Integration of BI Publisher Reports with Oracle Apps..

In my last few blogs on BI, I have emphasis
Advantages of the BI Publisher (formerly XML Publisher) reports over oracle reports, and how it will help us in

• Leverage the work done by the functional analyst for Layout design.
• Saving time and money in maintenance of reports etc

In this blog I will explain in brief how to integrate the BI Publisher in Oracle E-business suite.

A simple reports has two components

• Data Generation
• Output Format (Layout)

In BI Publisher we have isolated Data generation from the Formatting. Here we extracts data in XML Format and then bind it with the Layout.

In e-business we use Concurrent Program to run the BI reports. Concurrent Program has enhanced to support the data generation as well as output formatting. Now Concurrent Program will generate the Data in XML format and Output Post Processor will apply the XML data to required template.

Process
When user runs the concurrent Program it generate the data in the XML Format. Data in the XML format trigger the Output Post Process, OPP in turns select the Template and apply the XML data to it. Data Format is very important here, if the format of data generated is TEXT then OPP will never be invoked and report in simple TEXT format will be generated, only if output format is XML, OPP will be invoked.

Below is the Setup required for BI Publisher Report

• Created Concurrent Program, if underline executable of the CP is PL/SQL. JAVA etc then no changes are required in the existing program we just need to set the output format of CP to XML.Best Practice are not to modified the existing CP, copy the existing program and then modified the output Format = XML in copied Program.
• Other way of defining is the concurrent Program is create a new concurrent Program and attach the executable XDODTEXE with concurrent Program (if your underlying report is 9i/10g and you have stored it in .xml form).
• Login to XML Publisher Admin Responsibility.
• Create the Data Definition for the Concurrent Program, make sure that “Code” of data definition should have same value as that of short name of Concurrent Program.
• Attach the data file with the data definition created in step – 3.
• Create a Template and attach the template to data definition created in Step –4.
• Attach the Template (rtf) file to template, Make sure to enter value for Language /territory .

Once above step is done, attach the concurrent Program with the Request Group and Responsibility and run it.

Thanks