Oracle^® Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide > Administering Oracle BI Delivers >

About Delivers iBots and Impersonation

Delivers makes use of intelligence agents or Bots (called iBots). iBots are software-based agents driven by schedule or events that access, filter, and perform analytics on data based upon defined criteria. Users receive information from iBots in the form of alerts that appear on their designated delivery devices or dashboards.

To create an iBot, Oracle Business Intelligence administrators and users use Delivers to define the actions the iBot is to perform. Oracle BI Presentation Services gathers information about the priority, delivery devices, user, and other characteristics; packages that information into a job; and tells Oracle BI Scheduler when it wants the job to execute.

Because Oracle BI Scheduler runs these jobs on behalf of users without accessing or storing their passwords, Oracle BI Server permits the Scheduler and Oracle BI Presentation Services to impersonate users. This is done by configuring the Scheduler to use a user ID and password with administrator privileges that can act on behalf of other users. An iBot logs on to the system using this user ID and password, and then the Scheduler executes the job on behalf of the user.

NOTE:  If Oracle BI Server is configured to authenticate users through database logons, then impersonation is not permitted. Delivers works with database authentication provided that only the initialization block set up for authentication in the Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool uses a connection pool with pass-through authentication. That connection pool cannot be used for any other initialization block or request.

For information about user authentication options, read Oracle Business Intelligence Server Administration Guide. For information about Oracle BI Scheduler, read Oracle Business Intelligence Scheduler Guide.