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Oracle® Application Server 10g Best Practices
10g (9.0.4) Part No. B12223-01 |
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Oracle® Application Server 10g Best Practices
10g (9.0.4) Part No. B12223-01 |
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This chapter describes best practices for business intelligence. It includes the following topics:
This section describes best practices for Oracle Reports. It includes the following topics:
Section 10.1.1, "Differences Between Paper and Web Reporting"
Section 10.1.2, "Dynamic Environment Switching to Consolidate Reports Servers"
In order to be able to serve the requirements of Oracle Reports customers that use J2EE architecture for their enterprise applications, Oracle Reports introduced Web layout in addition to the paper layout. The Web layout is completely code-based as opposed to the paper layout, which is based on graphical frames, repeating frames, boilerplate objects and so on. When Oracle Reports users need to deploy their reports on the Web, they have 2 options:
design the reports in paper layout and access the report in HTML/HTMLCSS format
design the Web layout and access the JSP
The paper layout offers you minute control over pagination. In case you would like to generate HTML output, it also provides several properties that you can use to affect the HTML code in the output. However, in spite of all its capabilities, this format does not offer you full control over the look-and-feel of the HTML output. For example, if you want to alter the width and other attributes of the table that shows your data, it can only be done within the constraints of the graphical capabilities of the report layout designer, and you may not be able to make full use of the HTML or CSS capabilities. The paper layout is quite useful in situations when you do not want to hand-code your HTML report, and you would like to present exactly the same report in HTML as in paginated formats like PDF.
Because Web layout is code-based, it offers minute control over the HTML that appears in the output. You can design your reports to look exactly like the rest of the pages in your application. Using Java code inside the JSP report is more direct and easier than in the paper layout because you have to use PL/SQL logic to call the Java business logic. Once you have designed the report, you can package the JSP with the rest of the application and deploy it on a J2EE application server. The Web layout is useful when you plan to have a J2EE-based Web application and have expertise in writing Java and HTML code. You can use Web application wizards such as Oracle Reports Wizard or Oracle Graph Wizard to generate JSP code for you however, you will not experience the full potential of a JSP report unless you have a JSP-based Web application team.
Oracle Reports contains a feature called Dynamic Environment Switching. Previously, the Oracle Reports server could only serve reports that were compatible with the operating environment in place when the Oracle Reports server was started. For example, the reports had to be compatible with the value of the NLS_LANG parameter at the time the Oracle Reports server was started. This restriction meant that you needed to have one Oracle Reports server running for each processing language. The new environment switching feature available in Oracle Reports eliminates this restriction by enabling one instance of Oracle Reports server to serve reports with any number of environment settings, including language.
To be able to use this feature, just add as many <environment> tags in the Oracle Reports server configuration file as needed. Each of these tags can have values such as the NLS_LANG setting, a currency symbol, or a calendar. When processing a job, use the EnvID parameter in the command line to specify which <environment> setting you want to use. The Oracle Reports server reads the relevant environment settings from the configuration file, and if an engine is not already running with these settings, a new engine is started. The new engine, started with appropriate environment settings, will be used to process the job.
For more information about the <environment> section of the server configuration file, refer to Oracle Application Server Reports Services Publishing Reports to the Web guide.
This section describes best practices for Oracle Application Server Discoverer (OracleAS Discoverer).
The performance of a OracleAS Discoverer system refers to the time OracleAS Discoverer takes to complete a specific task. OracleAS Discoverer performance is largely determined by how well the database has been designed and tuned for queries. You can achieve additional performance benefits by designing your Business Areas and Worksheets with performance in mind.
The scalability of a OracleAS Discoverer system refers to the ability of OracleAS Discoverer to handle increasing numbers of users or tasks without compromising performance. To take advantage of inherently scalable architecture of OracleAS Discoverer, install it on multiple computers and share the workload between the computers.
Additional performance and scalability can be achieved by tuning Oracle Application Server and OracleAS Discoverer services on your middle tier installation.
Refer to the Oracle Application Server Discoverer Configuration Guide for additional information regarding optimizing performance and scalability of OracleAS Discoverer.
