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Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Release 11g (11.1.1)
Part Number E18861-01
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Viewing a Report

About Viewing Reports in BI Publisher

View a report in your Web browser using the report viewer. Depending on the report properties and your user permissions, you may be able to select and view different layouts, interact directly with displayed data, change the output type, or send the report to someone else.

This chapter includes the following topics:

Viewing a Report

All reports reside in the catalog. Your Home page will display recently viewed and most popular reports for quick access.

To view a report

  1. Navigate to the report.

    The Catalog displays two main reports folders.

  2. Open the appropriate folder and then click the report name or the Open link for the report. This will run the report using the options set in the report definition.

    Note: Some reports are not configured for online viewing. For these reports, the Open link will not display. Select Schedule to schedule a report job. See Creating Report Jobs.

    Some reports may require you to select parameter values before running the report. If the report does not immediately display data, select values for the displayed parameters and click Apply.

Using the Report Viewer Options

The following figure shows the report viewer:

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The following list describes components of the report viewer. Not all options are available for all reports:

Actions

The Actions menu provides more actions that you can take on the report. The complete list of possible options follows. The options that are available to you will depend on your user privileges and properties set for the report. The full list of options is shown in the following figure:

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Creating an Ad Hoc Pivot Table with the Analyzer

Note: Your administrator must assign you the appropriate permissions to use this feature.

The online Analyzer enables you to create ad hoc analyses of your data by quickly dragging and dropping your report data elements into a pivot table structure. You can then save your pivot table as a layout for the report. The interface enables you to easily rearrange and pivot your data by dragging items to different row, column or summary positions.

You can limit the data displayed in your pivot table by defining page-level filters. The page-level filter is an element from your data set by which to specify the results displayed in the table. Drag and drop the desired element from the data pane to the Page item area to automatically create a menu of the values for that element. You can then select a value from the list to filter the results in the table to display only the data that corresponds to your selection.

After selecting all the data elements for the table, choose whether to view the Sum, Average, or Count of the data.

This topic contains two procedures:

Limitations of the Online Analyzer

Because the data presented in the Online Analyzer is from the source XML file, no data type information is available; therefore, number formats cannot be localized according to Report Locale preferences.

Accessing the Online Analyzer

To access the Online Analyzer:

About the Online Analyzer Toolbar

The Analyzer toolbar enables you to perform the following functions:

Creating an Interactive Pivot Table

This procedure describes how to create an interactive pivot table using the Online Analyzer:

To create an interactive pivot table

The following example displays the usage of the Analyzer with a simple Sales Analysis report:

  1. From the report viewer, click Actions and then click Analyzer.

    The Analyzer interface displays the list of data fields on a pane and an empty pivot table structure on the adjacent pane, as shown in the following figure.

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  2. To filter by CATEGORY_NAME, drag the item to the Page Items region, as shown in the following figure:

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    Now you can choose a value from the CATEGORY_NAME list to filter the page data as shown in the following figure:

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  3. To view product sales by year, drag PRODUCT_NAME into the Row Field area, and drop ORDER_YEAR into the Column Field area. Drop the SALES data into the table body area, as shown in the following figure:

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    You can now see the calculated sales totals as a sum of the data items.

  4. Add the dimension of ORDER_PERIOD to the table by dragging the data item over the ORDER_YEAR as shown in the following figure:

    the picture is described in the document text

  5. Now you can click the ORDER_YEAR to open it up to display each ORDER_PERIOD total. Click again to close the item and view only the ORDER_YEAR total.

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Saving Your Interactive Pivot Table as a Layout

You can save your pivot table as a layout for your report by exporting it and saving it as a BI Publisher layout. The export command saves the pivot table as the BI Publisher layout type (.xpt). It will then have all the features and properties of a BI Publisher layout.

  1. Click Export.

  2. In the dialog, enter a name. The analyzer layout will be saved as a layout selection for this report.

  3. Close the Online Analyzer.

  4. On the Actions menu, click Edit Report.

  5. From the Report Editor, click View a List to display the layouts in the list view.

  6. Locate your new layout in the layout table and select a locale for it.

  7. Click Save.

Using the Analyzer for Excel

Note: Your administrator must assign you the appropriate permissions to use this feature.

Prerequisites

Important: If you have previously installed the Analyzer for Excel, and you are installing a later version, perform the following:

  1. Uninstall the current version of Analyzer for Excel from the Control panel, using the Add or Remove Programs function.

  2. Remove Xmlpreportaddin.xla from the add-ins list.

    To remove it from Word 2003: On the Tools menu, click Add-ins, then click Xmlpreportaddin.xla to remove it.

    To remove it from Word 2007 or 2010: Click the Office button, then click Excel Options, then click Add-Ins. Next to Manage: Excel Add-ins, click Go. Select the box next to Xmlpreportaddin. When prompted, delete it from the list.

Features

The Analyzer for Excel offers two modes: online mode and offline mode. The report designer sets the mode as a property of the report. The online mode is the default mode and is described in this section. For information on the offline mode, see Excel Analyzer Options, Oracle Fusion Middleware Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.

The Analyzer for Excel enables you to:

Launching the Analyzer for Excel

  1. From the report viewer, click the Actions toolbar button, then select Analyzer for Excel from the list. You will be prompted to save or open the report file.

  2. When you open the file in Excel, select Enable Macros from the Excel dialog.

    Note: You must enable macros to use the Analyzer for Excel in online mode.

    Your report data displays in an Excel worksheet and the Oracle BI Publisher menu appears on your Excel menu bar. Note that the data are the results of the report query with no layout or filtering applied.

    You can now manipulate the report data in Excel.

    If the report has parameters, the parameter fields will appear at the top of the worksheet, but you must log in to apply new parameter values. See the Analyzer for Excel help, or Using the Oracle BI Publisher Menu.

Using the BI Publisher Menu

You must log in to enable all the menu commands.

Login enables you to log in to BI Publisher. See Logging in Through Excel.

Show Report Parameters – displays the updateable parameters and available layouts for the report in a toolbar.

Analyzer for Excel Toolbar

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To update the data, select a new parameter value then click Refresh Data to refresh the data in the current sheet.

To apply a layout, select the layout, then click Refresh Formatted Data. This will download the report as HTML into a new worksheet. Select the new worksheet to see the data with the new layout applied.

Note: The layout you select must have HTML as an available output.

To change the parameter values from this worksheet, select the new values, then click Refresh Data, then click Refresh Formatted Data.

Update Excel Template

If you have edited the layout and wish to save your changes, use this option to upload the updated layout to the report definition in the BI Publisher catalog.

Note that to include charts in your saved layout, you must create them on the same worksheet that is downloaded by the Excel Analyzer.

Add as New Excel Template

Use this option to upload your layout and save it to the report definition.

View Report Online

Launches the report viewer page.

Browse for Reports Online

This feature enables you to select reports from the BI Publisher catalog and open them directly in Excel. You can either download the report data to Excel, or download an existing layout to update it or to use as a starting point for a new layout. See About the Open Template Dialog.

Preferences - select your locale and proxy settings if required.

About the Open Template Dialog

When you use the Open Template dialog to initiate the layout building process, you can then use the Update Excel Template options from the Oracle BI Publisher Menu to upload the layout directly to the appropriate report in the BI Publisher catalog.

Workspace

Select Oracle BI Publisher to browse the catalog.

Reports Pane

The Reports pane lists the reports in the selected folder. Select a report to display the available layouts in the Layout Templates pane.

Open Layout Template Downloads and opens the selected template in the Analyzer for Excel.

To start a new template, select <New> from the list of templates then select Open Layout Template; or double-click <New>.

Use the Report Browser’s Up icon to move up the directory structure.

Use the View As menu to view the folder contents as Large Icons, Small Icons, List or Details.

Logging in Through Excel

Once you have installed the Analyzer for Excel, you can log in to the BI Publisher from Excel, you do not have to log in to BI Publisher first.

Once you have Excel open, select Log in from the Oracle BI Publisher menu. The BI Publisher log in screen will prompt you to enter your credentials and to select (or enter) the Report Server URL. For example: http://example.com:7001/xmlpserver.

Important: For Oracle BI Enterprise Edition installations, the URL must point to the /xmlpserver as shown above.