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Locating the XML URL

The Oracle BI Server supports the use of XML data as a data source for the Physical layer in the repository. Depending on the method used to access XML data sources, a data source may be represented by a URL pointing to one of the following sources.

• A static XML file or HTML file that contains XML data islands on the Internet (including intranet or extranet). For example,
  tap://216.217.17.176/[DE0A48DE-1C3E-11D4-97C9-00105AA70303].XML
• Dynamic XML generated from a server site. For example,
  tap://www.aspserver.com/example.asp
• An XML file or HTML file that contains XML data islands on a local or network drive. For example,
  d:/xmldir/example.xml
  d:/htmldir/island.htm

  You can also specify a directory path for local or network XML files, or you can use the asterisk ( * ) as a wildcard with the filenames. If you specify a directory path without a filename specification (like d:/xmldir), all files with the XML suffix are imported. For example,
  d:/xmldir/
  d:/xmldir/exam*.xml
  d:/htmldir/exam*.htm
  d:/htmldir/exam*.html

• An HTML file that contains tables, defined by a pair of <table> and </table> tags. The HTML file may reside on the Internet (including intranet or extranet) or on a local or network drive. Refer to Accessing HTML Tables for more information.

URLs may include repository or session variables, providing support for HTTP data sources that accept user IDs and passwords embedded in the URL; for example: http://somewebserver/cgi.pl?userid=valueof(session_variable1)&password= valueof(session_variable2). (This functionality also allows the Oracle BI Administrator to create an XML data source with a location that is dynamically determined by some runtime parameters.) For more information about variables, refer to Using Variables in the Oracle BI Repository.

The Oracle BI Server also supports the use of XSL transformation files (XSLT) or XPath expressions for transforming the XML files or XML data islands in an HTML page.

XSLT is a generalized form of the Cascaded Style Sheet (CSS) for HTML documents as applied to XML documents or text fragments. XPath is a simplified version of XSLT that may be expressed in a one-line statement. For example, //xml is an XPath expression instructing the XML processor to extract all elements under the root element xml. An XSLT file can also contain an XPath expressions.

NOTE:  If the Oracle BI Server needs to access any nonlocal files (network files or files on the Internet, for example), you need to run the Oracle BI Server using a valid user ID and password with sufficient network privileges to access these remote files. In Windows NT and Windows 2000, this user ID also needs to have Windows Administrator privileges on the local machine. To change the account under which the server runs, follow the steps described in Changing the User ID in Which the Oracle BI Server Runs.