Oracle^® Business Intelligence Server Administration Guide > Connectivity and Third-Party Tools in Oracle BI Server >

Importing Metadata

You can import metadata from a data source to an Oracle BI repository. The metadata is used to establish physical table information in the Physical layer of the Administration Tool.

Metadata imports to an Oracle BI repository have to occur through an ODBC or native database connections to the underlying data sources. Metadata can also be imported from software such as Microsoft Excel through an ODBC connection.

For the metadata import procedure, refer to Process of Creating the Physical Layer from Relational Data Sources.

Using Query and Reporting Tools

You can connect to the Oracle BI Server with a wide variety of ODBC-compliant query and reporting tools. Connecting with a query tool is a matter of configuring a data source using the Oracle BI ODBC driver and then using the Oracle BI DSN to connect to a repository from the query tool.

The Presentation layer allows you to configure the presentation of a business model to be consistent with the rules and conventions of your tools to take advantage of the Oracle BI Server's analytical engine and data abstraction. This makes it much easier to include columns involving complex aggregation and calculation rules in queries and reports. Also, if your organization is currently using query and reporting tools, using the Oracle BI Server as a data source will make these tools more valuable and will simplify the work entailed when using them.