Creating Reports to Display Catalog Data Using Catalog Manager

You can create reports to display catalog data for all catalog object types. You can either display the report on the screen or save it to a file.

When you create a report, a blank or empty field is exported as a tab character. If you create a report with the default of a tab as the field separator, then two tab characters in the report file indicate a blank field.

To create a report that displays catalog data:

1. In Catalog Manager, open the catalog. To create a report that shows the SQL statement that is sent to the Oracle BI Server for the object, open the catalog in online mode.
2. Select the top folder for the catalog.
3. From the Tools menu, select Create Report.
4. Select the catalog object type for which you want to create a report.
5. To eliminate any rows that are the same from the report, select the Distinct box.
6. Specify the columns to be displayed in the report in the Columns in Report list. Use the left and right-arrow buttons (< and >) to move the columns between the Available Columns list and the Columns in Report list, and the plus and minus buttons (+ and -) to set the order in which columns are displayed in the report.
7. Click OK.
8. Repeat Steps 4 through 7 until the report contains the appropriate columns.
9. To save the report to a file, in the Save report to field, specify the path name of the file. Click the Browse button to display the Save As dialog for selecting the path name (if the file does not exist, then it is created).
10. Select Excel Format to specify to create a file with a .tab extension that can be imported into Microsoft Excel.

    For details on supported Excel versions as part of Microsoft Office, see the system requirements and certification documentation. For information, see System Requirements and Certification.

11. Click OK.

Sample Uses for Reports

Running reports can not only help you maintain data within the system, but also can help identify issues before they become problematic.

You can generate reports for various purposes, as described in the following examples:

• To see which dashboards are using an analysis, you can run a Dashboard report including analyses, and search that report for the analysis

• To find analyses that are affected by a changed column in a repository table, you can run an Analysis report that includes all columns and formulas, and then search the report for the items that must then be replaced in Catalog Manager.

• You can create a report that displays all the dashboard prompts and related fields (such as column, formula, and subject area) within the dashboards. You can also create a report of analyses and extract the filters that are used within those analyses. The following is an example of extracting filters in which the formula is derived using a saved filter that is prompted:

  Example: "Markets"."Region" [Filter, prompted]

• You can create a report that displays the ACLs for objects. By reviewing the ACLs in the report, you can verify that access to objects is granted to the proper roles with the proper permissions, such as Read/Write. The following line shows an example of ACLs in the report:

  "^biconsumer=RX:steve=F", where the caret (^) indicates an application role and "nothing" indicates a user.