard Objects area in the selection pane on the left to a section on the dashboard page. Then use the Properties dialog box of an object to set its properties.

Dashboard objects include link or image, embedded content, folder, guided navigation link, briefing

book and so on.

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.

Guided Navigation Link

Guided navigation can aid users' insight into business issues and appropriate actions to take by guiding their exploration of results obtained from Oracle BI Answers. When based on common scenarios and best practices for your industry or organization, guided navigation allows users to see and analyze related issues by navigating to a related set of results, another dashboard, or a URL. Guided navigation links can be static or conditional. Static links always appear. Conditional links appear only if results meet certain criteria.

Guided Navigation Link

Guided navigation can aid users' insight into business issues and appropriate actions to take by guiding their exploration of results obtained from Oracle BI Answers. When based on common scenarios and best practices for your industry or organization, guided navigation allows users to see and analyze related issues by navigating to a related set of results, another dashboard, or a URL. Guided navigation links can be static or conditional. Static links always appear. Conditional links appear only if results meet certain criteria.

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.

Adding Saved Content to a Dashboard

Adding saved content to a dashboard is simple. In the Dashboard Editor, you drag the desired saved content from the Saved Content area in the selection pane on the left to a section on the dashboard page. Then use the Properties dialog box of an object to set its properties.

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.

 

Modifying Dashboard Properties

You can set properties for the entire dashboard. Changing dashboard properties automatically saves any changes you made to the page you were working with.

To change dashboard properties, click the Dashboard Properties button near the top of the Dashboard Editor and specify your choices. Properties

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 or leave the page you are working on in the Dashboard Editor.

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:

Dashboard Prompt: Overview

A dashboard prompt filters the results of embedded requests to show only results that match the prompt criteria. A dashboard prompt can filter all requests embedded in a dashboard or requests on certain dashboard pages only.

You select the columns and operators for the dashboard prompt, and specify how the prompt appears on the dashboard and how users select the values. The user's selections determine the content of the reports embedded in the dashboard or on the dashboard page.

Every column contained in the dashboard prompt must be contained, in the projection list or in the filter, in each request that you want the prompt to filter. The columns in the request must have filters set, or the filter condition has to be set to Is Prompted. Columns contained in the prompt that are not included in the request will not

filter the request.

Creating a Dashboard Prompt

To create a dashboard prompt, click the New Dashboard Prompt button on the Answers start page:

Then, follow the on-screen instructions to build a dashboard prompt:

You can save a prompt to a personal or shared folder.

Using a Dashboard Prompt

Use the Dashboard Editor to add a prompt to a dashboard. Users can then set the dashboard prompt to filter the results of embedded requests to show only those results that match the prompt criteria:

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 solutionCreate, view, modify, and save an Interactive Dashboard

Using Oracle BI Delivers to Create Alerts

Goal

The goal of this topic is to introduce Oracle Business Intelligence Delivers and its role as an integrated component of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.

After completing this topic, you should be able 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

The Importance of Oracle BI Delivers

Oracle BI Delivers is the interface used to create alerts based on business intelligence results. If your organization licensed this interface, you can use Oracle BI Delivers to detect specific results and immediately notify the appropriate person or group through Web, wireless, mobile, and voice communications channels.

Oracle BI Delivers enables you to create your own unique form of information insurance, where any information-based problem or opportunity can be detected, and the appropriate person immediately notified through the Web or by wireless, mobile, and voice devices.

A device is the medium used to deliver content to you. The content of an iBot can be delivered on a variety of devices, including plain text or HTML email, mobile phone, pager, and PDA.

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Oracle BI Delivers uses intelligence agents or Bots, called iBots. iBots 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.

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How Oracle BI Delivers Works

In the simplest format, an Oracle BI Delivers iBot automatically performs a specified Oracle BI Presentation Catalog request (created with Oracle BI Answers) based on a defined schedule, and examines the results for a specific problem or opportunity. If the specific problem or opportunity is detected in the results, an alert is generated and passed to people who are subscribed to the iBot, using the delivery options specified for each person.

The content of the iBot is customized for each associated delivery device. For 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.

Controlling Access to Oracle BI Delivers

Access to Oracle BI Delivers is available to all Oracle BI users (the Everyone group in Oracle BI Administration) by default. Granting access to specific Oracle BI Delivers functions is performed from the Privilege Administration page in Oracle BI Presentation Services Administration.

If you have the appropriate authority, you can grant or deny explicit access to a variety of Oracle BI Delivers privileges, including the ability to perform the following actions:

Retrieve delivery destinations for iBotsCreate iBotsPublish iBots for subscriptionDeliver iBots to specified or dynamically determined usersChain iBotsChain iBots to custom scriptsView iBot instance errors

Accessing Oracle BI Delivers

To access the Oracle BI Delivers start page, log in to Oracle BI Presentation and click More Products > Delivers near the top of the screen.

The Delivers start page has two main areas:

Selection Pane

The selection pane is located on the left side of the page. It shows Deliverscontent saved in the Presentation Catalog, such as personal and shared iBots.

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.

Reviewing iBot Settings

When you click the Create New iBot link on the start page, the Overview page appears with a summary of the settings for the iBot:

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.

Setting Priority and Data Visibility Options

Use the General tab to set the importance of this iBot as well as options for impersonating a different user at run time.

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).

Personalized (individual data visibility)

This option uses the data visibility of each recipient to customize iBot delivery content for each recipient. This setting does not use the Run As field.

Not personalized (use the Run As user's data visibility)

This option sends the iBot's delivery content to the specified recipients. All users receive the same content as if they were the user specified in the Run As field. If you select the Not personalized option, use the Run As field to specify the user ID to act as the Run As user.

This option is available only to users defined as Oracle BI Presentation Service administrators with at least one of the following privileges set in Oracle BI Presentation Service Administration:

Publish iBots for subscriptionDeliver iBots to specific or dynamically determined users

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 when to discontinue running it.

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.

Selecting Users to Receive an iBot

Use the Recipients tab to select the users and groups to receive the delivery content of the iBot. You can determine the recipients of the iBot and subscription options.

Specifying the Content for an iBot

Use the Delivery Content tab to specify the type of content to deliver with the iBot, such as a dashboard page or a saved request.

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 requestA narrative text description of the conditional requestDashboard pages from My DashboardDashboard pages from public (shared) dashboardsBriefing BooksSaved requests (shared and private)

Selecting Destinations for an iBot

Use the Destinations tab to specify a range of desired devices and destinations for iBots. You can select User Destinations, Specific Devices, or System Services.

Saving an iBot

To save your iBot, click the Save button located on the different tabs at any point in the process.

Provide a name and description for the iBot and save to the default folder or create a new folder.

Editing Your Delivers Account

You configure and customize your delivery devices and your delivery profiles through the Edit My Account link, which is available on the Oracle BI Delivers start page.

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.

Accessing Oracle BI Alerts

The Alerts page shows your currently active alerts and information about when the content was delivered. Depending on the settings for the alert, links appear that enable you to view active alert content, clear all occurrences of the active alert, open the iBot that generated the alert, or check current conditions by reexecuting the iBot that generated the alert.

When Delivers is enabled, you can add an Alerts section to any dashboard page. When alerts are present, the Alerts! link appears at the top of each Answers, Delivers, and Interactive Dashboard

page.

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 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.

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