5. Building a BI Beans Catalog Browser

Exercise Objectives

The objective of this exercise is to create a simple Catalog browser for users to retrieve presentations. With this Catalog browser, developers can create reports that are shared and used by end-users.

Exercise Description

Users want quick and easy access to saved presentations. You can build a browser that displays presentations with a short description and creates a link for a user to open a specific presentation.

Exercise Tasks

Create the presentation Find Member page

The presentation Find Member dialog page is used to allow users to select dimension members when there are more than 25 available.

To create a Find Member dialog

  1. Based on the directions in the Creating a Simple BI JSP Application exercise, create a new empty page for your JSP application. Use findJSP.jsp as the filename.
  2. Add a BIThinSession JSP tag with id app and the same connection configuration file /Project1BIConfig1.xml.
  3. Add a FindMember JSP tag with id findMember.

Create the presentation viewer page

The presentation viewer page is used to view the selected presentation.

To create an empty JSP

  1. Based on the directions in the Creating a Simple BI JSP Application exercise, create a new empty page for your JSP application. Use viewerJSP.jsp as the filename.
  2. Add a BIThinSession JSP tag with id app and use the same connection configuration file /Project1BIConfig1.xml.
  3. Add a Presentation JSP tag with id viewer, location (crosstab definition) Sales Analysis Crosstab, findMemberPage findJSP.jsp and findMemberId findMember.
  4. Add a Toolbar JSP tag with id viewerToolbar and presentationId viewer.

Create the detail panel page

The detail panel page shows the details of each presentation under a particular folder. It provides a short description of the presentation and a link to view the presentation.

To create an empty JSP

  1. Based on the directions in the Creating a Simple BI JSP Application exercise, create a new empty page for your JSP application. Use detailJSP.jsp as the filename.
  2. Add a BIThinSession JSP tag with id app and the same connection configuration file /Project1BIConfig1.xml.
To open the ExplorerDetail tag wizard

  1. In the Code Editor, place the cursor on the line below the <%-- Insert your Business Intelligence tags here --%> comment.
  2. In the Component Palette pane, under Business Intelligence Tags, choose the ExplorerDetail icon.
To use the ExplorerDetail tag wizard

In the ExplorerDetail wizard, you define the attribute values for the ExplorerDetails tag.

  1. In the id box, enter detail.
  2. In the openPage box, select viewerJSP.jsp. This attribute identifies the presentation viewer page in which the presentation will be displayed.
  3. In the presentationId box, select viewer. This attribute refers to the id of the presentation that you want to use on the viewer page.
  4. Do not enter values in the remaining attributes.
  5. Choose Finish to create the tag.
To review the generated ExplorerDetail tag code

In the Code Editor, you can see the code that was generated for the ExplorerDetail tag. The following code identifies the JSP that is used to display the presentation:

<orabi:ExplorerDetail id="detail" openPage="viewerJSP.jsp" presentationId="viewer" />

The following code displays the details for a folder:

<orabi:Render targetId="detail" parentForm="BIForm" />

From the file menu, choose Save All to save the JSP application.


Run the application

You have created a simple application that allows users to browse the Catalog and view presentations in different folders. It is time to run the application.

To use the explorer
  1. In the System-Navigator pane, right-click detailJSP.jsp and choose Run detailJSP.jsp from the popup menu.
  2. A new browser window opens and the explorer details page appears. It displays presentation descriptions and allows you to open or to delete presentations. In the explorer details page, select Sales Analysis Graph.
    The graph is displayed in the presentation viewer page.
  3. Return to JDeveloper. From the Run menu, choose Terminate then Embedded OC4J Server to stop the application.

Exercise Summary

You have created a simple browsing tool easily and quickly to let users view, modify, and save previously saved presentations. With this simple application, executives can view key business information on presentations that are created by analysts.

4. Customizing Crosstab Properties | Overview | 6. Adding "Save As" Functionality