1. BI Publisher 11g : Only good news
Eng. Edelweiss Kammermann
UKOUG Conference - Birmingham December 2011

2. Who am I ?
• Computer engineer, BI and BPM specialist with over 15 years of
consulting and project management experience in Oracle
technology.
• Oracle University Instructor of many courses, included OBI,
BPM, Warehouse Builder and ODI.
• Co-founder and Vice President of Uruguayan Oracle User
Group (UYOUG)
• Emails: edelweisskf09@gmail.com
edelweiss@forbrichcomputing.com

3. Uruguay?

4. Agenda
• What is BI Publisher?
• Report Architecture
• Building a report: step by step guide
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.3)
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.5)
• Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things that you need
to keep in mind.
• Conclusions

5. Agenda
• What is BI Publisher?
• Report Architecture
• Building a report: step by step guide
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.3)
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.5)
• Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things that you need
to keep in mind.
• Conclusions

6. What is BI Publisher?
• Oracle BI Publisher is an enterprise reporting solution for
authoring, managing, and delivering all types of highly
formatted documents.
• Combine data from multiple and different data sources
• Separate the three report design components(data, layout,
translation), obtaining:
• Flexibility
• Reduced maintenance
• Provide multiple output formats
• Has very user-friendly tools to create different layouts

7. Install Options
•As standalone
product
• As part of OBIEE

8. Agenda
• What is BI Publisher?
• Report Architecture
• Building a report: step by step guide
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.3)
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.5)
• Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things that you need
to keep in mind.
• Conclusions

9. Report Architecture

10. Agenda
• What is BI Publisher?
• Report Architecture
• Building a report: step by step guide
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.3)
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.5)
• Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things that you need
to keep in mind.
• Conclusions

11. Building a report:
step by step guide
1. Create data model
2. Create layout(s)
3. Set Report Properties
4. (optional) Add Translations

12. Building a report:
step by step guide
1- Create data model:
• Data Model defines data that is used by a report .
Components:
• Data Sets
• Parameters
• Lists of Values
• Bursting
• Event Triggers
• Flexfields

13. Building a report:
step by step guide
2- Create layout(s):
• A layout defines how the data is presented in the report
• A report can include multiple layouts
• Consists of a template file and a set of properties.
• Types of templates:
– Predefined (basic templates)
– User defined
• BI Publisher supports templates created from many
sources including Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft
Excel, Adobe Flash, and BI Publisher's new layout editor.

14. Building a report:
step by step guide
3- Set Report Properties
• Enable control of generation, formatting and display aspects
4- (optional) Add Translations:
• BI Publisher allows translations for:
– A particular layout
– All translatable words in the layout, data model and the report
metadata.
• Support s over 150 languages

15. Building a report:
step by step guide
Defining Data Sources (Administration Page)

16. Building a report:
step by step guide
Defining Data Sources (Administration Page)

17. Agenda
• What is BI Publisher?
• Report Architecture
• Building a report: step by step guide
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.3)
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.5)
• Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things that you need
to keep in mind.
• Conclusions

18. New features 11g:
New Data Model Editor
• Combine Multiple Data Sources
• Allows query, structure and aggregate data
New Data Sources:
• Excel
• LDAP
• ADF View Object

19. New Data Model Editor
• Filter and structure data
• Define alias for columns to create user friendly names

20. New Features 11g:
New Layout Editor
Web
Design
Editor
WYSIWYG

21. New Layout Editor
Interactive HTML Output format

22. New Features 11g:
Style Templates
• Is an RTF file that contains layout formatting detail.
• Is applied to RTF Layouts at run time to manage style
information (font type, text color, or table styles)
• Template useful for :
– create consistent Look & Feel through organizational
reports.
– Avoid the need to apply changes to each report.
• Supported styles
– Table
– Paragraph
– Header/Footer

23. New Features 11g:
Sub templates
• A Subtemplate is a piece of formatting functionality .
• Can be defined once and used multiple times within a
single layout template or across multiple layout
template files.
• RTF or XSL file.

24. New Features 11g:
Sub templates
• Common uses:
– reusing a common layout or component (header, footer, or
address block)
– Handling parameterized layouts
– Handling dynamic or conditional layouts
– Handling lengthy calculations or reusing formulas
• In 11g, subtemplate is an indepent object in the
catalog.

25. New Features 11g:
Tighter BIEE Suite Plus Integration
• Web catalog
integration
• Home page
integration
• Security
integration

26. New Features 11g:
Scheduling & Bursting Enhancements
• Recurrence patterns:
– Hourly
– Annually/Monthly
– Specific Dates

27. New Features 11g:
Scheduling & Bursting Enhancements
• Multiple Outputs

28. New Features 11g:
Scheduling & Bursting Enhancements
• Manage Job History

29. Agenda
• What is BI Publisher?
• Report Architecture
• Building a report: step by step guide
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.3)
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.5)
• Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things that you need
to keep in mind.
• Conclusions

30. New Features version 11.1.1.5
• List Component
• Local Excel Data Source
• Native and Web App for iPad & iPhone
• Excel 2007 Output
• Faster Interactive Reports
• Excel Templates

31. New Features version 11.1.1.5
List component

32. New Features version 11.1.1.5
Local Excel Data Source

33. Agenda
• What is BI Publisher?
• Report Architecture
• Building a report: step by step guide
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.3)
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.5)
• Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things that you need
to keep in mind.
• Conclusions

34. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
that you need to keep in mind.
To upgrade Oracle BI Publisher you have to run Upgrade
Assistant in two steps:
• For Oracle BI Publisher Repository (Reports and
Configuration Files)
• For BI Publisher Schema

35. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
that you need to keep in mind.
BI Publisher Repository Upgrade
• When you upgrade the BI Publisher repository, 10g reports are
upgraded and placed in the 11g repository
• The most important change in the report definition (from 10g
to 11g), is the separation of the data model as an independent
object in the catalog.
• The upgrade from 10g to 11g splits the 10g report object into a
report definition file (.xdo) and a data model file (.xdm)

36. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
.
that you need to keep in mind.
Security Model Changes
• If you will upgrade a standalone installation of BI Publisher, the security
model does not change.
• In Oracle Fusion Middleware Security, you manage users and roles from the
Oracle WebLogic Administration Console
• If BI Publisher is integrated with Oracle BI EE, then users and groups are
migrated from the 10g repository file to the default 11g identity store (
Oracle WebLogic Server embedded LDAP server).

37. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
that you need to keep in mind.
Enhanced Catalog Object Security
• In 10g granting access to catalog objects was performed in the
Administration Roles and Permissions page. Giving access to the folder
which the report was.
• In 11g, the granting of permissions is performed within the catalog using
the Permissions task.

38. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
that you need to keep in mind.
Enhanced Catalog Object Security
• Permissions for folders: • Permissions for reports:
– Full Control – Full Control
– Modify – Modify
– Open – Open
– Schedule Publisher Report – Schedule Publisher Report
– View Publisher Output – View Publisher Output
– Traverse – No Access
– No Access – Custom
– Custom

39. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
that you need to keep in mind.
Enhanced Catalog Object Security

40. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
that you need to keep in mind.
Enhanced Catalog Object Security

41. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
that you need to keep in mind.
Enhanced Catalog Object Security
• For a user to run a report, he must have the read permission granted for every
object that is referenced by the report. (For example: data model, style template)
• In 11g, all roles that access a data source (even only for viewing reports) , must be
granted access to that data source. (This task is performed in the Administration
Page)

42. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
that you need to keep in mind.
• Discoverer Workbooks are not longer supported as a Data Set
Type

43. Migrating BI Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things
that you need to keep in mind.
• Compatibility between 10g and 11g Reports
– Cannot download reports from 10g and try to upload and run them in
11g. All the reports from 10g, have to be upgrated using the Upgrade
Assistant.
– The same from 11g to 10g
– You can use a template that was created in 10g for a 11g report.
– You can use the BI Publisher Template Builder for Word 11g to design
reports for 10g, setting the option: Backward Compatible.

44. Agenda
• What is BI Publisher?
• Report Architecture
• Building a report: step by step guide
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.3)
• New Features version 11g (11.1.1.5)
• Security in BI Publisher
• Migrating Bi Publisher from 10g to 11g: Things that you need
to keep in mind.
• Conclusions

45. Conclusions
With BI Publisher you can:
• Obtain data from almost any source
• Combine data from different data sources
• Reuse your data models
• Easily create many layouts in different output formats for the
same report.
• Generate multiple documents from the same report, and
deliver each document to a different destination (bursting).
• Schedule reports and manage the job history

46. Conclusions
Advantages:
• Reduces complexity: Most intuitive tool to create, deploy and
deliver reports
• Has quick learning curve: Only one tool to create any type of
report
• Reduces time in reports generation. (Optimizations for PDF and
to handle large documents.)
• Reduces total cost , including develop and maintenance
because of objects reuse (data models, style templates)

47. Additional Information
• http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-
publisher/overview/index.html
• http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-
publisher/learnmore/index.html
• http://blogs.oracle.com/xmlpublisher/
• http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=245
• www.rittmanmead.com/blog
• New book: Oracle BI Publisher 11g: A Practical Guide to Enterprise
Reporting

48. Q&A