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Oracle Fusion Middleware Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Release 11g (11.1.1)
Part Number E13881-02
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Introduction

Overview of the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Report Designer's Guide

Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher is a reporting and publishing application that enables you to extract data from multiple data sources, create layouts for report data, and publish the report to numerous output formats. BI Publisher also enables you to schedule reports and deliver the reports to multiple delivery destinations required by your business.

The Oracle Fusion Middleware Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher describes how to create report layouts and use BI Publisher's report editor to assemble the components of a report. See these other guides for more information about using the product for other business roles:

Role Sample Tasks Guide
Data Model developer Fetching and structuring the data to use in reports Oracle Fusion Middleware Data Modeling Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Administrator Configuring Security
Configuring System Settings
Diagnosing and Monitoring System Processes
Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Application developer or integrator Integrating BI Publisher into existing applications using the application programming interfaces Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Report consumer Viewing reports
Scheduling report jobs
Managing report jobs
Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher

Overview for Report Designers

A report consists of a data model, a layout, and a set of properties. Optionally, a report may also include a style template and a set of translations. A report designer performs the following tasks:

About the Template Types

BI Publisher offers several options for designing layouts for your reports. The following formats are supported. Note that the layout type determines the types of output documents supported.

About Setting Runtime Properties

BI Publisher provides a variety of user-controlled settings that are specified via an easily accessible Runtime Configuration page. These include security settings for individual PDF reports, HTML output display settings, font mapping, currency formatting, and other output-specific settings. For more information see Setting Report Processing and Output Document Properties. These settings are also configured at the system-level, but can be customized per report.

About Translations

BI Publisher provides the ability to create an XLIFF file from your RTF templates. XLIFF is the XML Localization Interchange File Format. It is the standard format used by localization providers. Using BI Publisher's XLIFF generation tool you can generate the standard translation file of your RTF template. You can then translate this file (or send to a translation provider). Once translated, the file can be uploaded to the report definition under the appropriate locale setting so that at runtime the translated report will automatically be run for users selecting the corresponding locale. For more information, see Translating Reports and Catalog Objects.

About Style Templates

A style template is an RTF template that contains style information that can be applied to layout templates. The style information in the style template is applied to report layout templates at runtime to achieve a consistent look and feel across your enterprise reports.

For more information, see Creating and Implementing Style Templates.

About Sub Templates

A Sub Template is a piece of formatting functionality that can be defined once and used multiple times within a single layout template or across multiple layout template files. This piece of formatting can be in an RTF file format or an XSL file format. RTF subtemplates are easy to design as you can use Microsoft Word native features. XSL subtemplates can be used for complex layout and data requirements.

For more information, see Creating and Implementing Sub Templates.

New Features for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher 11g Release 1 (11.1.1)

This section describes new features in Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher 11g Release 1 (11.1.1). If you are upgrading from a previous release, read the following for information about new features, tools, and procedures.

This section includes the following topics:

New Features for Oracle BI Publisher 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.5)

New features in Oracle BI Publisher 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.5) include:

Excel Templates

An Excel template is a report layout that you design in Microsoft Excel for retrieving your enterprise data in Excel. Excel templates provide a set of special features for controlling the display of data and providing specific formatting instructions. Excel templates support the following features:

For more information, see Creating Excel Templates.

Excel Template Builder

BI Publisher provides a downloadable add-in to Excel that enables you to preview your Excel template with sample data. This facilitates design by enabling you to test and edit your template without having to upload it to the BI Publisher catalog first. The Template Builder for Excel is installed automatically when you install the Template Builder for Word. The tools can be downloaded from the Home page of Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher or Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition as follows:

Under the Get Started region, click Download BI Publisher Tools.

For more information, see Creating Excel Templates

New Interactive List Component for BI Publisher Layouts

The list component displays all values of a data element in a vertical or horizontal list. When viewed in interactive mode, clicking an item in the list updates the results shown in the linked components of the report. The list enables the report consumer to quickly see results for each item in the list by clicking the list entry. For more information see About Lists.

Redesigned Formula Dialog for BI Publisher Layout Editor

The formula dialog in the BI Publisher layout editor has been redesigned for better usability. For more information, see Setting Predefined or Custom Formulas.

New Features for Oracle BI Publisher 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.3)

New features in Oracle BI Publisher 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.3) include:

Major User Interface Improvements

The user interface has undergone major improvements in several areas, including a new Home page and redesigned editors and panes. These improvements are intended to make working with Oracle BI Publisher easier and more consistent. This guide provides detailed information on working with the various pieces of the user interface.

Shared Oracle BI Presentation Catalog

For installations of BI Publisher with the Oracle BI Enterprise Edition, BI Publisher now shares the same catalog with Oracle BI Presentation services.

Layout Editor Design Tool

This release introduces a new type of layout template and design tool. The Layout Editor is launched from within BI Publisher and provides an intuitive WYSIWIG drag-and-drop interface for designing report layouts.

Interactive Viewer

For reports created with the new BI Publisher layout editor, a new interactive output type is available. The interactive viewer enables pop-up chart details, scrollable tables, table filtering, table sorting, and propagated filtering across different components of the report. This interactivity is achieved simply by designing the report in the layout editor, no additional coding is necessary.

Sub Templates

Previously subtemplates had to be stored outside of the BI Publisher catalog and called at runtime from the external directory. In this release your RTF and XSL subtemplates can be saved and managed as objects in the BI Publisher catalog.

Style Templates

A style template is an RTF template that contains style information that can be applied to RTF layouts. The style information in the style template is applied to RTF layouts at runtime to achieve a consistent look and feel across your enterprise reports. Style templates are saved and managed in the BI Publisher catalog.

Zipped PDF Output

This release introduces a feature to split a large PDF output file into smaller, more manageable files, while still maintaining the integrity of the report as one logical unit. When PDF output splitting is enabled for a report, the report is split into multiple files generated in one zip file. The output type is PDFZ. For easy access to the component files, BI Publisher also generates an index file that specifies from and to elements contained in each component PDF file.