2 Using the Tutorial

This tutorial presents an overview of the basics and a guided tour of how to use the products in Oracle BI Standard Edition One to quickly develop BI reports, build dashboards, and create data marts. This book does not emphasize formal definition of concepts or detailed discussion of the underlying issues. For details on each of the products and its use, refer to the product documentation available online. In addition, several instructor-led and online courses on these products are available through Oracle University (http://education.oracle.com).

This chapter contains the following topics:

Section 2.1, "Who Should Read This Tutorial"
Section 2.2, "How This Tutorial Is Organized"

2.1 Who Should Read This Tutorial

This book is intended for anyone involved in extracting business intelligence using Oracle BI Standard Edition One. Given the cross-section of organizational units and individuals involved in building a data mart, you could fit any of the following roles:

Information technology (IT) professional
Business analyst
Database administrator
Data mart designer
Application developer
Systems integrator

In general, this book defines technical terms and concepts when they are introduced. However, it assumes that you know the underlying operating system and are familiar with basic system administration tasks. It also assumes some knowledge of relational database systems.

2.2 How This Tutorial Is Organized

The organization of the tutorial follows the process flow of building and using a data mart. At each step in the process, this book provides some technical background on the products used and then uses a case study to walk you through the implementation steps.

The installation of Oracle BI Standard Edition One provides you with a database instance, BISE1DB, which holds all data referenced in the case study. The installation takes care of all of the setup needed to use any of the Oracle BI Standard Edition One components to access this database.

Oracle Corporation recommends that you use this BISE1DB database as the starting point for building your data mart, rather than creating a new database. That is the approach taken in this book.

If you want to work through the tutorial chapters in a different order, to suit your immediate needs, you can do so as long as you work through the steps in sequence within each chapter. For example, if you want to begin by learning how to create and publish reports based either on your operational data, or an existing data mart, you can proceed directly to Chapter 7, "Create and Publish Reports", read the introductory and prerequisites sections, and then begin with step 1 in that chapter.

To help you determine your best entry point into the tutorial, here is an overview of what each of the subsequent chapters cover:

In Chapter 3, "Set Up the Data Mart", you use Oracle Warehouse Builder to create and populate a data mart using an operational data source (an order entry system) as your starting point.
In Chapter 4, "Build the BI Repository", you use the Oracle BI Server Administration Tool to build a BI metadata repository from a data mart schema as well as from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The BI metadata repository presents a view of the data that can be easily understood and readily accessed using client tools such as Oracle BI Answers.
In Chapter 5, "Analyze the Data", you use Oracle BI Answers to query the data mart and display the query results in various ways, including cross-tabs and charts.
In Chapter 6, "Publish Data on Dashboards", you use Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards to publish the BI Answers results so that users can view them through a dashboard.
In Chapter 7, "Create and Publish Reports", you use Oracle BI Publisher to create and publish reports based on the operational data, and the data mart (through BI Answers queries).

This section contains the following topics:

Section 2.2.1, "Case Study—The Global Electronics Corporation"
Section 2.2.2, "Database Structures for the GEC Case Study"
Section 2.2.3, "Accounts Used in the Tutorial"
Section 2.2.4, "Tutorial Files and Directory Structure"

2.2.1 Case Study—The Global Electronics Corporation

This tutorial presents a case study to illustrate the use of Oracle BI Standard Edition One in building and managing a data mart. The case study represents activities at a fictitious organization, Global Electronics Corporation (GEC).

GEC, established in 2003, distributes computer hardware and software components to customers all over the world. GEC wants to analyze which components of its business are profitable, which could become more profitable, and which sales channels are most effective.

2.2.2 Database Structures for the GEC Case Study

There are several schemas in the BISE1DB database that you use throughout the tutorial. Database schemas are logical containers for objects in the database.

The operational data source is the order entry schema, called BISE1_SALES. This schema contains the source data for the prebuilt data mart schema, called BISE1_SALESWH.

A second data mart schema called BISE1_TUTORIALWH initially contains no objects. If you work through the tutorial in the given chapter sequence, you will complete the design, construction, and population of this data mart. If you choose to skip Chapter 3, "Set Up the Data Mart", and launch into any of the other chapters first, you will need to populate this schema by running a script.

This section contains the following topics:

Section 2.2.2.1, "BISE1_SALES Schema"
Section 2.2.2.2, "BISE1_SALESWH Schema"
Section 2.2.2.3, "BISE1_TUTORIALWH Schema"

2.2.2.1 BISE1_SALES Schema

The BISE1_SALES schema contains tables that store the data captured by the order entry application. The entity relationship diagram (ERD) shown in Figure 2-1 represents how the tables in this schema are related. This is the source schema for the prebuilt data mart schema, BISE1_SALESWH. This is also the source schema you will use to build the BISE1_TUTORIALWH data mart schema.

Figure 2-1 Entity Relationship Diagram for BISE1_SALES Schema

Image description currently unavailable.

2.2.2.2 BISE1_SALESWH Schema

The BISE1_SALESWH schema contains tables that comprise the data mart star schema. The entity relationship diagram (ERD) shown in Figure 2-2 represents how the tables in this schema are related. Note that there are five dimensions (PRODUCTS, GEOGRAPHY, TIMES, PROMOTIONS, and CHANNELS), and one cube (SALES).

Figure 2-2 Entity Relationship Diagram for BISE1_SALESWH Schema

2.2.2.3 BISE1_TUTORIALWH Schema

The BISE1_TUTORIALWH schema contains no objects initially. Upon successful completion of Chapter 3, "Set Up the Data Mart", this schema will be populated with the tables that comprise the data mart star schema and be equivalent to the BISE1_SALESWH schema.

If you are skipping Chapter 3, "Set Up the Data Mart", before working on any of the other chapters, you will need to populate the BISE1_TUTORIALWH schema by performing these steps:

Open a command prompt window.
Navigate to the directory where you installed Oracle BI Standard Edition One.
Navigate to the tutorial\owb subdirectory.
Run the reset_bise1_tutorialwh.bat script.
Navigate to the tutorial\bi_ad subdirectory.
Run the imp_bise1tutorialwh.bat script. Note that the script assumes the password for BISE1_TUTORIALWH is welcome1. If you specified a different password, edit the imp_bise1tutorialwh.bat file and replace welcome1 with the correct password.

2.2.3 Accounts Used in the Tutorial

Several accounts are created as part of the Oracle BI Standard Edition One installation. Table 2-1 lists those accounts you will use directly as you work through the tutorial. It will be useful for you to determine the passwords for these accounts before you proceed with the tutorial.

Table 2-1 Accounts Used in the Tutorial

Account Name	Account Type	Password Set During Installation?	Description
BISE1_SALES	Database	Yes	This database account owns the schema that contains tables which store the data captured by GEC's order entry application. This schema serves as the source for both the prebuilt data mart (BISE1_SALESWH) as well as the data mart you will build (BISE1_TUTORIALWH).
BISE1_SALESWH	Database	Yes	This database account owns the schema that contains the prebuilt data mart objects.
BISE1_TUTORIALWH	Database	Yes	This database account owns the schema that will be used as the data mart target schema for Oracle Warehouse Builder. Once this schema is populated with the data mart objects, it is used by Oracle BI as the data source for the repository definition, and so on, as detailed in the tutorial.
OWBREPOS_OWNER	Database	Yes	This database account owns the pre-created Oracle Warehouse Builder repository.
OWBREPOS_USER	Database	Yes	This database account has the privilege to access the Oracle Warehouse Builder repository, and is used to connect to it through the Oracle Warehouse Builder Design Center tool.
OWF_MGR	Database	Yes	This is the Oracle Workflow manager database account. It is used in Oracle Warehouse Builder to submit the deployment process, which populates the data mart objects, such as the fact and dimension tables.
SYS	Database	Yes	This is the database "super user" account. It has access to all database objects, and can perform any task in the database.
Administrator	BI Server (also used to authenticate BI Presentation Services users)	No	This account is pre-created in the BI Server metadata repository. The password is `Administrator` (case-sensitive). It is used to open the default BI metadata repository (AnalyticsWeb) through the BI Administration tool. This same account and password is also used to login to BI Presentation Services (`http://localhost:9704/analytics`) to access the pre-created BI dashboard and Answers requests.
Administrator	BI Publisher	No	This account is pre-created in BI Publisher (stored in the `datasources.xml` file). The password is `Administrator`. This account is used to login to BI Publisher (`http://localhost:9704/xmlpserver`) and must be the same as the BI Presentation Services account for the predefined integration points between BI Publisher and BI Presentation Services to work.

2.2.4 Tutorial Files and Directory Structure

The tutorial files are located in a directory called tutorial, under the Oracle BI Standard Edition One installation home directory, which you specified at installation time. Under the tutorial directory, there is a file and several subdirectories:

The tutorial.pdf file is this book, in Adobe PDF format.
The three subdirectories (owb, bi_pub, and bi_ad) contain files that are required as you work through the tutorial. They also contain files that can be used to reset the tutorial exercise environment back to the starting point, or to a known state. See Chapter 8, "Reset the Tutorial Exercise Environment" for more information.