6 Oracle Business Intelligence

This chapter covers licensing for Oracle Business Intelligence products. It contains the following sections:

6.1 Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition

Oracle Business Intelligence can be separately licensed, independent of any Oracle Application Server edition. Oracle Business Intelligence is also included in Oracle Application Server Enterprise Edition.

When you license it independently, Oracle Business Intelligence includes:

  • Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Plus

  • Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Viewer

  • Oracle Discoverer Administrator

  • Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Desktop

  • Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Portlet Provider

  • Oracle Reports Services

  • Oracle Warehouse Builder

  • Oracle Spreadsheet Add-in

  • Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control

  • Oracle Data Miner

In order to use the Oracle Business Intelligence offering, you must separately license Oracle Database Standard Edition (for use with Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Relational) or Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and the Oracle OLAP option (for use with Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer OLAP).

In order to use the Oracle Spreadsheet Add-in, you only need to license Oracle Database Enterprise Edition with the Oracle OLAP option. You do not need to license the Oracle Business Intelligence offering.

6.1.1 Restricted-Use Licenses

The following restricted-use licenses are included when you separately license Oracle Business Intelligence:

  • Oracle Internet Developer Suite is provided for use with Oracle Reports Builder and Discoverer Administrator only. Two Named User Plus licenses per Processor are provided.

  • Oracle HTTP Server and its modules are provided for running Oracle Business Intelligence applications only.

  • Oracle Advanced Security Option is included, with use limited strictly to the Oracle Java SSL Library.

  • WebLogic Server Basic, described in Appendix A, is provided as the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) container for deployment of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications only.

  • The Oracle Database is provided for use with the Oracle Repository Creation Utility database schema for storing Discoverer metadata. Storing any other data in the Oracle Repository Creation Utility database schema requires a full use license of the Oracle Database.

    Notes:

    During installation, you can choose to install the product metadata into an existing, licensed database. Choosing this option has the following licensing implications:
    • The restricted use license does not apply to the use of the existing database as a metadata repository.

    • If the computer on which your existing database is running does not run any other Oracle Application Server installations, there is no Oracle Application Server license requirement for that computer.

    • Installing the metadata repository into your existing database may increase the number of users accessing that database, and may thus affect your database license needs. You need to make sure that you have the appropriate number of database licenses to ensure compliance.

6.2 Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher

Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher is a Java-based tool that allows users to convert XML into other document types, such as Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word.

6.2.1 Restricted-Use Licenses

The following restricted-use licenses are included when you separately license Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher:

  • Oracle Containers for J2EE (OC4J) is provided for running Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher only.

6.3 Business Intelligence Management Pack

The Oracle Enterprise Manager Business Intelligence Management Pack provides an integrated solution for ensuring the performance and availability of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Oracle BI EE). Using the pack, you can receive proactive alerts on impending problems for the application, examine run-time statistics to troubleshoot and tune performance, compare configurations across different environments, and keep track of configuration changes to avoid configuration-related problems.

You can use the pack with other Oracle Enterprise Manager management packs and plug-ins to achieve end-to-end management of the entire application environment, including both Oracle and non-Oracle databases, operating systems, storage, and network devices.

The following sections summarize key features and installation information.

6.3.1 Features

The Business Intelligence Management Pack includes the features shown in Table 6-1.

Table 6-1 Feature Highlights of Oracle Business Intelligence Pack

Feature Benefit

Dashboards and reports

Visualize in one stop the health status of the BI environment.

Alert notifications

Provide proactive management to improve performance and availability.

Historical metrics

Measure a wide range of usage and performance metrics for monitored Oracle BI targets, send out alerts when these metrics exceed or nearly exceed pre-defined thresholds, and diagnose performance problems by identifying bottlenecks in any of the monitored Oracle BI targets.

Blackouts

Suppress unnecessary alerts during maintenance windows, and provide more accurate availability reporting.

O/S monitoring

Provide complete end-to-end management of the application environment.

Automatic discovery

Speed up the management pack setup for quicker time-to-benefit.

Configuration snapshot

Allow known effective configuration information to be retained for future analysis. Save configurations to a configuration file (XML file) or to the Management Repository.

Configuration comparison

Get quicker configuration diagnostics. Use Configuration Comparison to:

  • Replicate configuration in development/staging to production.

  • Make sure that configuration settings amongst Oracle BI components in a clustered environment are consistent.

Change history

Search collected configuration data and view the history of configuration changes for diagnostic and regulatory purposes.


6.3.2 Installation and Licensed Links

The Oracle Enterprise Manager Business Intelligence Management Pack is available from the Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control installer.

For complete license details about Business Intelligence Management Pack, see "Business Intelligence Management" in Oracle Enterprise Manager Licensing Information.

6.4 Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Desktop

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Desktop is a data access tool. You use it to view the information in your company's databases. The purpose of Discoverer Desktop is to help you — the business professional — view the data you want from a database, analyze it to support your business decisions, and create reports to keep track of things.