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Copyright (c) 2019, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle Confidential.

Fusion Applications BI Publisher : How Should We Create New BI Publisher Reports or Customize Existing
Seeded BI Publisher Reports? (Doc ID 1926322.1)

In this Document

Abstract
History
Details
Identifying BI Publisher content
Creating New BI Publisher content
Modifying seeded BI Publisher content
The Customize Option for a BI Publisher Report
Customizing Data Models
Why do some reports have no data model listed ?
Summary
References

APPLIES TO:

Oracle Fusion Application Toolkit Cloud Service - Version 11.1.8.0.0 and later
Oracle Fusion Application Toolkit - Version 11.1.8.0.0 and later
Oracle Fusion Enterprise Contracts Management Cloud Service - Version 11.13.17.11.0 to 11.13.17.11.0 [Release 1.0]
Oracle Fusion Supplier Qualification Management Cloud Service - Version 11.13.18.02.0 to 11.13.18.02.0 [Release 1.0]
Information in this document applies to any platform.

ABSTRACT

The intention of this document is to provide guidelines as to how new content should be built and published for BI Publisher in a Fusion
Applications context, and as to how existing seeded content should be modified.

HISTORY

15-Sept-2014 - JMAYALL - Initial Publication

DETAILS

The Fusion Application is provided with a fully functional Oracle Business Intelligence suite, including both BI Answers for the creation of
OTBI and OBIA content (analyses and dashboards), and BI Publisher for the creation of pixel-perfect report output.

When working with BI Publisher content there may be scenarios in which it is desirable to make changes to the seeded content or to create
and expose new BI Publisher content to end users.

The intention of this document is to clarify the best approaches to be taken in each case in order to avoid some commonly encountered
issues.

It should be noted that the document is generic in nature and that there are a variety of other KM documents which have been published by
various support teams for the modification of their specific content therefore these should also be reviewed for additional relevant
information. A static list of some of the more popular content will be provided at the end of this document.

The following is a list of documentation which is immediately relevant to the tasks being performed and should be used as a reference
during the customization process :

Quick Start Guide for BI Publisher : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi/documentation/bipqs-1911948.pdf

Data Modelling Guide for BI Publisher : http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28280_01/bi.1111/e22258/toc.htm

Report Designers Guide for BI Publisher : http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28280_01/bi.1111/e22254/toc.htm

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Customizing Oracle Fusion Payments Templates using Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher: 1965324.1

Guidance for Managing Customizations in Oracle Cloud Application Services: Business Intelligence Migration: 1510577.1

Fusion Applications - Hints and Tips for creating new BI Publisher reports (Doc ID 1594291.1)

Identifying BI Publisher content

There are a number of ways to determine whether or not the content you are looking at is a BI Publisher report.

Firstly when looking in the BI Catalog the icon for a BI Publisher report appears as shown in the examples below :

Secondly when looking at the Properties for a BI Publisher report the path will show a '.xdo' extension :

Finally, when opening or editing a BI Publisher report you will either see a reference to 'bipublisherEntry' (if the report was accessed initially
from the BI Catalog in /analytics) or the URL will show /xmlpserver when working directly in the BI Publisher application :

Creating New BI Publisher content

When looking to create new BI Publisher content there are two main processes which need to be followed :

1) Identify the required data and build a suitable Data Model object in BI Publisher to retrieve this data

2) Build a suitable Report Template to display the data from the Data Model in the layout required

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The Data Modelling Guide documents that there are a number of different types of Data Model which can be built within BI Publisher, of
these the most commonly used will be a SQL-based data model wherein a SQL query is constructed and issued

Modifying seeded BI Publisher content

NOTE : Modifications made to seeded BI Publisher reports may be lost during upgrades if the following procedures are not followed. If
existing customizations have already been made to seeded content then those same changes should be migrated to the appropriate
locations using the process detailed below

Historically there has been a requirement to be able to make customizations to the BI Publisher reports that are shipped with the Fusion
Application to bring them in line with requirements on-site. As a result seeded reports would be modified, templates added, layouts changed,
etc but following on from upgrades it was found that these same changes may be lost and the seeded report reverted back to its original
version. Patches often contain fixes or changes to seeded content which can result in the customized versions being over-written and
therefore a mechanism was needed to preserve changes but to also ensure that any customizations could be called automatically from the
existing buttons and configuration within the Fusion Application.

The Customize Option for a BI Publisher Report

The Customize feature provides report developers with this functionality and should be used when making any changes to BI Publisher
Reports. Changes to data models are handled slightly differently and an approch for this is detailed below.

The Customize option exists against for a BI Publisher Report when the developer access BI Publisher directly via the /xmlpserver URL as
can be seen below :

When this option is selected on a seeded report such as the one above the system will automatically make a copy of the seeded report and
place it, in the same folder hierarchy, under the /Shared Folders/Custom/... folder structure.

In this example we can see the report being Customized exists in /Shared Folders/Financials/Fixed Assets/Financial Transactions/Asset
Impairment Report and if we check the /Shared Folders/Custom folder structure we see that there is no 'Fixed Assets' folder here.

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Clicking on the 'Customize' option at this point will therefore clone the seeded report, generate the appropriate folder structure, and we will
implicitly be taken to this location to continue our changes. This is not immediately obvious to the report developer but by checking the URL
at this point it can be seen that it references the Custom folder structure in the path :

Moving back to Answers and checking the Catalog we can see that additional folders and a cloned report have been added to the Catalog :

Once we reach this point any further changes can now be made against the copy of the report.

The second critical aspect of this functionality is that whenever the seeded report is invoked from the Fusion Application if the report has
been 'Customized' then the system will re-direct the Fusion Application to call the custom version instead. As a result there is no need for
any code or URL changes in the Fusion Application to invoke the custom report.

Customizing OBIEE Reports

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Where is the 'customize' option for a report in OBIEE? (Doc ID 2063539.1)

Customizing Data Models

When customizing data models in the Fusion Application the same considerations need to be made with regards to preserving content, as
those considerations outlined above for reports. Any customized data model needs to be kept away from the seeded content therefore the
seeded data models should never need to be modified directly. Copies of the seeded data model should be made and placed in the /Shared
Folders/Custom folder structure.

Unlike BI Publisher Reports there is no 'Customize' option available, primarily because the data models are not called directly from the Fusion
Application itself, they are only ever accessed via a report. As a result seeded data models should be cloned and changes made to the copy.
The calling report can then be modified to use this custom version of the data model (using 'Customize' if a seeded report is calling it).

When developing or customizing Data Models it is essential to be aware of the table structures that you are querying against and to this end
Oracle provide the Oracle Enterprise Repository which details this information. The Oracle Enterprise Repository can be reached at the
following URL https://fusionappsoer.oracle.com/oer/index.jsp and is documented in the following KM note :

How To Get The Most From Oracle Enterprise Repository For Troubleshooting Fusion Applications (Doc ID 1399910.1)

From a reporting perspective queries can be run for specific tables or just for all Table objects, and details for each table including column
information, indexing, relationships can all be reviewed.

Why do some reports have no data model listed ?

In some cases when trying to Customize a seeded report the developer may access the report in question and then find that there is no data
model listed against the report as shown below :

If a report shows no data model then then this is because the XML data that the report is using is being pushed out from the Fusion
Application. Under normal circumstances a BI Publisher report would be called which would then call the data model, execute it, and process
the resulting XML. There are a number of Fusion Application reports which have no data model, the XML being generated by the Fusion
Application from the View Objects, and then pushed out to the report which processes it and generates output. As a result these types of
report can be more complex to customize because of the lack of information on the available fields in the XML. It should also be noted that
these same reports cannot then be enhanced to include additional fields beyond that being pushed out as to do so would require code
changes to the Fusion Application.

This seems to apply to all reports in the following folders but there may be additional exceptions :

/Shared Folders/Enterprise Contracts

/Shared Folders/Functional Setup

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/Shared Folders/Procurement

How do I revert back to my seeded report.

Deleting the Custom report from the custom folder will allow you to revert back to your seeded report.

SUMMARY

REFERENCES

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