The lifetime of a business intelligence application can be months, or even years. During that time, data may change and new requirements appear. As the underlying data changes, authors must modify existing content and develop new content. Administrators must also update models and data sources over time. For more information about using data sources, see the Administration and Security Guide and the Framework Manager User Guide. In a working application, the technical and security infrastructure and the portal are in place, as well as processes for change management, data control, and so on. For information about the workflow associated with creating ACI content, see the Architecture and Deployment Guide.
The following provides an overview for how to use ACI to build applications across all of your ACI components.
Locate and prepare data sources and models
ACI can report from a wide variety of data sources, both relational and dimensional. Database connections are created in the Web administration interface, and are used for modeling, for authoring, and for running the application.
To use data for authoring and viewing, the business intelligence studios need a subset of a model of the metadata (called a package). The metadata may need extensive modeling in Framework Manager.
Build and publish the content
Reports, scorecards, analysis, dashboards and more are created in the business intelligence studios of ACI. Which studio you use depends on the content, lifespan, and audience of the report, and whether the data is modeled dimensionally or relationally. Report Studio reports and scorecards are usually prepared for a wider audience, published to Reporting Center or another portal, and scheduled there for bursting, distribution, and so on. You can also use Report Studio to prepare templates for self-service reporting.
Deliver and view the information
You deliver content from the ACI portal or other supported portals, and view information that has been saved to portals, or delivered by other mechanisms. You can also run reports, analyses, scorecards, and more from within the business intelligence studio in which they were created.
For information about tuning and performance, see the Administration and Security Guide.
