04 Oracle BI Publisher Architecture

Table of Contents
What Is Oracle BI Publisher?....................................................................................... 2
Classic Reporting Paradigm........................................................................................ 2
Oracle BI Publisher Paradigm...................................................................................... 4
Flexible Deployment Options...................................................................................... 4
Oracle BI Publisher for Applications............................................................................5
Oracle BI Publisher Standalone................................................................................... 6
Oracle BI Publisher Desktop....................................................................................... 6
Oracle BI Publisher Architecture.................................................................................6
From Data to Destination............................................................................................ 8
Government Forms..................................................................................................... 8
Extract Once, Publish Many Times..............................................................................9
Report Bursting........................................................................................................ 11
Consolidated Document Publishing..........................................................................12
Distributed Delivery.................................................................................................. 12
Inbound Document Capture..................................................................................... 13
Data Sources............................................................................................................ 14
Oracle BI Publisher Data Engine............................................................................... 14
Oracle BI Publisher Technology.................................................................................14
Oracle BI Publisher Technology.................................................................................15
Performance and Scalability..................................................................................... 15
Security.................................................................................................................... 15
Internationalization and Language Support..............................................................15
Translation................................................................................................................ 16

What Is Oracle BI Publisher?

Oracle BI Publisher is a Java-based product available within the technology
stack of the E-Business Suite which
provides users with:
A template-based, easy-to-use publishing solution
A tool to rapidly develop and maintain report formats
What is Oracle BI Publisher?
Oracle Oracle BI Publisher is a new Java-based product within the technology stack
of the e-Business Suite. It is an easy-to-use, template-based publishing solution that
enables customers to rapidly develop and maintain report formats.
It is build on standard, well-known technologies such as XML and allows customers
to take advantage of using tools they are familiar with such as Microsoft Word and
Adobe Acrobat.
It consists of:
A library of APIs
An integrated architecture with the E-Business Suite
A reporting tool providing rich output options
A friendly solution that provides control of the report design
layout to the customer to decrease the overall costs associated
to customizations and maintenance

Classic Reporting Paradigm

Classic tools include such products as Oracle Reports.

Oracle BI Publisher Paradigm

Separate data, layout, and translation

Oracle BI Publisher Paradigm

While it may appear that splitting the report into data, layout, and translation
components is more complex, the tools and techniques used actually simplify the
process.

Flexible Deployment Options

Oracle BI Publisher for Applications

Oracle BI Publisher for Oracle E-Business Suite
Integrated with concurrent manager
Tightly integrated with all E-Business Suite modules
Central repository for managing data and layout
Translation and configuration management
Oracle BI Publisher for PeopleSoft Enterprise
Integrated with process scheduler and report manager
Publish PeopleSoft queries and row sets
Report bursting
Security join tables
Template manager with effective dates support
Oracle BI Publisher for JD Edwards Enterprise
Integrated with Enterprise One queries
Support queries saved through data browser
Row and business unit security

Oracle BI Publisher Standalone

Oracle BI Publisher Embedded: Custom Development
Powerful formatting engines
High-performance data extraction engine
Batch processing, and bursting
Delivery API for e-mail, fax, printing, FTP, and AS2
Based on open standards: Java, XML, XSL, FO, RTF, PDF
Oracle BI Publisher Enterprise
Easy and fast deployment
Any J2EE container
Configure repository on XMLDB or file system
Data from multiple DBs in the same report (Oracle, DB2, and
others)
Multiple output formats and multiple delivery options
Document repository, scheduling, archiving
Database and Application Server independent
Advanced security and administrative options
Pluggable Services, Web Service APIs

Oracle BI Publisher Desktop

Functional users tools:
Functional users can create reports using familiar desktop
applications.
Oracle BI Publisher for Word
Oracle BI Publisher for Excel
Oracle BI Publisher for PDF
Consultants or IT departments tools:
Consultants create data sources and reports using expert
tools.
Oracle BI Publisher Builder
Oracle BI Publisher Viewer or Debugger

Oracle BI Publisher Architecture

Oracle BI Publisher Architecture

Oracle BI Publisher is made up of the five modules:

Data Handled: Data engines are registered with the data

handler. Can be any XML source or any engine that
generates XML such as Oracle Reports.
Template Manager: The Template Manager is a friendly
user interface that is built over a collection of APIs that
enables customers to register and maintain their Data
Definitions and Templates. Layout templates to be used
for the final output are stored and managed in the
Template Manager. Templates are created using familiar
desktop tools such as MS Word, MS Excel, or Adobe
Acrobat.
Document Processor: The Document Processor allows the
user to build single documents from multiple data source
and template combinations or individual documents for
each combination. Passing XML that contains multiple
data sources and templates to Oracle BI Publisher will
result in the generation of multiple output documents.
Translation Handler: The Translation Handler provides
users with ability to register and maintain Data
Definitions and Templates in a friendly user interface.
Increases ease and flexibility of maintaining everyday
reports and business documents. (This will be supported
in a future release.)
Delivery Server: Takes the output document and delivers
it to the printer
Oracle BI Publisher offers a new concurrent program, XML Report
Publisher, that will apply a user-selected template layout to generated
XML data. The new concurrent program is accessible at the Concurrent
Manager and can be executed at the Single Request Submission screen.
New concurrent program is executed at the familiar Concurrent Manager
Request Submission screen.
Provides flexibility of choosing a layout template from a
list of registered templates associated to the selected
XML generated data source
User is able to apply multiple layout templates to the
same XML data without having to run the XML
generating program more than once.
Output is a friendly viewable PDF document. Prerequisite is to register
data definition and template. Four parameters in the report: XML data,
Template, Language, and Currency.

From Data to Destination

An Oracle BI Publisher report can consist of one or more sources that feed
a template created by any supported method. The resulting output of the
report can be sent to one or more outputs and distributed to one or more
destinations.

Government Forms

Download PDF forms from the government Web site.

Send back the exact form filled with data.

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Extract Once, Publish Many Times

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Report Bursting

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Consolidated Document Publishing

Generate consolidated documents:
Briefing books
Shipping documents
Others
Either Oracle BI Publisher or third-party PDFs:
Page numbering
Bookmarks
Start and end pages
Overlays

Distributed Delivery

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Inbound Document Capture

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Data Sources
Any database or multiple databases
Distributed queries
Oracle BI Publisher Data Engine
Any ERP system
Any XML data server
Oracle Reports
DB packages in SQL or XML
Any XML Web service

Oracle BI Publisher Data Engine

Fast, scalable extraction engine

Integrated into concurrent manager
Migration tools available from Oracle Reports
Offers all that Oracle Reports offers, 3040% faster
Multiple queries and joins
Event triggers
Flexfield support
Formula/Summary columns
Java API layer for Oracle Applications Framework (OAF)
support
Data bursting (5.6.1)
Distributed queries (5.6.1)

Oracle BI Publisher Technology

Open-standard technologies:
W3C XSL:FO implementation
Pure Java
Pluggable data in XML
Output formats in PDF, PS, RTF, and HTML
Support for Internet Printing Protocol, WebDAV, Internet Fax
Protocol, and SMTP

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Oracle BI Publisher Technology

Industry Standard Templates
Using desktop applications
Word
Excel
PDF
XSL Editors
Template Builder Add-ins

Performance and Scalability

Stream-based implementation:
Reduces memory footprint
Handles large XML input files
Is the fastest XSL-FO implementation
Users can design layout templates using familiar desktop applications
such as Adobe Acrobat and MS Word. There are now many XSL editors
available on the market for the user to take advantage of.

Security
Printing from MS Excel is not accepted by financial auditors.
PDF security levels for:
Read only/editable text
Copyable text
Printable text
Password protecting text

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Internationalization and Language Support

No need for expensive language-specific printers

Oracle BI Publisher ships with a full set of Unicode fonts.
Scalable fonts embedding, with CID mapping tables
Oracle BI Publisher supports
CJK
BiDi
Unicode
MLS
Communicate with partners around the world.
Create a template for any language or territory.

Translation
Communicate with partners around the world.
No dependency on installed languages
No dependency on database character set
Create a template for any language or territory.
Translate template or send to third party
Support for XLIFF
Recognizes any combination of:
185 language codes
244 territory codes

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