This topic contains the following sections:
An Oracle Business Intelligence application archive (BAR) file is a compressed archive file that contains a cohesive set of BI metadata artifacts (data model, content model, and authorization model).
A BAR file can be imported into a BI Service Instance. You can backup a BI Service Instance into a BAR file, and subsequently restore it either to the existing service instance running in the BI domain, or into a different service instance running on a different BI installation.
A BAR file contains the following BI application module artifacts:
Data model metadata for the Oracle BI Server. This metadata is xml-based but functionally equivalent to a .RPD file.
Presentation Services catalog metadata for a service instance.
Security policy metadata containing application role and application role memberships plus permission and permission set grants for a service instance.
A manifest file declaring the dependencies for the BAR file.
Oracle provides a number of predefined BAR files, containing BI metadata to use with a service instance.
You can choose one of the following BAR files during installation:
Empty BAR - oracle.bi.application.empty.bar
The empty BAR file enables you to have complete control over metadata and security policy, or you may simply have an existing BAR from another system that you might want to import.
ORACLE_HOME/bi/bifoundation/admin/provisioning/oracle.bi.application.empty.bar
The Empty BAR file contains only enough permissions for the administrator user to login and administer the system.
The following table shows the application role and corresponding permission sets that come with the Empty BAR file.
| Application Role | Permission Set |
|---|---|
|
BIServiceAdministrator |
obisch.administrator essbase.administrator obips.administrator cds.administrator bip.administrator obis.administrator |
SampleAppLite BAR - SampleAppLite.bar
You can select SampleAppLite at install time (see Installing and Configuring Oracle Business Intelligence).
The SampleAppLite BAR enables you to start using BI Analytics straight away, enabling you to demonstrate the functionality of the product.
The SampleAppLite BAR file contains a file based data source with 2 subject areas, a collection of reports, and application roles for read, write, and administration tasks.
ORACLE_HOME/bi/bifoundation/samples/sampleapplite/SampleAppLite.bar
The following table shows the application roles and corresponding permission sets that come with the SampleAppLite BAR file.
| Application Role | Permission Set |
|---|---|
|
BIServiceAdministrator |
obisch.administrator essbase.administrator obips.administrator cds.administrator bip.administrator obis.administrator |
|
BIConsumer |
bip.consumer |
|
BIContentAuthor |
va.author obisch.author bip.author |
Starter BAR
You use the starter BAR when you want to build metadata from the beginning, but need a typical security policy to be in place.
The starter BAR is essentially empty except for containing the same security policy as the Sample application BAR.
For example, if you want to create a service instance for Visual Analyzer where users will import their own data from scratch, by importing the starter BAR into your service instance it means that you only have to provision users with the starter application roles and they can immediately login and start using the product.
When you import a BAR file into a service instance, the service instance will use the data model, content and security policy imported from the BAR file.
The import process does the following:
Takes the content, model and security policy defined by the BAR, and deploys it to a Service Instance.
Overwrites any existing content, model, security policy already established in the Service Instance.