Oracle9i Discoverer Administrator

Release Notes

Release 2 (9.0.2) for Windows

April 2002

Part No. A96163-01

This document summarizes the differences between Oracle9i Discoverer Administrator and its documented functionality.

See Also:

Oracle9i Developer Suite Release Notes

1 Certification and System Requirements

Please see the Oracle9i Developer Suite Installation Guide for details of certification and system requirements.

1.1 Oracle9i Application Server version

This release of Oracle9i Discoverer Administrator is certified for use with:

Oracle9i Discoverer Desktop 9.0.2
Oracle9iAS Discoverer Plus and Oracle9iAS Discoverer Viewer (which are components of Oracle9i Application Server release 2.0 (9.0.2))

1.2 Migrating from Discoverer 3.1

To migrate from a release of Discoverer prior to 4.1 (e.g. 3.1), follow the steps below:

Migrate the 3.1 EUL to a 4.1 EUL using Oracle Discoverer Administration Edition 4.1.
Migrate the 4.1 EUL using Oracle9i Discoverer Administrator 9.0.2.

If you do not have Oracle Discoverer Administration Edition 4.1, you can obtain it from Oracle Support.

(Note: Oracle Discoverer Administrator was previously called Oracle Discoverer Administration Edition).

2 General Issues and Workarounds

At the time of writing, there were no known general issues or workarounds. Please see the Oracle9i Developer Suite Release Notes for any late breaking information.

3 Configuration Issues and Workarounds

At the time of writing, there were no known configuration issues or workarounds. Please see the Oracle9i Developer Suite Release Notes for any late breaking information.

4 Administration Issues and Workarounds

At the time of writing, there were no known administration issues or workarounds. Please see the Oracle9i Developer Suite Release Notes for any late breaking information.

5 Useful Information

5.1 Installing the Lineage workbook for use with Oracle Warehouse Builder

The Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) Discoverer bridge is documented in Chapter 11 "Administration" and in Appendix H "Warehouse Builder Bridges: Transfer Parameters and Considerations" of the Oracle9i Warehouse Builder User's Guide (Release 9.0.2, Part no. A95931-01).

Before you can use the Lineage workbook you must have first generated your Discoverer EUL using OWB and Discoverer Bridge. Discoverer Bridge will generate a Discoverer import file (.eex) that contains references to the folder and item lineage held within OWB. You can then load this .eex file into your Discoverer EUL. Please note that the Lineage workbook will only work with a business area generated in this way.

Login to Oracle9i Discoverer Administrator as the Discoverer EUL schema owner.
Import the lineage.eex file.
Login to SQL*Plus as the Discoverer EUL schema owner.

For example:
```
> SQLPLUS myeul/myeul@myconnection
```
Run the lineage.sql file.

For example:
```
> start d:\lineage.sql
```
This script will ask you to input and verify the following:
- the OWB URL Machine Name.Domain Name:Port
  
  For example, http://myserver.us.mycompany.com:7777
- the OWB Virtual path to mod_plsql (the default is pls)
  
  For example, pls
- the OWB Database Access Descriptor DAD (the default is portal30)
  
  For example, portal30
- the OWB Browser schema
  
  For example, myowbinstall
- the OWB Host name (i.e. the name of the machine that runs the OWB9i repository)
  
  For example, myserver
  
  Note that the name must be exactly the same as used in the OWB browser registration.
- the OWB SID (i.e. the database instance name)
  
  For example, 9iASdB
- the OWB Schema where the OWB repository resides
  
  For example, e.g. owbrep
Login to Oracle9iAS Discoverer Plus, Oracle9iAS Discoverer Viewer, or Oracle9i Discoverer Desktop as the EUL schema owner and open the Lineage workbook.

If you export and re-import the EUL, you will need to re-run lineage.sql.

If you have previously imported EUL5.eex, you will already have the Lineage workbook saved in the database. If this is the case, all you need to do is run lineage.sql.

5.2 Characters that will be de-supported for use in identifiers

Identifiers are Discoverer's way to enable End User Layer (EUL) objects to be consistently referenced between different EULs. This is particularly useful if you wish to update a production EUL with changes made in a development EUL. The identifier property of an EUL object is accessed via the Properties dialog.

In a future release of Discoverer, there will be a change to the valid characters that can be used in identifiers. For this release, a warning will appear when attempting to create an identifier that contains a character that will be de-supported and a warning will appear in the import log when using Discoverer Administrator to import an .eex file that contains identifiers that contain de-supported characters. Please modify any identifiers that use these characters so that the identifiers can be used in future releases of Discoverer.

The following characters will be de-supported for use in identifiers in future releases of Discoverer:

! ~ * ( ) ` -

The characters that are supported for use in identifiers are as follows:

A..Z, a..z, 0..9, _

5.3 Query re-write and remote databases (Bug 1504880)

The Oracle8i/9i database will not perform a query re-write if the detail tables of a materialized view exist on a remote database. The workaround depends on whether the summary being created is an external summary or a managed summary, as follows:

External Summaries

Define the external summary using the Discoverer Summary Wizard.
Create a view in the database that selects all columns from the materialized view created by Discoverer.
Register the view created in step 2 as an external summary table.

Managed Summaries

For each combination in the managed summary folder, determine the name of the underlying materialized view from the database storage properties (which can be found on the Combination tab of the Edit Summary Wizard).
For each of the underlying materialized views found in step 1, repeat the procedure for external summaries described above.
Set the 'Available for queries' property to 'No' for the managed summary folder.

Server based re-write and fast refresh capability for the remote database scenario is planned for a future release.

6 Documentation Errata

This section describes known errors in the documentation.

6.1 Change to privileges required when creating external summary folders

In Chapter 15, "Creating summary folders manually" of the Oracle9i Discoverer Administrator Administration Guide, the section 'What are the prerequisites for creating summary folders manually?' contains the following text:

If you want Discoverer to use external summary tables, the EUL owner:

must have SELECT access to the external summary tables
must have been granted SELECT access explicitly (i.e. not via a database role)

However, the above privileges are not necessarily sufficient when creating external summary folders against an Oracle9i database. If the materialized view is on a pre-built container and the creator is different from the owner, the creator must have SELECT WITH GRANT privilege on the container table.

So in both cases above, 'SELECT' should read 'SELECT (or for Oracle9i databases) SELECT WITH GRANT'.

6.2 About Discoverer Plus and Discoverer Viewer registry settings

On page 22-2 of the Oracle9i Discoverer Administrator Administration Guide, the registry key:

\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Oracle\Oracle9iASDiscoverer\..

should read:

\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Oracle\WebDisco 902\..

6.3 Un-translated error messages

A number of error messages that may appear in the product were added after translations had been completed. These will appear as a number. A description of these messages appears below:

Message Number	Description
3755	This user requires Create Any Table and Drop Any Table system privilege
3757	This message appears when importing a user-defined function that has the same identifier as a Discoverer internal function. An example of this message is "Function with identifier `EUL_226' and display name `GROUP_ID' cannot be imported as one of these values is reserved".

6.4 Installation Directory

Any occurrences of <ORACLE_HOME>\discv902 in the Oracle9i Discoverer Administrator Administration Guide should read <ORACLE_HOME>\discoverer902.

6.5 Location of EUL workbooks

The location of the EUL status workbooks (EUL5.EEX and LINEAGE.EEX) has changed from that indicated in the product documentation. These workbooks can be found in the \discoverer902\ directory.

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