How Does Oracle BI EE Interact with Other Products?

Integration of Oracle BI EE with Oracle BI Publisher

BI Publisher enables you to create highly formatted reports that are suitable for printing. BI Publisher reports are built on top of BI Publisher data models. A BI Publisher data model can consist of data sets from a wide range of sources, such as subject areas from the BI Server or analyses, SQL queries against relational databases, MDX queries against Essbase or other OLAP sources, LDAP, Web Services, Microsoft Excel, HTTP feeds, or XML files. BI Publisher supports a wide range of layout types, so you can create the full range of documents that your organization might need. Within Oracle BI EE, you can view, create, edit, and schedule BI Publisher reports and can include them in dashboard pages.

As part of Release 11g, Oracle BI EE includes a fully integrated BI Publisher. All the BI Publisher functionality appears seamlessly within the Oracle BI EE application, and all reports and related objects are created within Oracle BI EE and saved to the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog.

When using the integrated environment, you see that the following areas are affected by the integration:

• Editors — You can create or edit BI Publisher content. When you work with a BI Publisher object, the appropriate BI Publisher editor is displayed. For example, when you work with a data model, the Data Model editor is displayed.

• Dashboards — You can embed BI Publisher reports in dashboards. You can also create custom print layouts for high-fidelity printing of dashboard pages. For information, see Chapter 4, "Building and Using Dashboards."

• Catalog — The Oracle BI Presentation Catalog contains all BI Publisher objects, such as reports and templates. You can work with BI Publisher objects in the catalog just as you work with other catalog objects, such as analyses or filters.

• Security — Single sign-on capability is provided. The Release 11g security model has been extended to include additional BI Publisher-specific permissions, such as xmlp_template_designer.

For more information about creating a BI Publisher report, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher. For more information about scheduling a BI Publisher report, see Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.

Integration of Oracle BI EE with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System

Oracle BI EE offers the following integration with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System:

• You can download Oracle Hyperion Smart View for Office from the Oracle BI EE Home page. For more information, see "Integration with Microsoft Office".

• You can download Oracle Essbase Studio Console from the Oracle BI EE Home page. For more information, see "Downloading BI Desktop Tools".

• You can download Oracle Essbase Administrative Services Console from the Oracle BI EE Home page. For more information, see "Downloading BI Desktop Tools".

• You can download Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting Studio from the Oracle BI EE Home page. For more information, see "Downloading BI Desktop Tools".

• You can navigate to Financial Reporting content by using a Navigate to EPM Content action. For information, see Chapter 10, "Working with Actions."

• Within EPM Workspace, you can work with analyses, agents, dashboards, and BI Publisher reports. For more information, see the Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management Workspace documentation in this Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System library:

  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/index.htm

Interaction of Oracle BI EE with Oracle BI Applications

Oracle Business Intelligence Applications are pre-built business intelligence solutions that are available for Oracle applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, Peoplesoft, and Siebel. Oracle Business Intelligence Applications are built on Oracle BI EE.

Oracle BI Applications consist of industry-specific dashboards and analyses that are built using industry best practices to address key functional areas within an organization. Dashboards and analyses are tailored for each end user's role in an organization.

Typically, Oracle BI Applications are integrated with and accessible from other operational applications, such as Oracle's Siebel CRM applications, to provide business metrics in analyses in the context of an organization's business function and industry. Oracle BI Applications include Extract Transform Load (ETL) routines to extract, transform, and load data into the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse. Oracle BI Applications also contain metadata that maps to the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse and a transactional database, and define key measures and metrics for all levels of the organization. These measures and metrics are available to content designers in Oracle Business Intelligence.

Integration with Microsoft Office

Oracle BI EE offers a set of add-ins to Microsoft Office that can be downloaded and installed to enable integration between components of Oracle Business Intelligence and Microsoft Office. The Get Started section of the Oracle BI EE "Home page" provides links to install the following add-in components:

• Template Builder for Word

• Analyzer for Excel

• Oracle Hyperion Smart View for Office

For more information about these components, see "Downloading BI Desktop Tools".