Business Intelligence Services

Business Intelligence Services can help you gain insight into internal business operations, customers, and suppliers. The basic Business Intelligence requirements usually include data quality, data analysis, and information access. The ultimate goal of Business Intelligence Services is to provide up-to-the-second business insight, most commonly provided with reporting tools. Oracle provides two enterprise-quality reporting tools: Oracle Reports and Oracle Discoverer. The choice of which tool to implement (or the decision to implement both) will be based on the needs and skill level of the employees in your organization. Both of these tools, in conjunction with Oracle Application Server 10 g , provide the capability to easily make reports available over the Web.

Similar to the Forms Server discussed earlier, the Reports Server allows you to publish Oracle Reports on an internal company intranet, an external company extranet, or over the Web. In addition, the Reports Server can interface with a mail server to automatically deliver reports to the mailbox of selected users or groups. The Reports Server consists of the server component, run-time engines, and the servlet runner. When a client submits a request for a report, the Oracle HTTP Server web listener routes that request to the Oracle Reports Services server component. The server then routes the request to the Oracle Reports Services run-time engine, which runs the report. The report output is then sent back to the client through the Oracle HTTP Server web listener. Reports can be formatted as HTML, XML, PDFs (Adobe Acrobat), or as plain text for the user . Developers can also easily customize them for import into Microsoft Excel or any other commonly supported Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) document type. The Oracle Reports Server can be configured to use Application Server 10 g ˜s SSO and OID capabilities to secure access. Reports can also be integrated easily with Oracle Portal so that they can take advantage of Portal s publishing, security, and visual template features. 11 discuss Oracle Reports and the Reports Server. Figure 1-7 shows an Oracle Report served up over the Web.

Figure 1-7: An Oracle Report viewed through a web browser

Oracle Discoverer is a reporting tool that gives ad-hoc query capabilities to your end users. Targeted at power users, Discoverer enables you to access information from the database and create dynamic reports that accept parameters and have drill-down or data pivoting capabilities, all without the need to learn SQL. Invoking the Discoverer workbook or worksheet over the Web can be made as simple as clicking a URL that invokes the Discoverer web component called Discoverer Viewer. This link can be constructed to invoke a particular workbook query automatically, giving the user the results in a web browser with the ability to interact with the query results to drill up or down, enter values into optional parameters, or to follow links to other workbooks or applications. Figure 1-8 shows an Oracle Discoverer workbook displayed in Discoverer Plus.

Figure 1-8: An Oracle Discoverer worksheet viewed through a web browser

There is no environment in Application Server 10 g to develop Oracle Forms and Reports. The Forms Server and Reports Server components exist solely to take Forms and Reports and serve them up on the Web. Oracle Discoverer Server has the capability to serve Discoverer Workbooks and Worksheets over the Web, but it also has the capability to develop Workbooks and Worksheets using a web browser as its interface. This piece of the Discoverer Server, called Discoverer Plus, can be used as a replacement to the Oracle Discoverer Desktop. By using the Discoverer Plus web interface, you will no longer have to install the Discoverer Desktop software on every client that needs to create and manage workbooks and worksheets. The Discoverer Administrator program, which is used to administer End-User Layers (EULs) and Discoverer privileges, is still required. Figure 1-9 shows an Oracle Discoverer worksheet displayed over the Web in the Discoverer Plus environment.

Figure 1-9: The Discoverer Plus development environment