Depending on the type of report you are running, you may have to use Transactional Business Intelligence or BI Applications as the product of preference. Transactional Business Intelligence gives you real-time data, and BI Applications reports on historical data.
Examples of reports and which product to use:
For more highly aggregated, time series-based queries, consider using BI Applications.
For Oracle Fusion Financials reports:
For current-month holds on invoices and the reasons for the holds, use Transactional Business Intelligence.
Calculate the total AP Invoice amount for last year along with Average Aging amount, use BI Applications.
Based on the characteristics of the report that you are running, the following table can help you decide which product to use.
Table 11. Running Reports: Compare and Contrast
| Characteristic | Transactional Business Intelligence | BI Applications |
|---|---|---|
| Business Solution | Current State Analysis | Enterprise Integration and Reporting Platform |
| Business Process Reporting | Tactical Reporting | Strategic Reporting |
| Target Users | Oracle Fusion Application Operational User | Enterprise Users–Executive, Manager, Analyst |
| Data Sources | Homogeneous–Oracle Fusion Applications Centric | Heterogeneous–Multiple business areas and disparate applications |
| Data Availability | Real Time | Mostly Latent Data |
| Data Preparation | Mostly Views, Nonpersisted Data | Mostly Tables, Persisted Data, Massive Data Movement, and Bulk ETL Processing |
| Data Granularity | Lots of Detail, some Aggregations | Some Detail, lots of Aggregations |
| Historical Trending | History limited by Oracle Fusion source data | Extensive Time Trending, Versioning, and Historical Analysis |
| Cross Functional Analysis | Oracle Fusion Applications Specific | Extensive Cross Functional Analysis |
| Calculations, Aggregations | Simple to medium | Simple to complex |