The Business Model and Mapping layer is where business or logical modes are defined and the mapping between Business Model and Physical layer schemas are specified. Business models are always dimensional (Star schema) and contain dimensions, facts (Logical Tables in Oracle BI EE terminology) and hierarchies (Logical Dimension in Oracle BI EE.) Multiple business models exist in the shipped Oracle BI repository.
All Transactional Business Intelligence objects are part of business model Core, which is a common business model for both Transactional Business Intelligence and BI Applications objects.
The following icons are used for the Dimensions and Facts objects.
Table 1. Transactional Business Intelligence and BI Applications Objects
| Icon | Description |
|---|---|
 | Shared objects between BI Applications and Transactional Business Intelligence. |
 | Objects that are specific to Transactional Business Intelligence. |
Any objects that do not have these icons are specific to BI Applications, except for hierarchies. Figure 10, Example of Logical Objects (Dimension/Fact) Icons is an example of how the chart and tennis ball icons are used in the Oracle BI repository.
Similar icons are being used for attributes within the shared objects as displayed in Figure 11, Example of Logical Attribute Icons.
For more details on the icons that are available, see Icons Used in the Business Model and Mapping Layer. In addition, navigation object names are prefixed. For example, dimensions are prefixed with Dim – and Facts with fact –.
Shared logical objects, such as Dimension and Fact, have sources (Logical Table Source) from both BI Applications and Transactional Business Intelligence physical objects. Oracle BI EE uses the source redirection feature to route the query either to BI Applications or Transactional Business Intelligence sources based on the Priority Group setting of each Logical table source. For more information, see Query Redirection.
The following guidelines were implemented for ease of use and maintainability:
Transactional Business Intelligence Logical source names are similar to the physical view object names and all of the Logical source names have PVO (public view object) as part of the name. For example, InvoiceHeaderPVO.
All facts have only measures.
All textual attributes and nonadditive measures from fact source are designed as a separate dimension, and these two are logically joined. These dimensions have the same name as a fact with a suffix of Details. See the following figure as an example.
