Understanding the Report Definition Process

Although the BI Publisher Report Definitions application (P95620) is available on both the web client and the Microsoft Windows client, you must use the Microsoft Windows client to create a new report definition or to modify an existing report definition.

Adding a report definition is a three-step process. The first step consists of entering the required details for the report definition and defining the source of data and the templates to process. Additionally, if a template uses one or more transformations, they are defined in this step.

Second, you define the output types that a user can select when submitting the report definition. You also define the default output types and default languages for the XML output.

In the third step, you define the optional bursting field for the report definition, as well as the delivery options for the output. A report definition must comply with the following conditions to allow bursting to be configured:

• Templates of type TL (Microsoft Excel) and TS (XSL) cannot be used.

• A transformation cannot be used.

• Microsoft PowerPoint and XML output types cannot be used.