Preface

Welcome to Discoverer Plus - the complete business intelligence (BI) analysis tool that works over the Internet.

Discoverer Plus enables you to query complex databases without having to understand the database language SQL (Structured Query Language). You can use Discoverer Plus to retrieve and analyze data, and produce reports in printed format or a range of electronic formats.

OracleAS Discoverer Navigation and Accessibility

Keyboard Navigation

OracleAS Discoverer supports standard keyboard navigation. Standard keyboard navigation includes the use of the tab key, mnemonics (using the Alt key and the underlined character), and accelerators (such as Alt+F4 to exit a window).

Changing font sizes and colors for enhanced readability

You can change the font size and color of worksheet items, headings, and totals to make them more readable.

To change the default font size and color of new worksheet items, headings, and totals, choose Tools | Options and specify appropriate settings on the "Options dialog: Default Formats tab".

To change the font size and color of existing worksheet items, headings, and totals, choose Sheet | Format and specify appropriate settings on the "Edit Worksheet dialog: Format tab".

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle Corporation is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For additional information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/.

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, might not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS might not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Note: The JAWS screen-reader requires that Java Access Bridge software is installed on the client machine. You can download Java Access Bridge software from the
Sun Microsystems site at http://java.sun.com/products/accessbridge/.

For additional information about accessibility software, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation might contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle Corporation does not own or control. Oracle Corporation neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

Intended Audience

Use this guide when you want to use Discoverer to view and manipulate data to support business decisions and you want to know how to:

• create new workbooks (i.e. collections of business intelligence reports) or use existing workbooks to find the information you are interested in

• format the information to meet your requirements

• analyze the information in different ways

• share the information with other users

Structure

This manual contains the following chapters:

• Part 1 Getting Started
  • "Introducing Discoverer Plus"

  • "Starting Discoverer"

  • "About the Discoverer workarea"

  • "Using workbooks and worksheets"

  • "Formatting worksheet data"

  • "Creating graphs in Discoverer"

• Part II Analyzing Data
  • "Pivoting data"

  • "Using drilling"

  • "Using parameters"

  • "Using conditions"

  • "Using totals"

  • "Using percentages"

  • "Sorting data"

  • "Using calculations"

• Part III Sharing results with others
  • "Printing worksheets and graphs"

  • "Exporting data to other applications"

  • "Sharing workbooks"

  • "Publishing workbooks to OracleAS Portal"

• Part IV Advanced Discoverer Plus features
  • "Advanced Discoverer Plus features"

• Part V Discoverer Plus Reference
  • "Reference dialogs"

• Appendices
  • "Discoverer calculation examples"

  • "Discoverer support for Oracle Applications"

Related Documents

For more information, see the following manuals:

• Oracle Application Server Discoverer Plus Tutorial

• Oracle Discoverer Administrator Administration Guide

• Oracle Discoverer Administrator Tutorial

• Oracle Application Server Discoverer Configuration Guide

Conventions

The following conventions are used in this manual:

Convention	Meaning
File | New	Menu options are shown with a vertical bar separating the menu and the name of the option. For example, File | New indicates the selection of the New option from the File menu.
bold type	Bold type is used to distinguish field names in Discoverer dialogs.
italic type	Italic type is used for the names of other Oracle publications. Note: Italic type is also used on reference dialogs to refer to areas of a dialog that have no label.
< >	Angle brackets enclose user-supplied names.
monotype	Characters you type are shown in monotype.

Discoverer often gives you several ways to perform an operation. For example, to create a new condition you could:

• choose Tools | Conditions

• click the Conditions toolbar button

Since you might not be using a mouse, the Discoverer documentation always tells you the menu and menu option to choose.

Prerequisites to run Discoverer Plus

To run Discoverer Plus, a Discoverer End User Layer must already exist. The Discoverer manager must have created or upgraded the End User Layer using Oracle Discoverer Administrator (which is shipped as a component of Oracle Developer Suite 10g (9.0.4).