Exploring BI Publisher 11g : A simple report with DataModel Editor

If you have installed OBIEE 11g successfully, lets try to explore some of the new features and tools available with BI Publisher 11g.

Unlike 10g, where Report is a single entity and data sets are the part of Report definition, in 11g, Data Sets (which termed as Data Model in 11g) and Report definition are two separate entities.

Data Model, which drive/extract the xml data for report is the advance version of Data Template, So there is no Data Template in 11g, its all Data Model with a very nice Data Model editor to design simple to complex Data model. This support some new data source like, BC4J View Objects and EXCEL, which were not supported in earlier releases as data source.

Report definition includes the Data Model reference, Layout template and other report specific metadata required to render or generate the Report output.

For these many years, we are using RTF templates as main Layout Template, now there is new format available with 11g, it is xpt format, which looks like Oracle’s proprietary format. As claimed, it generates almost pixel perfect output and could be a good substitute for PDF Forms. A nice Report Designer is available to design these xpt reports.

As I mentioned earlier, the complete report consist of two main objects, Data Model and Report definition. Data Model should exist, before we start Report definition.

Before design the data model, make sure the required jdbc connection is setup through BI Publisher Administration UI. To access JDBC data source UI, click the Administration from the Top bar and select the Manage BI Publisher Administration from the Common Administration Page.
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