September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

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Madi Serban
BI Publisher and APEX September 20, 2018
The Next Dimension of Oracle Reports DOAG Big Data Days Dresden
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Who We Are & What We Do

Madi Serban Florin Serban

Co-Founder, CogniByte Co-Founder, CogniByte

Oracle R&D, Project Management Oracle DB, Forms, Reports, Java: Architecture,
Oracle Forms and Reports Migrations Performance Tuning, Migration and Upgrade

Master of Science Applied Mathematics Master of Science Informatics

MBA Technology Management Project Management Professional, PMI
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

AGENDA

Reporting future
- Trends and technologies
- Oracle BI Publisher and APEX positioning

3 technologies side-by-side
- About Oracle BI Publisher and APEX
- Strengths and weaknesses

Migration
- Typical wishes, features we do not want to lose, challenges
- Case study: 3 reports, 3 technologies
- Beyond migration: What comes next
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Where is the Reporting market going?

Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Magic Quadrant
2014 2015 2017 2018

Oracle

Where to go?
- High fluctuation of reporting and business intelligence solutions
- Previous main players out of chart
- Changing needs:
- ease of use, visual-based data discovery, augmented analytics, cloud-based deployments
- from IT-centric system of record (SOR) reporting to business-centric, self-service agile analytics

https://www.gartner.com/doc/3861464/magic-quadrant-analytics-business-intelligence
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

What do we need from our reports in the future?

More interaction
- Business users need to interact with the data, search, rearrange
- Data may be presented as a web page, or available to download as a spreadsheet
- Less dependence on the IT department
- Modern UI, visualization as interactive charts, maps, ..
- Eliminate duplicates by combining related reports into common interactive reports

Less paper (printed, conventional reports)

- Still needed for specific standard forms, legal and financial documents or compliance
with specific formats
- Here a PDF output is mostly needed
- Pixel-perfect capabilities are mandatory in some cases

Zero obsolete reports

- If not used anymore, then we do not need to migrate them! Yes!
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Why Oracle Application Express

Free + Simple to use/ learn

• Included with the Oracle database, at no additional cost.
• Easy mock-ups and web apps, even without knowing HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
• Offers a rich, browser-based, intuitive development interface.
• Enables business users to easily search, sort data, add custom filters, generate charts.
• No special software needed on client machines, other than a supported browser.

Scalable, Powerful, Portable, Proven

• Thousands of applications worldwide, for various industries
• Applications can scale across the enterprise
• Highly secure web applications out of the box.
• The most vibrant, global, and growing communities Oracle has to offer. “easiest way possible for developers
• Runs on the Oracle Cloud, on-premises, or anywhere we have an Oracle DB. to build great-looking apps against
• Includes native functionality to integrate with REST and SOAP Services. their data”

Disadvantages
• Oracle-dependent
https://apex.oracle.com/en/platform/why-
• Particular attention needed for source control and team development oracle-apex/
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Why Oracle BI Publisher

Enterprise Oracle reporting solution

• Easily integrated with Oracle products (including APEX)
• + virtually any other data source with a JDBC connection

Data extraction separated from layout

• Flexibility, reuse - multiple layouts for a single dataset

Layout templates with MS Word/ Excel, Adobe Acrobat, or browser

• Highly formatted and interactive, pixel-perfect reports
• Multiple output formats (PDF, RTF, Excel, HTML, etc) and languages from 1 template
• Scheduling + bursting – multiple destinations/ multiple output formats delivery
• Drag and drop style web-based layout editor

Disadvantages
• Not free at all :)
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Case Study 1: Orders - Grouped Table - Oracle Reports

most-used
components in
Oracle Reports

grouped queries

conditional
formatting

summary/ formula
columns
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Case Study 1: Orders - Grouped Table - Oracle APEX

Interactive reports/ grids

= modern, customizable onscreen reporting - End-users can show/ hide
columns, perform calculations, filter etc.

How to get a high level/ pixel perfect formatting?

Define an external reporting server such as Oracle BI Publisher
• Install BI Publisher Desktop
• Create the report query as an APEX shared component
• Create report layout in Microsoft Word
• Upload report layout to APEX as a shared component
• Add links to run the report

What if we need to quickly print/ download the information?

• Download as PDF, RTF, MS Excel, CSV files - without custom layout/
control breaks/ conditional formatting/ computation/ aggregation
• Or print directly from browser – using custom CSS to eliminate
headers, menus and improve overall layout. DEMO
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Case Study 1: Orders - Grouped Table - Oracle BI Publisher

= Data (XML):

+ Layout (RTF):

DEMO
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Case Study 2: Invoice - Oracle Reports

 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Case Study 2: Invoice - Oracle BI Publisher

= Data (XML)

+ Layout (RTF) (manual redesign) ->

How does the Oracle automated

conversion look like? ->
In this particular example the effort of adapting
the automated conversion would be higher
than the manual redesign effort.
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Case Study 3: What about really complex reports? Oracle Reports

What can be really complex about the Oracle Reports?

Many components:
lots of queries, groups,
triggers, program units,
SRW package, text_io, events
 Not scary, just more work
& refactoring
 Good that PL/SQL
can be reused!!

Complex components,
such as matrixes
 Let’s see a matrix demo 
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Case Study 3: What about really complex reports? Oracle APEX

Matrix with Oracle APEX?

No problem, for example
the IR Pivot.

Naturally!!

DEMO
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

Case Study 3: What about really complex reports? Oracle BI Publisher

Matrix with Oracle BIP?

Again, absolutely no problem
= Data (XML):

+ Layout (RTF):

DEMO
 September 20, 2018 | Copyright © 2018 CogniByte

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Thank You! Madi Serban

September 20, 2018
Q&A DOAG Big Data Days Dresden