1 Introduction to Using Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher

This chapter introduces Oracle BI Publisher for report consumers and describes the features specific to viewing and scheduling reports.

This chapter includes the following section:

• Section 1.1, "Introduction to Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher"

1.1 Introduction to Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher

Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Publisher is an enterprise reporting solution for authoring, managing, and delivering all your highly formatted documents, such as operational reports, electronic funds transfer documents, government PDF forms, shipping labels, checks, sales and marketing letters, and much more.

Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher describes how report consumers use BI Publisher to view and schedule reports. See the other guides that are listed in Table 1-1 for information about using the product for other business roles.

Table 1-1 Other BI Publisher Guides

Role	Sample Tasks	Guide
Administrator	Configuring Security Configuring System Settings Diagnosing and Monitoring System Processes	Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Application developer or integrator	Integrating BI Publisher into existing applications using the application programming interfaces	Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Data Model developer	Fetching and structuring the data to use in reports	Oracle Fusion Middleware Data Modeling Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Report designer	Creating report definitions Designing layouts	Oracle Fusion Middleware Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher

1.1.1 Overview for Report Consumers

A report consumer performs the following tasks:

• Run and view reports in real-time from the BI Publisher catalog

• Schedule reports to run at selected intervals and to various destinations such as printer, fax, or e-mail

• View report history

• Create an ad hoc analysis of report data using BI Publisher's Analyzer feature

• Open and manipulate reports in Microsoft Excel using BI Publisher's Analyzer for Microsoft Excel

The tasks that are available to you depend on the permission that is assigned to you by your administrator.

The topics in this book that describe performing report consumer tasks are:

• Section 2.4.1, "Browsing the Catalog"

• Section 3.1, "About Viewing Reports in BI Publisher"

• Section 3.4, "Creating an Ad Hoc Pivot Table with the Analyzer"

• Section 3.7, "Using the Analyzer for Excel"

• Section 4.1, "Navigating to the Schedule Report Job Page"

• Section 4.8, "Creating a Bursting Job"

• Section 5.1, "About the Manage Report Jobs Page"

• Section 6.1, "Viewing Report Job History and Saved Output"