13 Back Office

This chapter provides information on implementing Back Office.

Deploying Reports

Each Back Office report is defined with a Layout template (rtf) and a Data Template (xml). In addition, there are configuration files that control the report menu items in the Back Office user interface, associate the templates to user interface menu items, and define the parameters required by each report.

Language translations of the reports shipped with Back Office are translated using XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) files. XLIFF is an XML-based format that contains only the text that needs to be translated. All of these translation and configuration items are stored in the store database in tables named with an XMLP_ prefix.

In the source tree, all of the Back Office report templates and configurations are located in the following directory:

<source directory>\applications\backoffice\reports

After installation, the files are located in the following directory:

<install folder>\backoffice\configured-output\db\reports

Selecting either the sample or minimum dataset when installing Back Office deploys all of the report configuration artifacts into the database. In addition, reports can be loaded independently by executing the ant target load_reports. This ant target is helpful for customizing Layout or Data Templates as it provides a way to test report changes without reinstalling Back Office or rebuilding the entire database. For more information, see the Oracle Retail Back Office Installation Guide.

For extensive customization, such as the creation of a new report, it may also be necessary to modify language bundles deployed on the application server as part of the Back Office application. Specifically, the report titles are externalized in the report_<lang>_properties file (for example, report_en_properties), which is bundled inside the report-ejb.jar file, included in the Back Office EAR file.