Overview of Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher in Oracle Fusion Applications

What is Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher?

Oracle BI Publisher is a very powerful enterprise reporting solution that can be used to extract data from virtually any underlying technology such as relational databases, data warehouses, Essbase cubes, RSS feeds, Excel Spreadsheets, etc. BI Publisher essentially allows you to access data from multiple sources and send out that data in multiple formats to multiple recipients.

What functions can Oracle BI Publisher provide?

Besides generating business user reports such as Purchase Orders, Invoices, and Credit Memos, BI Publisher can carry out operational bank tasks such as send electronic funds transfer, bank statements and payments, or automatically fill in a government report such as tax forms.

Which applications offer Oracle BI Publisher?

BI Publisher is available both as a standalone application (BIP) and as a part of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE).

The Standalone BIP doesn't need to be integrated into your Fusion environment. You can simply use it on its own. And inside of that, you can manage all the scheduling, all the security, all of the administrative details that you need to manage to deliver these reports.

As part of OBIEE, then all your BI Publisher reports are going to be in the same repository as all of the other BI objects. And the functionality is basically the same as the standalone application. But within Fusion and within OBIEE, you can navigate to the Enterprise Edition if you need to manage all your reports.

What types of Data can BI Publisher use?

BI Publisher supports a multitude of data formats (SQL, Spreadsheet, XML, etc.) from different data sources (Oracle Database, SQL Server, Spreadsheets, Essbase, Microsoft Analysis Services, web services).

How can BI Publisher generate reports? 

Firstly, a BI Publisher Report consists of a Data Model, a Data File and a Layout. The data model contains the “script” that will extract the actual data, contained in the Data File, and the Layout will then display the actual data before delivery.

The procedure for getting data from those data sources is to create a data model that will extract all your data into an XML file.  For example, we can write a SQL query in BI Publisher and that SQL query will extract data from our relational database or databases and that data will be written to an XML file. The layout template would then display that XML data in formats the business user would need such as PDF, text, HTML, Spreadsheets, CSVs, etc. The possibilities for your output formats are very wide and diverse.

Also, you can also deliver it in a number of ways: by email, straight to a printer, straight to a fax machine, right into a repository, right directly to a database, or you can send it through e-commerce.

How can you run BI Publisher reports?

Financial Reporting Center (FRC)

• If you are going to be running BI Publisher reports from FRC, you would need to initially run the report from an area called Scheduled Processes.

Enterprise Scheduler System (ESS) or Scheduled Processes Area

• Most seeded BI Publisher reports can be run from the Scheduled Processes area and would be available to Business Users depending on their Roles.
• With the help of Scheduled Processes, BI Publisher reports can be executed immediately, or to run on a scheduled time, such as off business hours if you're running a massive report (such as all of the tax information for the whole company to the tax authorities)
• You can keep a track about the log of those jobs from the ESS and access the output of the jobs that have been submitted.
• Users access this interface from Navigator > Tools > Scheduled Processes.
• Most financial users will have access to this interface so that they can run the standard reports for general ledger and other subledger applications.

From inside an Applications Work Area

• Some seeded BI Publisher reports can already be executed from a Work Area, such as Receivables Transactions (Invoices, Credit Memos, Debit Memos), Purchase Orders, etc.

Directly from BI Publisher

• Although not recommended, BI Publisher has the capability to run the report on the fly. However, note that you would need the appropriate BI roles to do this, such as BI Author, BI consumer, etc.

What are Data Models and Layouts?

A data model is a set of instructions for BI Publisher to retrieve the data and structure that data so that it can then be married to a layout. It is an object that will extract the data from a data source. Data model can incorporate prompts, list of values and parameters to filter out the data further. A Data Model can be created directly from the BI Publisher screen using the Data Model editor. 

A report layout basically allows you to display the data in a format the user understands. Note that a report can have multiple layouts using one Data Model. Complex Layouts can be created using a very powerful template builder that is add-in for Microsoft Word and Excel. Also, there are other tools that you can use, like JDeveloper, to build the layout, or you can simply write the XSL if you wish. There is a built-in Layout editor in BI publisher but I personally don’t recommend on using it as it is slow, unresponsive and limited in its use.

The data model and the layout does not have a one-to-one relationship, they are simply brought together at runtime, and they are independent of each other. You can have one data model, many layouts, or one layout, many data models. For example, a Data Model that extracts Tax Data can have two or more layouts, one for the government tax authorities and another for internal use.

What is Translation?

Translation means that BI Publisher supports multiple layouts of multiple translations. Your layouts might look the same, but in fact, the language in the layout could be different. This is indicated during the uploading of layout templates.

Customizing Seeded BI Publisher Reports

However, most times, an organization may have other reporting requirements that are not being met by the ones Oracle provides out of the box, such as company branding, Wording, Colors, etc. You find that some of our predefined reports are close, but not quite what you need, then what you can do is you can customize those reports. Oracle provides a way for users to customize reports and protect it from being overwritten during patching. Check out a separate article about customizing the layouts of seeded Oracle Fusion Applications reports.

Below are some more articles that show Customization of Seeded report layouts in Oracle Fusion Applications:

• Changing the Purchase Order Layout in Oracle Fusion Applications
• Correctly display images in Separate Remittance Advise report in Oracle Fusion Applications
• Deactivate the seeded Separate Remittance Advise Layout in Oracle Fusion Applications
• Customize the Data Models of seeded Oracle Fusion Applications reports

For more full-detailed Tutorials and Tips, check out #TheOracleProdigy at https://lifeofanoracleprodigy.blogspot.com/

Follow The Oracle Prodigy on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/theOracleProdigy/) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/D_OracleProdigy)