Introducing Oracle BI Discoverer and Oracle Portal (2024)

1.1 What is Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer?

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is an intuitive ad-hoc query, reporting, analysis, and Web publishing toolset that gives business users immediate access to information in databases.

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer enables business users at all levels of the organization to make faster and more informed business decisions. Using any standard Web browser, you have secure and immediate access to data from both relational and multidimensional data sources. Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer provides a business view to hide the complexity of the underlying data structures, enabling you to focus on solving business problems.

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer comprises several integrated components that work with the Oracle database to give you a complete and integrated Business Intelligence solution.

1.2 What is a Discoverer workbook?

A Discoverer workbook is simply a named collection of worksheets. Each worksheet contains the data and graphs that you require to extract business information from the database. Each worksheet contains the result of a query.

Worksheets can show information:

• As data points in cells (formatted as tables or as crosstabs)

• As graphs (Oracle BI Discoverer supports many different graph types)

You use Discoverer Portlet Provider to enable Discoverer worksheets to be accessed by Oracle Portal users.

1.3 What is a Discoverer Portlet?

Portlets are reusable information components that summarize or provide access to different types of information sources. You can customize the appearance of portlets on a per user or per group basis.

Discoverer portlet can be used to link a portal to an existing Discoverer worksheet. Discoverer provides two types of portlets:

1. Discoverer PDK-Java portlets - These portlets are created based on Oracle Portal Developer Kit-Java (PDK-Java) and they can be published only in Oracle Portal and Oracle WebCenter Spaces.

2. Discoverer WSRP portlets - These portlets are created based on the Java Portlet Specification (JSR 168) and the portlet provider is available as a WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) application in the Discoverer installation. You can access this WSRP application using a WSDL URL. Discoverer WSRP portlets can be published in any portal that supports WSRP.

For more information about portlet styles available for Discoverer content, see "What are the different types of Discoverer portlet?".

1.4 What is Discoverer Portlet Provider?

Providers act as containers for portlets. Providers manage the portlets they own and handle the communication between the portlets and Oracle Portal.

Discoverer Portlet Provider is a Discoverer component that provides Discoverer portlets for publishing Discoverer content.

Discoverer Portlet Provider allows publishing Discoverer content in Oracle Portal, Oracle WebLogic Portal, and Oracle WebCenter Spaces.

You can also publish Discoverer portlets on third-party portals such as IBM WebSphere. For more information about registering a portlet producer and adding portlets in WebSphere, see the IBM WebSphere documentation.

1.5 What are the different types of Discoverer portlet?

The following Discoverer portlets can be published in a portal:

• Worksheet portlet (for more information, see "About the Discoverer Worksheet portlet")

• Gauges portlet (for more information, see "About the Discoverer Gauges portlet")

• List of Worksheets portlet (for more information, see "About the Discoverer List of Worksheets portlet")

1.6 What is Oracle Portal?

Oracle Portal is a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware that is used for the development, deployment, administration, and configuration of enterprise-class portals. Oracle Portal incorporates a portal-building framework with self-service publishing features that enable you to create, publish, and manage information within your portal. Your portal can publish information from your database and other sources, provide and gather information from internal and external customers, and manage the content they consume.

A portal is made up of groups of pages hosting many different types of content that come from many different sources, all presented from a single location, the portal. The basic structural components of a portal built with Oracle Portal include page groups, pages, tabs, regions, portlets, and items.

1.7 About Publishing Discoverer portlets in Oracle Portal pages

You can integrate Discoverer portlets in Oracle Portal pages using Discoverer Portlet Provider. Discoverer Portlet Provider is a Discoverer component that provides the Discoverer portlets for publishing Discoverer content in Portal pages.

If you have created a Discoverer worksheet in Discoverer Plus Relational, Discoverer Plus OLAP, or Discoverer Desktop, Oracle Portal makes it easy to publish the worksheet to a portal community.

For more information about portlet types available for Discoverer content, see "What are the different types of Discoverer portlet?".

The figure below shows a page in Oracle Portal containing Discoverer portlets.

Key to figure:
a. A Simple Parameter Form portlet.
b. A Discoverer Worksheet portlet.
c. An Analyze link that displays the worksheet in Discoverer Viewer. Displaying this link is optional.
d. A Discoverer Gauges portlet.

There are several benefits that are available when you use Discoverer with Oracle Portal:

• Display multiple crosstabs, tables and graphs from multiple datasources on a single page

  Discoverer Portlet Provider is the Discoverer component that enables you to put multiple presentations (crosstabs, tables, graphs) on one page. These presentations can be either from relational or OLAP datasources. Discoverer Portlet Provider also provides an additional visualization - Gauges which is not available elsewhere in Discoverer.

• Control portlets through common portal page parameters

  Not only can you put multiple presentations on one page, but you can also have all of these presentations driven by a common set of Portal Page-level parameters.

• Caching

  Discoverer Portlets provide results instantaneously, since they run the queries on a schedule in the background and cache the data for instant display.

• Security enables greater control over what the user can see

  With Discoverer portlets you can create one portal page and show different results to different users. The data can be striped either by DB users or by OracleAS Single Sign-On users in the database.

• Personalization

  Discoverer portlets can also be personalized individually by users either through the Customization pages or by clicking the Analyze link.

For more information about Oracle Portal, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Portal.

1.8 What are the prerequisite tasks for publishing Discoverer portlets in Oracle Portal?

The prerequisite tasks for publishing Discoverer portlets in Oracle Portal are provided in the following list:

• Install Oracle Portal and Oracle BI Discoverer.

  For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide and Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer.

• Install the schemas that Discoverer Portlet Provider requires.

  Discoverer Portlet Provider requires that the <user-prefix>_DISCOVERER and <user-prefix>_DISCOVERER_PS schemas be installed using the Repository Creation Utility (RCU).

  For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide and Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer.

• Register Discoverer Portlet Provider.

  To publish Discoverer portlets on various portals, you must first register the portlet provider with respective portals.

  Discoverer Portlet Provider is registered in Oracle Portal by the Oracle Fusion Middleware administrator. For more information, see "How to register Discoverer PDK-Java Portlet Provider with Oracle Portal" and "How to register Discoverer WSRP Portlet Provider with Oracle Portal".

  For more information about registering Discoverer portlets on Oracle WebCenter, see Appendix A, "Publishing Discoverer Worksheets in Oracle WebCenter ."

  For more information about registering Discoverer portlets on Oracle WebLogic Portal, see Appendix B, "Publishing Discoverer Worksheets in Oracle WebLogic Portal."

• Create a Discoverer worksheet.

  Discoverer worksheets are created by Discoverer Plus or Discoverer Desktop end users.

  Note: Before you can create a Discoverer worksheet the following tasks must have been completed:

  • Create Metadata (EUL or Discoverer Catalog).

    EUL Metadata is created in Oracle Discoverer Administrator by the Discoverer manager. The Discoverer Catalog Metadata is installed in Oracle Fusion Middleware Control by the administrator.

    For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer and Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer.

  • Create a public or a private connection.

    Public connections are created in Oracle Fusion Middleware Control by the Discoverer manager. Private connections are created in Discoverer Plus and Discoverer Viewer by end users. For more information, see:

    • Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer

    • Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Plus

    • Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Viewer

• Add Discoverer portlets.

  Discoverer portlets are added in the portal, typically by Discoverer Plus and Discoverer Viewer end users.

  For more information about adding Discoverer portlets on Oracle Portal, see Chapter 3, "Authoring Oracle Portal Pages with Discoverer Portlets".

  For more information about adding Discoverer portlets on Oracle WebCenter, see Appendix A, "Publishing Discoverer Worksheets in Oracle WebCenter ."

  For more information about adding Discoverer portlets on Oracle WebLogic Portal, see Appendix B, "Publishing Discoverer Worksheets in Oracle WebLogic Portal."

Note: For information about upgrading a 9.0.4 metadata repository to work with Discoverer Portlet Provider Version 10.12 or 11.1.1.1.0 and Oracle Portal 10.1.2 or 11.1.1.1.0, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer.

1.9 Setting up Discoverer WSRP Portlet Preference Store for High Availability

The portlet preference store is used for persisting consumer registration handles and portlet preference data.

In a clustered environment, to make the Discoverer WSRP portlet preference store accessible to all Discoverer instances, you must set the value of the discoWsrpPrefStoreSharedPath variable to a shared path in the Discoverer application deployment plan. For more information, see the "Setting up Discoverer WSRP Portlet Producer in a Clustered Environment" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware High Availability Guide.

1.10 How to Publish Discoverer Portlets in Oracle Portal

To publish Discoverer portlets in Oracle Portal, do the following:

1. (Optional) Ensure that Discoverer Portlet Provider is installed correctly.

   To verify a Discoverer PDK-Java Portlet Provider installation, enter the following URL in an Internet browser:

   http://<host.domain>:<port>/discoverer/portletprovider/

   If Discoverer Portlet Provider is installed correctly, you see the PDK-Java test page, displaying the message 'Congratulations! You have successfully reached your Provider's Test Page'. The test page also lists the Discoverer portlet types available.

   To verify a Discoverer WSRP Portlet Provider installation, enter the following URL in an Internet browser:

   http://host:port/discoverer/portlets/WSRPservice_version?WSDL

   For example: http://myserver:80/discoverer/portlets/wsrp2?WSDL

2. Register Discoverer Portlet Provider with Oracle Portal. For more information, see How to register Discoverer Portlet Provider with Oracle Portal.

   This step only needs to be performed once (after installation). Typically, Oracle Fusion Middleware administrators register the Discoverer Portlet Provider.

3. Use Oracle Portal to add Discoverer portlets to portal pages (for more information, see Chapter 3, "Authoring Oracle Portal Pages with Discoverer Portlets."

   Typically, a portal page designer would add Discoverer portlets to portal pages.

1.11 What are Discoverer connections?

A Discoverer connection is a stored set of database login details that comprises the following items:

• A database user name - to identify the Discoverer end user

• A database password - to authenticate the Discoverer end user

• A database name - to specify the database containing the information that the Discoverer end user wants to analyze

• (optional) An Oracle Applications Responsibility - to specify a Discoverer end user's responsibility when using Discoverer with Oracle Applications

• (relational data source only) An EUL - to specify the End User Layer to be used

• A language - to specify the language to use in Discoverer

Discoverer connections enable end users to start Discoverer without having to reenter database login details each time they start Discoverer. Discoverer connections and related information are stored in the DISCOVERER_PS schema.

If you have used Oracle's Single Sign-On functionality to establish a database connection, you are not prompted for password information when you start Discoverer

You must know about Discoverer connections because a connection must exist before you can publish Discoverer data in a Discoverer portlet (for more information, see Chapter 3, "Authoring Oracle Portal Pages with Discoverer Portlets").