Creating Reports Using a Direct Connection to a Subject Area

Subject area reports contain queries that are issued directly to the Oracle BI Server, therefore the report does not use a BI Publisher data model.

When you run a report that uses a subject area as a data source, the Oracle BI Server optimizes and determines how many queries are actually issued to the database based on the columns selected for the report.

Keep the following points in mind when creating a subject area report:

  • You must use the Create Report guide to create subject area reports.

  • No data model is created for a subject area report. BI Publisher executes the subject area queries as defined in Oracle BI Enterprise Edition to retrieve the report data.

  • In the Create Report guide, you can only select one subject area for a report. To create a report that uses multiple subject areas, first create a report against a single subject area using the Create Report guide and then edit the report in the report editor to add subject areas. See Creating a Report Against Multiple Subject Areas

    for more information.

  • For reports that use a subject area, BI Publisher calculates subtotals and totals based on the data received from the BI Server, which is already summarized. As BI Publisher is not performing the summary calculations, certain functions that require access to the original column data, such as count distinct and average, may deliver different results in BI Publisher.

  • Hierarchical columns that are available in Oracle BI Enterprise Edition are not available for use in subject area reports in BI Publisher.

  • Be aware that if you link multiple fields from unrelated subject areas in a single report component such as a graph, table, or pivot table, the rendering of the component may fail because the data cannot be correlated correctly.

Creating Subject Area Reports

You can create a subject area report by launching the create report guide.

To create a subject area report:

  1. Launch the Create Report guide.
  2. Select a subject area. Only one subject area can be selected.

    To report against multiple subject areas, after selecting the first subject area, select the Use Report Editor option, and click Finish to save the report. Then, use the report editor to add the additional subject areas. For more information, see Creating a Report Against Multiple Subject Areas.

  3. Follow the prompts to create your report layout as described in Choosing Columns for Report Layouts.

Adding Parameters to Subject Area Reports

Parameters are usually defined in the data model for BI Publisher reports. Reports that run directly against a subject area do not use a data model, therefore, you must use the report editor to set up parameter definitions for subject area reports.

If you intend to use a subject area report in an Oracle BI Enterprise Edition dashboard and you need to use pass parameters, see 'Using Prompts with Parameterized Reports’ in User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition for more information.

To add parameters to subject area reports:

  1. Create and save the report as described in Creating Subject Area Reports.
  2. In report editor, click Parameters to launch the Edit Parameters dialog as shown in the following figure.
  3. Click Add to launch the Select a Column to Define Parameter dialog as shown in the following figure.
  4. Select a parameter column and click OK to launch the Edit Parameter dialog as shown in the following figure.

    The options displayed for selection in the Edit Parameter dialog are driven by the parameter column data type.

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    Description of the illustration GUID-62E5AEAC-EB9B-4202-9C07-1D20CE230EC5-default.gif
  5. Enter the parameter label to be displayed in the report.
  6. Select a parameter display option:

    • Calendar - Provides users with a field into which they can enter a specific date, as well as a calendar pop-up to select a date. This display option is only available for selection if the parameter has a date column type.

    • Choice List - Provides users with a collapsed list of all prompt values. This display option is useful for a long list of values where you want to provide the user with the ability to search for a specific value.

    • Checkboxes - Provides users with a visible list of all prompt values where a small, selectable box displays before each value item. This display option is suitable for a prompt that contains a smaller set of data.

    • Radio Buttons - Provides users with a visible list of all prompt values where a radio button is displayed before each prompt value. This display option is useful for short lists of values where the user is to select only one prompt value.

    • Text - Provides users with a field into which they can enter a specific prompt value. This display option cannot be used for multiple prompt values. Only the field and the field label are displayed for this option.

  7. Select the parameter operator. The default value is set to is equal to/is in.
  8. Click OK.

Creating a Report Against Multiple Subject Areas

You can use the report editor to link a report to multiple subject areas.

To add multiple subject areas to a report:

  1. Use the report editor to open the report. The upper left corner displays the subjects areas already linked to the report as shown in the following figure:
  2. Click Edit Subject Areas to launch the Select Subject Areas dialog as shown in the following figure:
  3. From the Available pane, select one or more subject areas.
  4. Click Add to move the subject area(s) to the Selected pane.
  5. Click Finish.