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Enterprise Data Publishing
with Oracle Reports:
Any Data, Any Format, Anywhere
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INTRODUCTION
In the history of publishing we have used different
approaches all with the same goal to provide information
in an easy accessible, yet representative way. It was a hard
and exhausting process in the early days of data
publishing where all reports had to be written by hand.
With the invention of the printing press, the process was
dramatically enhanced and speeded up.
The computer age opened up a complete new meaning to
data publishing. This new computer technology produced
lots of unformatted data that had to be heavily processed
before it was comprehendible by humans. The age of
enterprise reporting began. As data-processing technology
improved, the expectation of the results also rose. Not only
were accurate results expected, the format and presentation
also became very important. The goal of enterprise reporting
shifted more and more towards presenting the results in apleasing, boardroom quality output. Those reports were
high-fidelity paper reports, which were printed.
With the introduction of Internet technology, the
requirements for enterprise reports changed. Online became
their primary distribution medium, but still they were reports
originally designed for printing. They were just produced to
a compatible format, so users using their lightweight
browser environments could view them.
Now that the Internet-technology has become an essential
part of our information technology infrastructure, enterprisereporting has taken on a new meaning: enterprise data
publishing. The requirements for page-based, printable
reports are still there, but the presentation requirements for
online reporting have changed dramatically. In the Web
environment, there is no such thing as a page that is
limited by a specific width and height. While paper pages
are bound to strict page outlines, Web pages flow within the
confines of your Web browser. To fit in a modern Web-
environment it is also essential to use the latest technologies
available in order to produce high fidelity Web pages.
Online (data) publishing heavily utilizes dynamic mediacontent, from animated images to full-blown animations and
streaming content; all these are parts of a modern Web
presentation.
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In modern information technology environment, integration
and interaction is a big issue. The key to this is openness:
openness towards data, openness towards output and
openness to possible requirements, meaning extensibility, as
you need it. You want to be able to use a system out of the
box but also be able to extend it over time to adjust it to new
or changed requirements. Using documented interfaces
(Application Programming Interface, API) you extend
existing or create completely new functionality to fit your
requirements. Extending your infrastructure should be easy
and uniform across your entire IT infrastructure. The J2EE
platform is designed to provide exactly that: a uniform
environment for developing applications, regardless of
operating system and hardware platform.
Enterprise data publishing is much more than just producing
numbers on paper. It is presenting whatever information you
need, however you need it, wherever you need it any data,
any format, anywhere Oracle Reports.
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ORACLE REPORTS HIGH END REPORTING MADE
SIMPLE
Oracle Reports is a powerful Enterprise Reporting tool to
build and publish high quality, dynamically generated Web
reports. Through data-driven tables of contents, hyperlinks,
and drill-down chart hyperlinks, Oracle Reports provides
users with an easy route to the information they require.
Rapid Development
Using a declarative, document centric development model,
Oracle Reports Developer focuses a new user on the tasks
required in the production of a report, while still allowing
experienced developers to have total control of their report
development. Each major task in report production is
expedited by the use of an appropriate Wizard, while the use
of Report Templates and a live data pre-view allows for
easy customization of the report structure. Once daunting
tasks, such as complex data-models and layouts become
simple drag & drop actions. For example, the Query
Wizard allows for the visual representation and construction
of the complex SQL on which operational reports are often
based, while the Report wizard steps the developer through
the task of defining a report structure, data source, break
groups and summaries.
Wizards Simplify Report Development
Unlike many graphical reporting tools, Oracle Reports
Developer does not apply any limitation on the number of
queries defined within the report (many allow only a single
query per report module), nor the overall format of the data
returned. Based on page/frame model rather than the more
simplistic banded reporting paradigm, Oracle Reports
Developer allows for an almost unlimited number of report
formats, without the need to resort to the complexity of
nested report modules or complex procedural code.
On creation of a report definition, the report layout is
displayed, along with the first page of data, in the Live Pre-
Viewer. In this WYSIWYG view the developer is able to
see immediately the impact their format choices have, orwill have, on the final report and hence, they can further
enhance the output by the direct manipulation of report
objects.
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Oracle Reports WYSIWYG Report Editor
As the requirements for a report change with the changing
business environment Oracle Reports Developer simplifies
the modification process by use of re-entrant Wizard
technology. That is, a developer may return repeatedly to a
wizard to make further modification, without loosing the
current customizations that have been made. Currently mostimplementations of development wizards assume that any
invocation is the first and will destroy any work to that
point.
ANY DATA - PUBLISH ALL YOUR DATA,
TRANSPARENTLY AND FLEXIBLE
In a modern IT environment, data is produced in different
places and different formats. Consolidation into a single
source of truth is often difficult and in some cases even
unwanted. You just want to publish specific information
without having to transform or consolidate it first.
Oracle Reports provides you with multiple data sources out-
of-the-box. It supports SQL, PL/SQL (=ref-cursor), Express,
XML, JDBC, Oracle OLAP and text-files (delimited and
fixed format). You can combine queries from different
sources in a single report and link them to produce master-
detail relationships. With Oracle Reports it does not make
any difference where the data of a query comes from.
Oracle Reports supports a variety of data sources and
also provides a Java-API so you can create your own
datasource
These data sources are written against a Java-based API that
also allows you to create and plug in your own data sources.
A Java-class implementing the Pluggable Data source API
allows you to create access mechanisms for data, common to
your business and integrate it into reports, allowing you to
use this data directly in your report.
Suppose you're building a report based on your supplier's
inventory, accessible via an XML stream over the Internet,
and your own inventory, stored in an Oracle database. Using
the JDBC data source, you can access data from differentJDBC-compliant datasources in a single report.
In order to easily personalize your query, you can include
parameters into your query-definition, which allows you to
pass query-criteria at runtime. For example, if you create a
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report where you want to list employees that are with the
company for a number of years, but this number is not set
yet or changes, you can add these criteria as parameter and
pass the actual value when you execute the report.
Data from an Oracle Database (upper block) and an
XML-stream (lower block) combined in a single Report
This example shows a report that combines data from an
SQL data source (warehouse data on the top) and data from
an live XML feed via the Internet (inventory data, below) in
a single report. You can also aggregate data across data
sources and use columns regardless from where they
originally come from.
Oracle Reports provides native access for data stored in
Oracle OLAP as well as Express, which allows you to
smoothly transition your OLAP data stored in Express to the
new OLAP Services.
The only visible difference in the data model is a small icon,
indicating the data source that is behind the query. Other
than that, all queries are handled similarly. All PDSs are
also available in wizard-driven report creation and can be
used for all available report-styles.
Integrated Approach to Business Intelligence
Every organization has a spectrum of Business Intelligence
requirements ranging from complex MIS written operational
reports, to end user based ad-hoc queries to advanced
analytical tasks like forecasting and what if analysis.
However, in general the insight gained from corporate data
may be simplified to three basic questions:
How is my business doing?
What influenced this and what factors were
involved?
Based on certain trends where will my business go?
The job functions of those tasked with answering these
questions has often resulted in the use of quite different
reporting methods. That is, traditional structured reports for
(1), drill and pivot ad-hoc query tools for (2) and advanced
analytical engines for question (3).
To date the use of disparate tools, often from separate
vendors, has resulted in pockets of knowledge without the
AdvancedAnalysis
AdvancedAdvancedAnalysisAnalysis
Ad Hoc Queryand Analysis
Ad Hoc QueryAd Hoc Queryand Analysisand Analysis
EnterpriseReportingEnterpriseEnterpriseReportingReporting
What were sales by
Region last quarter?
What is driving the
increase in revenue
in the Western
Region?
Given the rapid
increase in Web sales,
what will total sales be
for the rest of the year?
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ability for others to easily access the findings or to drill
further into the results. A successful solution to Business
Intelligence gathering should therefore allow end users to
take advantage of the findings of others and to feed their
own findings into an integrated solution.
Integrated business Intelligence across the enterprise
In order to make the most of the information gained from
analytical tools it needs to be accessible to as wide an
audience as possible. Oracle Reports facilitates the
publishing of analytical data to the enterprise in two ways;
By allowing for the creation of reports directly from
worksheets created in OracleAS Discoverer,
Oracles award winning ad-hoc query and analysis
tool for Relational databases.
Generate Operational Reports directly from Ad-Hoc query worksheets
By including an OracleOLAP pluggable data
source. On-line analytical processing (OLAP)
services are part of the Oracle database. These
Oracleanalytical functions allow users to
answer typical on-line analytical processing
(OLAP) questions on demand. Powerful
analytics like ranking, period-to-period
comparisons and moving averages are now easyto use. In addition, users can sort, pivot, and
drill on the data to meet their needs.
OracleAS Discoverer
Oracle Re orts
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ANY FORMAT YOUR DATA FROM BOARDROOM-
QUALITY TO ONLINE-FLEXIBILITY
Once created, a report can serve various purposes. From
being served or distributed online to being printed, all from
a single layout model. This approach would be true for strict
page-oriented, paper-based publishing, but there are
differences between creating a report for printing and
reproducing its appearance in a Web-environment vs. true
Web publishing.
Paper-based publishing still a valid way to present
data
For traditional Enterprise reporting, a report was always
designed for printing and only secondary for online
presentation. And even then, its original format the page-
was preserved. Oracle Reports pays respect to this way of
publishing, by offering various output formats for its paper
layout. Besides PDF, HTML and HTMLCSS, the traditional
Web-formats, it offers RTF (incl. Unicode support) for
support of e.g. Microsoft Word, as well as more data- rather
than formatting oriented formats like DELIMITED or XML.
The same report in XML (left) and in PDF (right)
The latter two will produce the data contained in the report
for other applications to process . This way you can produce
a boardroom-quality report in PDF and from the same report
interchangeable data for business-to-business applications.
An example would be a catalogue of your inventory. You
could produce a high-fidelity version in PDF for your
customers to view and print, and from the same report, by
just changing the destination format in your request,
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produce an XML version, which your customers can use to
import in their own order management or inventory system.
In terms of PDF generation, the driver of Oracle Reports has
multiple major enhancements. It now supports the use of
multibyte fonts, such as simplified and traditional Chinese,
Korean, Japanese. In conjunction with Adobes Asian Font
Pack you can now produce reports for multi-byte users.
Different language characters combined in a single report
In order to produce real client-independent PDF files,
Oracle Reports now supports font embedding and font sub
setting, which includes the font definition of all used fonts
in the report. By choosing one or the other, you can specify,
whether you want to include the complete font set
(embedding) or just the definition for the characters used(sub-setting). The resulting PDF document can be viewed in
any PDF viewer, regardless if the used fonts are installed, or
not. Font sub setting is especially useful if youre dealing
with Unicode documents, displaying different character-sets
in a single report. You can then subset the font, so the
document looks the same on any browser. Also special fonts
that define your corporate identity can be included in the
PDF file, so your customer does not need to install those
specific fonts in order to view the document correctly.
To optimize the download time, we also support PDF
compression, which allows you to minimize the size of your
PDF document. Although compression is especially useful
for documents with embedded/subsetted fonts, it can be
used with any PDF document.
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Implementing the PDF 1.4 standard for tagging PDF files
adds, in conjunction with new properties in the paper layout,
accessibility to the generated PDF document. It contains
information that allows screen readers, such as Freedom
Scientifics JAWS, to read the PDF documents content.
Web vs. paper publishing
Todays IT environments are all about online services and
most of them are based on Web-technology focused on
browser based delivery of information. In a browser-based
environment, there are no traditional page boundaries as on
a paper-page; the layout is flowing. A Web page is a
collection of elements coming from different sources bound
and rendered in the Web browser. Dynamic content is
usually embedded in a framework of static information
creating the basic look-and-feel of the Web page. This look
and feel is created by a Web designer in any HTML-
authoring tool and then handed to the different contributorsto put content into the provided framework.
A true webpage, containing dynamic report content,
created created using the new Web Source of Oracle
Reports
Oracle Reports introduces the new reporting paradigm
called the Web source. Based on Java Server-Pages (JSP)
technology it allows you to inject dynamic report content
into any surrounding structure. This could be an existing
web-page or any other format that you want to inject content
into (e.g. WML for wireless browsers, ). The goal here is
seamless integration into the HTML page, rather than exact
reproduction of a paper layout as it is with our HTML(CSS)
rendering of the paper-layout.
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Using custom tags, the control elements of a JSP, you add
programmatic elements in your HTML layout. At execution
time, those elements access the data model, fetch the data
from the data sources and produce the actual data.
Both Web source and Paper-Layout reside in the same file
and so a single file can produce both Web and paper output.
You can provide a true Web version of your report byexecuting the JSP in OracleAS or producing, for example, a
PDF file from your paper-layout stored in the exact same
file, by executing the report using Oracle Reports Services.
The web source is based on standard JSP1.1 technology,
which allows you to include other functionality, such as
JavaBeans or regular Java Code into the page.
Web and paper layout, out of a single report definition file
Oracle Reports allows you to share data model and program
unit objects within a Paper-based layout and a Web-basedlayout. In essence this means that the actual report needs to
be developed just once - and the same data model and
business logic can be used for Web publishing. Web
designers can design the Web page itself, and the data
component can be incorporated into the page using Oracle
Reports JSP tags. This will also ensure a smooth migration
for existing reports that incorporate a paper layout, and need
to be moved to the Web. Thus, existing investments can be
protected.
The Reports Builder is now capable of opening and saving
various formats. The RDF, JSP and XML will all store data
model as well as Web source and paper layout. However,
only the JSP format provides you with the flexibility of the
develop once, deploy anywhere principles of Oracle
Reports. The JSP format can be executed in the applications
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servers JSP engine to produce the Web output or can be
used with OracleAS Reports Services to produce the paper
output.
JavaServerPages offer the following advantages:
Separation of dynamic and static content
Support for scripting and tags
Reuse of components and tags
Portable, powerful and easy to use
Accepted, industry-standard way of building
dynamic Web pages
Use of a non-proprietary scripting language (Java)
Compiled for permanent execution
Report Versioning, Customization and Personalization
using XML definitions
Though modern analysis and design techniques aim to meet
the requirements of the entire user base as closely as
possible, it is rare that a new report module will meet the
needs of different users in quite the same manner. For
example, the amount of information displayed may be
insufficient for a given user or conversely superfluous to
requirement, or simply in the wrong format. As such, it is
often the case that the base report module is further
customized for each unique need, resulting in a plethora of
reports, each of which differs slightly from the original
report definition
The problem is further compounded when a new version of
the base report is released, as any custom modification
would need to be rolled forward into the new version. This
can result in a significant effort on the part of the application
developers, and, in particular, greatly effects vendors of
ERP style applications, where the modules are often heavily
modified for each customer site in order to meet their own
corporate standards (e.g. Logo, Font, Look and Feel etc.)
Oracle Reports Server answers this need by allowing the
modifications to be externalized into a separate file, rather
than having to create a unique version of the report. By
creating and applying different customization files, the
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report output can be customized on a per user or group basis
without changing the original report definition
Hard coded modifications Vs. Runtime customization with
Oracle Reports
Defined using XML, the customization file allows for both
the modification of current objects in the report and also the
creation of new components. Using these XML tags it is
possible to build a full or partial report definition that will
then serve as either a customization file or even a
completely self contained report.
The ability to externalize modifications greatly simplifies
the upgrade process, as well as the need to make an
application site specific. As an XML definition is applied, it
is possible to save the resultant combined definition,
resulting in a new unique module. By performing a batch
update to the applications existing reports, it is possible to
quickly update/upgrade a large number of modules without
the need to open each file in the Reports Developer to
manually make the changes. For example, a vendor of an
ERP suite may wish to allow each customer to define the
look and feel for their reports, requiring modification tofonts, colors etc. Through the use of XML based
customization, gross changes of this nature can be made to
the entire application in a single step.
User A
Version
User B
Version
Each user customizes the definition to
create a unique report to meet their
requirements.
Version 1Version 1
Version 1Version 1 Version 2
Version 3
Version 4...
Customization must be re-applied
for each new version
User A User B
Customization is externalized and
applied at runtime.
Version 1
A single report definition for all
users.
XML
X
M
L
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ANYWHERE WHEREVER YOU WANT YOUR DATA
Oracle Reports is all about publishing data. Publishing
YOUR data WHEREVER you need it. In order to bring
flexibility to publishing, Oracle Reports is offering a
number of features that allow you to bring the published
data exactly where YOU need it.
Deployment made simple
The OracleAS Reports Services allow you to deploy your
reports on the OracleAS. The Reports Server Infrastructure,
written in 100% Java provides mechanisms for securing and
scheduling your jobs, as well as access-mechanisms to
submit jobs via HTTP (reports servlet), PL/SQL or
command-line (reports thin-client).
Pluggable features like notification allow you to integrate
the reports-server into your existing business systems in a
bi-directional manner. After submitting a job, you have
access to the server-queue information in XML format so
you can easily track your job from within an application and
the pluggable notification allows you to implement
callback-mechanisms where the server can notify your
application when a job has finished.
Other pluggable mechanisms like the cache-management
and security allow you to create your own implementations,
if you require special handling. With the pluggable engine,
you can even use the OracleAS Reports Servicesinfrastructure to perform additional tasks (e.g. execute an
operating system command) and leverage the other services
of the server such as scheduling, security and distribution of
the output.
Advanced mechanisms
With Enterprise reporting, you can produce multiple reports
that respond to different requirements. For example, several
managers in your company may need information specific to
their departments. By using enterprise reporting, you can
run a report once to generate multiple files, each filecontaining the information each manager needs for his
department. For example, if you produce reports about data
of your employees, a manager of a particular department is
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interested in a brief overview of the company but only in the
detail for his particular department.
Distributing reports sections to different recipients in a
single run of the report.
Enterprise reporting enables you customize information for
your audience. Oracle Reports provides a new feature called
bursting that allows you to split the output of your report
based on a repeating-group in your report. In our example,
you would burst around the department group to produce the
output for each department. The outputs are generated in a
single run of the report.
Using the distribution feature of Oracle Reports, the result
of this bursting could then be distributed wherever you need
it. You could generate a PDF file of the report for every
department and push it into OracleAS Portal or email the
reports to the managers of each department.
The rules for distribution are defined in a distribution-file
in XML format and passed to the report-request. OracleAS
Reports Services will then render the report and distribute
the output to the specified destinations. You can distribute
to as many destinations as you want at the same time. For
example, you could send the report by email to the
department managers and archive them at the same time in
OracleAS Portal.
The email-destination allows you to assemble your email
however you want it. You can decide if you want the report
output as attachment or as the body and add static files asattachments as well.
Please find attached the InventoryOverview of your warehouse for your
convenience.
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Example distribution file
This examples will create one email for each record in the
bursting-group of the report, use fields from the data model
to populate the TO field as well as enhance the content of
the SUBJECT. The email will have a static text in the bodyand will have a PDF file attached, which name is enhanced
using a field of the data model, and will contain only the
data, for the current record of the bursting group. It will
contain only the main section of the report.
Distribute your report to any kind of destination, printer,
file, web and if you cant find the one you need, you can
create it in Java.
All destinations are built against another interface, the
Pluggable Destination API. This allows you to extend this
functionality as well. You can write your own destination
and plug it into the reports infrastructure. If you for example
want to push the report output directly into Oracle iFS orsend it to a remote location via FTP, you can implement this
functionality as new Pluggable Destinations.
CONCLUSION
In a modern IT environment, reporting is no longer just
about simple representation of data; reporting is also about
how and where the data is presented. High fidelity,
boardroom-quality reports that are usually printed or at least
designed in a way, so they are paper oriented to be printable
later on, stand against the growing area of online data
publishing; the ad-hoc way of presenting data in a Web-
browser as the point of service.
Modern enterprise data publishing is all about online.
Online presentation of data and online servicing even the
boardroom report requests. Oracle Reports offers a solution
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for both areas. The traditional Paper Layout gives you high-
quality, paper oriented output with options to generate this
output in many different online formats like PDF, HTML,
HTMLCSS as well as print it directly, while the new Web-
oriented publishing solution, based on JavaServerPages,
allows you to easily integrate dynamic report content into
your regular Web page so it fits your website look and feel
100%.
Opening up the complete infrastructure by exposing and
documenting certain APIs, you can even extend reports
functionality by adding data-sources, destinations or other
components of the Oracle Reports framework.
Oracle Reports has become the complete solution for all
your Enterprise Data Publishing needs ofany data in any
formatanywhere.
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Enterprise Data Publishing with Oracle Reports
February 2002
Authors: Philipp Weckerle
Copyright Oracle Corporation 2001
All Rights Reserved Printed in the U.S.A.
This document is provided for informational purposes
only and the information herein is subject to change
without notice. Please report any errors herein to
Oracle Corporation. Oracle Corporation does not
provide any warranties covering and specifically
disclaims any liability in connection with this document.
Oracle is a registered trademark and Enabling the
Information Age and Software Powers the Internet are trademarks
of Oracle Corporation.
All other company or product names are mentioned for identification
purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Oracle Corporation
World Headquarters
500 Oracle Parkway
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
U.S.A.
Worldwide Inquiries:
650.506.7000
Fax 650.506.7200
Copyright Oracle Corporation 1995
All Rights Reserved
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