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Introduction

There are several design and development principles behind OTBI/BI

Publisher and key items, the customer should keep in mind while using it as
solution. This blog will explain some of the key considerations and best
practices for OTBI/BIP in oracle cloud.

What is OTBI?
Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) is a real time, self-service
reporting solution offered to all Oracle Fusion application users with valid
roles to create ad hoc analysis and analysis to help them make their decisions
on a daily basis.

It is real time BI. There is no data warehouse or ETL process for OTBI. OTBI is
leveraging the advanced technologies from both BI platform and ADF to
enable the online BI queries against the Fusion Applications database
directly.

OTBI is complete Coverage over Fusion Apps Schema.

OTBI is built on the OBIEE platform there are few limitations as compared to
the on premise OBIEE features
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What is BIP?
Oracle BI Publisher(BIP) is a powerful reporting tool that allows you to
separate data sources (data model) from the data formats (report layout.)
And ability to create and manage highly formatted reports from a wide
range of data sources.

Oracle has already delivered a lot of BIP Reports in the Fusion, However
there are several challenges during implementation and a need to develop
new and customize delivered reports and layouts .

Best Practices:OTBI
➢ Shared Folders, If you have the appropriate roles, you can also save in Shared Folders
so that your custom analytics or reports are available to anyone with the appropriate
access. It's best practice to save under the Custom subfolder, which has subfolders
organized by product family.
➢ Although cross subject area reporting is supported in OTBI, use it only when necessary,
since these are performance intensive.
➢ Make Sure Dimensionality Option is Selected while doing a cross Subject area Analysis.
➢ Apply Selective Filters while querying large tables
➢ Consider performance of the application, while defining the OTBI security. Data security
defined translates into filter criteria while generating physical query.
➢ Limit the number of Roles Assigned to a user to keep the security simple
➢ Always use Custom folder for all the custom development.
➢ Avoid building complex reports (e.g. using other report as a filter criteria), instead try to
leverage the set operator to design simple report.

Best Practices:BI Publisher

➢ Do Not Over Complicate your Layout Template Design
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o Keep it easy to understand, debug and maintain

o In general better to have different business documents in different templates
o Try to limit the logic in templates to simple if or loop statements – Use sub templates to
simplify documents if necessary
o Many calculations are better performed in the data model
➢ What Template Type should I use?
• RTF Templates
o RTF marked up with XSL code or BI Publisher simplified XSL
o Widest range of output (PDF, HTML, Excel, PPT, RTF, MHTML)
o Greatest flexibility and functionality
o Easy to create w/ BI Publisher Template Builder Add-in to Word
• PDF Forms
o PDF forms with XML elements mapped to form fields.
o Great to use with government forms
o PDF output only
o Create in Acrobat Professional
• Excel Templates
o Excel w/ data mapped to named cells & Excel and XSL formatting
o Great for formatted, true Excel output and burst over sheets
o Excel XLS output only
o Create directly in Excel, good flexibility
➢ Performance Considerations:
o Grouping
o Better to Sort data in the data model
o Group By will force the XSL engine to sort data
➢ JDBC vs JNDI to Connect to Database
o Both types of connection use the same JDBC driver
o With JNDI you can take advantage of connection pooling
▪ Better performance •
▪ Connection already established to the source
➢ Enable Scalable Mode
o Enable for large reports – Slower performance, but prevents out-ofmemory errors
– Use with scheduled reports
➢ Pass Null Value when User selects “All” in LOV
o For large LOVs, pass NULL to the parameter when users select All & modify WHERE
clause in Data Set query to use the NVL function.
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➢ Report Properties for long running reports – Take advantage of scheduling and disable Run
Report Online
➢ Caching
o Enable Data Caching
o Saves XML data for reuse up to the Cache Expiration threshold
o Improved performance with different template/output format
o Not recommended for real-time data
➢ Element Naming(tag names)
o Avoid re-using the same name for element names; it can cause confusion in template
design. – For example, CITY under SHIPPING_ADDRESS and BILLING_ADDRESS. But in
many cases you are better off using different names e.g. S_CITY and B_CITY • For
reports that generate large data sets using 2 or 3 character names for elements can have
a large impact on performance and size.

Key Considerations For OTBI/BIP

• Unlike OBIA(Oracle Business Intelligence Applications), OTBI does not have a lot of prebuilt
dashboards and reports. The reason is that for some advanced analysis, the data need to be
prepared. You cannot get eveything you can get from the OBIA data warehouse in OTBI.
• OTBI is for Oracle Cloud Apps only; we cannot report on any other sources of data.
• It performs online BI queries against the Cloud Application database directly.There is no data
warehouse with advanced metrics and it lacks historical data, which limits the type of analytics
that can be done.
• OTBI RPD cannot be customized. Minor customizations can be done using flexfields to expose
some columns in OTBI subject areas. For major customizations we need to use BI Publisher.
• Any changes to configuration parameters can only be done by submitting an SR to Oracle with
a business justification.
• The Fusion Apps database on cloud cannot be queries using tools like SQL Developer. So, the
only way to query the database is by using BI Publisher. This is mainly a developer pain point.
• When the Fusion apps source system in not heavily customized
• Restricted access to Ad hoc analysis to avoid run away queries
• OTBI supports simple reporting that does not require further data enrichment outside the
transactional data model
• Multi-Source Data Integration (not supported in OTBI)
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• A rich data repository for Advanced analytics (e.g. unstructured data, what-if planning,
Predictive analytics*) (not supported in OTBI)

• It performs online BI queries against the Cloud Application database directly.There is no data
warehouse with advanced metrics and it lacks historical data, which limits the type of analytics
that can be done.

• OTBI RPD cannot be customized. Minor customizations can be done using flexfields to expose
some columns in OTBI subject areas. For major customizations we need to use BI Publisher.

• Any changes to configuration parameters can only be done by submitting an SR to Oracle with
a business justification.

• The Fusion Apps database on cloud cannot be queries using tools like SQL Developer. So, the
only way to query the database is by using BI Publisher. This is mainly a developer pain point.

• The above is suggested approach before deciding which tool would be used to deliver reporting
requirements.

• It is always preferable to build reports using OBIEE Answers/OTBI subject areas for 2 main
reasons.

o Firstly, reports built out of the subject areas are interactive in nature. Users can drill
up/drill down, navigate to another report based on actions which are configured on the
report.

o Secondly, the subject areas are accessible to Analysts and Managers based on access
provided. This allows them to create reports easily by choosing columns from the
appropriate subject area using the drag and drop approach. Also, the configurations are
reusable for creating more reports.

• Also, the custom SQL's built are usually complex in nature since the data in the Fusion tables
are normalized unlike the typical data warehouse. This means data would need to be pulled
from multiple objects causing the code to grow while also impacting performance due to huge
data which needs to be processed.

• To summarize, the preferable approach is to use OTBI subject areas to build reports and BI
Publisher must be used if all else fails.
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How Can SplashBI Help?

SplashBI is an analytics platform featuring pre-built reports and dashboards,
economical pricing, and robust self-service reporting capabilities. We offer an
exhaustive suite of pre-built reports and dashboards for Human Resources,
Sales & Marketing, and Oracle Applications. SplashBI delivers the important
data insights you need with maximum efficiency and minimum effort—for a
fraction of the cost.

SplashBI Benefits Over OTBI/BIP

• Modern Interface – HTML5
• Works for Any Datasource
• Browser/Mobile/Tablet/Excel Connect/GLC+
• Built as Discover Replacement
• No Data Warehouse
• Connectors
• One Product to replace OBIEE, BI Publisher, Discoverer, Report
Writer,APEX
• In-built oracle EBS security
• Multi-User development
• Auto Configured DFFs, KFFs, SITs, EITs
• Advanced Distribution & Bursting
• OAuth2 Enabled APIs, Embed, Integrate
• Multiple Output Formats
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Future Benefits
SplashBI provides multiple Cloud connectors to Oracle, SalesForce, and Taleo.
Upon client request SpalshBI, has built Cloud connectors to Avatures,
SuccessFactor, Microsoft Dynamics, ADP, Gallup and SAP. We are are prepared
for the constant changes of the technology landscape, so building new connectors
and adding them to SplashBI is something we are more than willing to do.

• Single reporting solution regardless of how you migrate your system

• New systems or project will be stress free for stakeholders and IT from a
reporting perspective. Get your data in a format that can be easily injected
into your existing data model

SplashBI will solve your Cloud-migration problems and prepare you if you decide
to move back on-premise or to another cloud solution.
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About the Author

Prasad Renati is the Senior Solutions Engineer and Subject Matter Expert for
EiS/SplashBI. Prasad brings 13+ years of technology experience developing and
implementing Oracle E-Business Suite, Business Intelligence solutions with Oracle
technology, ETL design and development, workforce analytics, delivering analytical
reports, dashboards, custom metadata models, and discoverer migration, ETL
design for OTBI and BI Publisher reporting. He understands how the core reporting
tools work together and the relevant considerations when seeking to integrate
them. Prasad Expertise in Oracle HCM Extracts, OTBI Reports, Oracle Business
Intelligence Publisher (BIP), EiS/SplashBI tools. Extensive exposure in HCM full life
cycle implementations, right through development, support, extensions,
customization, upgrade, data conversion and testing. Prasad has extensive
experience of implementing business intelligence and analytics solutions for HR
and other cross functional organization. He has done several implementations for
Oracle HR, Payroll, GL, AR, AP, AOL, System Administrator, Workflows, Reports,
Interfaces, Conversions, OBIA with ODI, BI Publisher, Discoverer Reports
Conversion.
Prasad holds a Bachelor of technology degree in computer science and information
technology, Certified Oracle Global Human Resources Cloud Implementation
Specialist with experience on Fusion Global Human Resources and presented
several paper presentations in OAUG/OATUG,OHUG.