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About Extracting Metadata Subsets Into Projects

A project consists of a discretely-defined subset of the metadata. Projects can consist of Presentation layer catalogs (subject areas) and their associated business model logical facts, dimensions, groups, users, variables, and initialization blocks. The Oracle BI Administrator creates projects so that developers and groups of developers can work on projects in their area of responsibility. The following is a list of some of the reasons you might wish to create projects:

• Licensing. Prior to releasing a new software version, you want to make sure that only the metadata that is relevant to the licensed application is in a project and that everything is consistent and complete. You accomplish this by adding only the fact tables that are relevant to the application.
• Multiuser development. During the development process, you want to split up the work (metadata) between different teams within your company. You accomplish this by extracting the metadata into projects so that each project group can access a different part of the metadata.

Project extractions are fact table centric. This makes sure that project extracts are consistent and makes licensing much easier to manage. The following is a list of the types of fact tables:

• Simple (base) fact table. Fact tables with nonderived columns or with columns that are derived but whose expressions are made up of constants.
• Compound fact table. Fact tables with derived columns whose components come from other fact tables
• Component fact table. Simple (base) fact tables that are part of a compound fact table. Their nonderived columns are used in the compound fact table.

About the Project Dialog Box

Target levels, list catalogs, and presentation catalogs cannot be added to or removed from projects.

Although, in the left pane, it appears that you can add a presentation catalog, you are actually adding only the underlying fact tables. The presentation catalogs appear as choices only to make it easier for you to add the elements you want in your project. Additionally, it adds any other objects that are necessary to make the extract consistent.

The user interface reflects what is happening in the code. In the Project dialog box, the left pane contains objects that you can use to create a project. The objects in the right pane are all the objects you chose (directly or indirectly) that reflect the complete set of data that makes each addition consistent. For example, if you select a presentation catalog to add to your project, underlying fact tables of other Presentation catalogs will be automatically be added if needed to make the extract consistent.

The following describes what you will see in the left pane of the Project dialog box:

• Only simple (base) fact tables and component fact tables appear.
• Compound fact tables do not appear.
• You can choose to group objects by Catalog or Business Model.
• When grouped by business model, the left pane displays only facts that belong to the business model.

The following describes what you will see in the right pane of the Project dialog box:

• Only simple (base) fact tables and component fact tables appear.
• If you add some but not all components of a compound fact table, the compound fact table will not appear on the right pane.
• Catalogs that will be extracted when you click OK.

About Converting Older Projects During Repository Upgrade

When you upgrade to the 10.1.3.2 version of Oracle BI the project definition is upgraded. During the upgrade, the project definition, presentation catalogs, target levels, list catalogs, and existing fact tables are automatically converted into simple (base) fact tables in the following way:

• Get presentation columns related to the target levels through the qualifying keys.
• Get presentation columns related to the list catalogs through the qualifying keys.
• Get presentation columns related to the presentation catalogs.
• Get all the base logical columns from all the presentation columns.
• Get all the base logical columns from the fact tables in the project.
• Get the base fact tables from all the base logical columns.

NOTE:  After the upgrade, projects contain only simple (base) fact tables. All the security objects remain unchanged.

About Using Older Repositories After Upgrading

Occasionally, you might need to use an older version of the repository. To support this, the project definition might need to be converted to the old project definition. To downgrade the project definition, the fact tables will be converted into a project definition that contains presentation catalogs, target levels, list catalogs, and compound fact tables.

When you open a repository with a version number older than the 10.1.2.3 version, the following actions occur:

• Get all the presentation catalogs related to the fact tables.
• Get all the presentation columns under the presentation catalogs.
• Add all the target levels whose qualifying key columns are contained in the presentation column.
• Add all the list catalogs whose qualifying key columns are contained in the presentation column.
• Add the presentation catalogs to the project.