[2] reports antwhere anyway

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Enterprise Data Publishing

with Oracle Reports:

Any Data, Any Format, Anywhere


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INTRODUCTION

In the history of publishing we have used different

approaches all with the same goal to provide information

in an easy accessible, yet representative way. It was a hard

and exhausting process in the early days of data

publishing where all reports had to be written by hand.

With the invention of the printing press, the process was

dramatically enhanced and speeded up.

The computer age opened up a complete new meaning to

data publishing. This new computer technology produced

lots of unformatted data that had to be heavily processed

before it was comprehendible by humans. The age of

enterprise reporting began. As data-processing technology

improved, the expectation of the results also rose. Not only

were accurate results expected, the format and presentation

also became very important. The goal of enterprise reporting

shifted more and more towards presenting the results in apleasing, boardroom quality output. Those reports were

high-fidelity paper reports, which were printed.

With the introduction of Internet technology, the

requirements for enterprise reports changed. Online became

their primary distribution medium, but still they were reports

originally designed for printing. They were just produced to

a compatible format, so users using their lightweight

browser environments could view them.

Now that the Internet-technology has become an essential

part of our information technology infrastructure, enterprisereporting has taken on a new meaning: enterprise data

publishing. The requirements for page-based, printable

reports are still there, but the presentation requirements for

online reporting have changed dramatically. In the Web

environment, there is no such thing as a page that is

limited by a specific width and height. While paper pages

are bound to strict page outlines, Web pages flow within the

confines of your Web browser. To fit in a modern Web-

environment it is also essential to use the latest technologies

available in order to produce high fidelity Web pages.

Online (data) publishing heavily utilizes dynamic mediacontent, from animated images to full-blown animations and

streaming content; all these are parts of a modern Web

presentation.


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In modern information technology environment, integration

and interaction is a big issue. The key to this is openness:

openness towards data, openness towards output and

openness to possible requirements, meaning extensibility, as

you need it. You want to be able to use a system out of the

box but also be able to extend it over time to adjust it to new

or changed requirements. Using documented interfaces

(Application Programming Interface, API) you extend

existing or create completely new functionality to fit your

requirements. Extending your infrastructure should be easy

and uniform across your entire IT infrastructure. The J2EE

platform is designed to provide exactly that: a uniform

environment for developing applications, regardless of

operating system and hardware platform.

Enterprise data publishing is much more than just producing

numbers on paper. It is presenting whatever information you

need, however you need it, wherever you need it any data,

any format, anywhere Oracle Reports.


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ORACLE REPORTS HIGH END REPORTING MADE

SIMPLE

Oracle Reports is a powerful Enterprise Reporting tool to

build and publish high quality, dynamically generated Web

reports. Through data-driven tables of contents, hyperlinks,

and drill-down chart hyperlinks, Oracle Reports provides

users with an easy route to the information they require.

Rapid Development

Using a declarative, document centric development model,

Oracle Reports Developer focuses a new user on the tasks

required in the production of a report, while still allowing

experienced developers to have total control of their report

development. Each major task in report production is

expedited by the use of an appropriate Wizard, while the use

of Report Templates and a live data pre-view allows for

easy customization of the report structure. Once daunting

tasks, such as complex data-models and layouts become

simple drag & drop actions. For example, the Query

Wizard allows for the visual representation and construction

of the complex SQL on which operational reports are often

based, while the Report wizard steps the developer through

the task of defining a report structure, data source, break

groups and summaries.

Wizards Simplify Report Development

Unlike many graphical reporting tools, Oracle Reports

Developer does not apply any limitation on the number of

queries defined within the report (many allow only a single

query per report module), nor the overall format of the data

returned. Based on page/frame model rather than the more

simplistic banded reporting paradigm, Oracle Reports

Developer allows for an almost unlimited number of report

formats, without the need to resort to the complexity of

nested report modules or complex procedural code.

On creation of a report definition, the report layout is

displayed, along with the first page of data, in the Live Pre-

Viewer. In this WYSIWYG view the developer is able to

see immediately the impact their format choices have, orwill have, on the final report and hence, they can further

enhance the output by the direct manipulation of report

objects.


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Oracle Reports WYSIWYG Report Editor

As the requirements for a report change with the changing

business environment Oracle Reports Developer simplifies

the modification process by use of re-entrant Wizard

technology. That is, a developer may return repeatedly to a

wizard to make further modification, without loosing the

current customizations that have been made. Currently mostimplementations of development wizards assume that any

invocation is the first and will destroy any work to that

point.

ANY DATA - PUBLISH ALL YOUR DATA,

TRANSPARENTLY AND FLEXIBLE

In a modern IT environment, data is produced in different

places and different formats. Consolidation into a single

source of truth is often difficult and in some cases even

unwanted. You just want to publish specific information

without having to transform or consolidate it first.

Oracle Reports provides you with multiple data sources out-

of-the-box. It supports SQL, PL/SQL (=ref-cursor), Express,

XML, JDBC, Oracle OLAP and text-files (delimited and

fixed format). You can combine queries from different

sources in a single report and link them to produce master-

detail relationships. With Oracle Reports it does not make

any difference where the data of a query comes from.

Oracle Reports supports a variety of data sources and

also provides a Java-API so you can create your own

datasource

These data sources are written against a Java-based API that

also allows you to create and plug in your own data sources.

A Java-class implementing the Pluggable Data source API

allows you to create access mechanisms for data, common to

your business and integrate it into reports, allowing you to

use this data directly in your report.

Suppose you're building a report based on your supplier's

inventory, accessible via an XML stream over the Internet,

and your own inventory, stored in an Oracle database. Using

the JDBC data source, you can access data from differentJDBC-compliant datasources in a single report.

In order to easily personalize your query, you can include

parameters into your query-definition, which allows you to

pass query-criteria at runtime. For example, if you create a


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report where you want to list employees that are with the

company for a number of years, but this number is not set

yet or changes, you can add these criteria as parameter and

pass the actual value when you execute the report.

Data from an Oracle Database (upper block) and an

XML-stream (lower block) combined in a single Report

This example shows a report that combines data from an

SQL data source (warehouse data on the top) and data from

an live XML feed via the Internet (inventory data, below) in

a single report. You can also aggregate data across data

sources and use columns regardless from where they

originally come from.

Oracle Reports provides native access for data stored in

Oracle OLAP as well as Express, which allows you to

smoothly transition your OLAP data stored in Express to the

new OLAP Services.

The only visible difference in the data model is a small icon,

indicating the data source that is behind the query. Other

than that, all queries are handled similarly. All PDSs are

also available in wizard-driven report creation and can be

used for all available report-styles.

Integrated Approach to Business Intelligence

Every organization has a spectrum of Business Intelligence

requirements ranging from complex MIS written operational

reports, to end user based ad-hoc queries to advanced

analytical tasks like forecasting and what if analysis.

However, in general the insight gained from corporate data

may be simplified to three basic questions:

How is my business doing?

What influenced this and what factors were

involved?

Based on certain trends where will my business go?

The job functions of those tasked with answering these

questions has often resulted in the use of quite different

reporting methods. That is, traditional structured reports for

(1), drill and pivot ad-hoc query tools for (2) and advanced

analytical engines for question (3).

To date the use of disparate tools, often from separate

vendors, has resulted in pockets of knowledge without the

AdvancedAnalysis

AdvancedAdvancedAnalysisAnalysis

Ad Hoc Queryand Analysis

Ad Hoc QueryAd Hoc Queryand Analysisand Analysis

EnterpriseReportingEnterpriseEnterpriseReportingReporting

What were sales by

Region last quarter?

What is driving the

increase in revenue

in the Western

Region?

Given the rapid

increase in Web sales,

what will total sales be

for the rest of the year?


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ability for others to easily access the findings or to drill

further into the results. A successful solution to Business

Intelligence gathering should therefore allow end users to

take advantage of the findings of others and to feed their

own findings into an integrated solution.

Integrated business Intelligence across the enterprise

In order to make the most of the information gained from

analytical tools it needs to be accessible to as wide an

audience as possible. Oracle Reports facilitates the

publishing of analytical data to the enterprise in two ways;

By allowing for the creation of reports directly from

worksheets created in OracleAS Discoverer,

Oracles award winning ad-hoc query and analysis

tool for Relational databases.

Generate Operational Reports directly from Ad-Hoc query worksheets

By including an OracleOLAP pluggable data

source. On-line analytical processing (OLAP)

services are part of the Oracle database. These

Oracleanalytical functions allow users to

answer typical on-line analytical processing

(OLAP) questions on demand. Powerful

analytics like ranking, period-to-period

comparisons and moving averages are now easyto use. In addition, users can sort, pivot, and

drill on the data to meet their needs.

OracleAS Discoverer

Oracle Re orts


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ANY FORMAT YOUR DATA FROM BOARDROOM-

QUALITY TO ONLINE-FLEXIBILITY

Once created, a report can serve various purposes. From

being served or distributed online to being printed, all from

a single layout model. This approach would be true for strict

page-oriented, paper-based publishing, but there are

differences between creating a report for printing and

reproducing its appearance in a Web-environment vs. true

Web publishing.

Paper-based publishing still a valid way to present

data

For traditional Enterprise reporting, a report was always

designed for printing and only secondary for online

presentation. And even then, its original format the page-

was preserved. Oracle Reports pays respect to this way of

publishing, by offering various output formats for its paper

layout. Besides PDF, HTML and HTMLCSS, the traditional

Web-formats, it offers RTF (incl. Unicode support) for

support of e.g. Microsoft Word, as well as more data- rather

than formatting oriented formats like DELIMITED or XML.

The same report in XML (left) and in PDF (right)

The latter two will produce the data contained in the report

for other applications to process . This way you can produce

a boardroom-quality report in PDF and from the same report

interchangeable data for business-to-business applications.

An example would be a catalogue of your inventory. You

could produce a high-fidelity version in PDF for your

customers to view and print, and from the same report, by

just changing the destination format in your request,


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produce an XML version, which your customers can use to

import in their own order management or inventory system.

In terms of PDF generation, the driver of Oracle Reports has

multiple major enhancements. It now supports the use of

multibyte fonts, such as simplified and traditional Chinese,

Korean, Japanese. In conjunction with Adobes Asian Font

Pack you can now produce reports for multi-byte users.

Different language characters combined in a single report

In order to produce real client-independent PDF files,

Oracle Reports now supports font embedding and font sub

setting, which includes the font definition of all used fonts

in the report. By choosing one or the other, you can specify,

whether you want to include the complete font set

(embedding) or just the definition for the characters used(sub-setting). The resulting PDF document can be viewed in

any PDF viewer, regardless if the used fonts are installed, or

not. Font sub setting is especially useful if youre dealing

with Unicode documents, displaying different character-sets

in a single report. You can then subset the font, so the

document looks the same on any browser. Also special fonts

that define your corporate identity can be included in the

PDF file, so your customer does not need to install those

specific fonts in order to view the document correctly.

To optimize the download time, we also support PDF

compression, which allows you to minimize the size of your

PDF document. Although compression is especially useful

for documents with embedded/subsetted fonts, it can be

used with any PDF document.


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Implementing the PDF 1.4 standard for tagging PDF files

adds, in conjunction with new properties in the paper layout,

accessibility to the generated PDF document. It contains

information that allows screen readers, such as Freedom

Scientifics JAWS, to read the PDF documents content.

Web vs. paper publishing

Todays IT environments are all about online services and

most of them are based on Web-technology focused on

browser based delivery of information. In a browser-based

environment, there are no traditional page boundaries as on

a paper-page; the layout is flowing. A Web page is a

collection of elements coming from different sources bound

and rendered in the Web browser. Dynamic content is

usually embedded in a framework of static information

creating the basic look-and-feel of the Web page. This look

and feel is created by a Web designer in any HTML-

authoring tool and then handed to the different contributorsto put content into the provided framework.

A true webpage, containing dynamic report content,

created created using the new Web Source of Oracle

Reports

Oracle Reports introduces the new reporting paradigm

called the Web source. Based on Java Server-Pages (JSP)

technology it allows you to inject dynamic report content

into any surrounding structure. This could be an existing

web-page or any other format that you want to inject content

into (e.g. WML for wireless browsers, ). The goal here is

seamless integration into the HTML page, rather than exact

reproduction of a paper layout as it is with our HTML(CSS)

rendering of the paper-layout.


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Using custom tags, the control elements of a JSP, you add

programmatic elements in your HTML layout. At execution

time, those elements access the data model, fetch the data

from the data sources and produce the actual data.

Both Web source and Paper-Layout reside in the same file

and so a single file can produce both Web and paper output.

You can provide a true Web version of your report byexecuting the JSP in OracleAS or producing, for example, a

PDF file from your paper-layout stored in the exact same

file, by executing the report using Oracle Reports Services.

The web source is based on standard JSP1.1 technology,

which allows you to include other functionality, such as

JavaBeans or regular Java Code into the page.

Web and paper layout, out of a single report definition file

Oracle Reports allows you to share data model and program

unit objects within a Paper-based layout and a Web-basedlayout. In essence this means that the actual report needs to

be developed just once - and the same data model and

business logic can be used for Web publishing. Web

designers can design the Web page itself, and the data

component can be incorporated into the page using Oracle

Reports JSP tags. This will also ensure a smooth migration

for existing reports that incorporate a paper layout, and need

to be moved to the Web. Thus, existing investments can be

protected.

The Reports Builder is now capable of opening and saving

various formats. The RDF, JSP and XML will all store data

model as well as Web source and paper layout. However,

only the JSP format provides you with the flexibility of the

develop once, deploy anywhere principles of Oracle

Reports. The JSP format can be executed in the applications


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servers JSP engine to produce the Web output or can be

used with OracleAS Reports Services to produce the paper

output.

JavaServerPages offer the following advantages:

Separation of dynamic and static content

Support for scripting and tags

Reuse of components and tags

Portable, powerful and easy to use

Accepted, industry-standard way of building

dynamic Web pages

Use of a non-proprietary scripting language (Java)

Compiled for permanent execution

Report Versioning, Customization and Personalization

using XML definitions

Though modern analysis and design techniques aim to meet

the requirements of the entire user base as closely as

possible, it is rare that a new report module will meet the

needs of different users in quite the same manner. For

example, the amount of information displayed may be

insufficient for a given user or conversely superfluous to

requirement, or simply in the wrong format. As such, it is

often the case that the base report module is further

customized for each unique need, resulting in a plethora of

reports, each of which differs slightly from the original

report definition

The problem is further compounded when a new version of

the base report is released, as any custom modification

would need to be rolled forward into the new version. This

can result in a significant effort on the part of the application

developers, and, in particular, greatly effects vendors of

ERP style applications, where the modules are often heavily

modified for each customer site in order to meet their own

corporate standards (e.g. Logo, Font, Look and Feel etc.)

Oracle Reports Server answers this need by allowing the

modifications to be externalized into a separate file, rather

than having to create a unique version of the report. By

creating and applying different customization files, the


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report output can be customized on a per user or group basis

without changing the original report definition

Hard coded modifications Vs. Runtime customization with

Oracle Reports

Defined using XML, the customization file allows for both

the modification of current objects in the report and also the

creation of new components. Using these XML tags it is

possible to build a full or partial report definition that will

then serve as either a customization file or even a

completely self contained report.

The ability to externalize modifications greatly simplifies

the upgrade process, as well as the need to make an

application site specific. As an XML definition is applied, it

is possible to save the resultant combined definition,

resulting in a new unique module. By performing a batch

update to the applications existing reports, it is possible to

quickly update/upgrade a large number of modules without

the need to open each file in the Reports Developer to

manually make the changes. For example, a vendor of an

ERP suite may wish to allow each customer to define the

look and feel for their reports, requiring modification tofonts, colors etc. Through the use of XML based

customization, gross changes of this nature can be made to

the entire application in a single step.

User A

Version

User B

Version

Each user customizes the definition to

create a unique report to meet their

requirements.

Version 1Version 1

Version 1Version 1 Version 2

Version 3

Version 4...

Customization must be re-applied

for each new version

User A User B

Customization is externalized and

applied at runtime.

Version 1

A single report definition for all

users.

XML

X

M

L


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ANYWHERE WHEREVER YOU WANT YOUR DATA

Oracle Reports is all about publishing data. Publishing

YOUR data WHEREVER you need it. In order to bring

flexibility to publishing, Oracle Reports is offering a

number of features that allow you to bring the published

data exactly where YOU need it.

Deployment made simple

The OracleAS Reports Services allow you to deploy your

reports on the OracleAS. The Reports Server Infrastructure,

written in 100% Java provides mechanisms for securing and

scheduling your jobs, as well as access-mechanisms to

submit jobs via HTTP (reports servlet), PL/SQL or

command-line (reports thin-client).

Pluggable features like notification allow you to integrate

the reports-server into your existing business systems in a

bi-directional manner. After submitting a job, you have

access to the server-queue information in XML format so

you can easily track your job from within an application and

the pluggable notification allows you to implement

callback-mechanisms where the server can notify your

application when a job has finished.

Other pluggable mechanisms like the cache-management

and security allow you to create your own implementations,

if you require special handling. With the pluggable engine,

you can even use the OracleAS Reports Servicesinfrastructure to perform additional tasks (e.g. execute an

operating system command) and leverage the other services

of the server such as scheduling, security and distribution of

the output.

Advanced mechanisms

With Enterprise reporting, you can produce multiple reports

that respond to different requirements. For example, several

managers in your company may need information specific to

their departments. By using enterprise reporting, you can

run a report once to generate multiple files, each filecontaining the information each manager needs for his

department. For example, if you produce reports about data

of your employees, a manager of a particular department is


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interested in a brief overview of the company but only in the

detail for his particular department.

Distributing reports sections to different recipients in a

single run of the report.

Enterprise reporting enables you customize information for

your audience. Oracle Reports provides a new feature called

bursting that allows you to split the output of your report

based on a repeating-group in your report. In our example,

you would burst around the department group to produce the

output for each department. The outputs are generated in a

single run of the report.

Using the distribution feature of Oracle Reports, the result

of this bursting could then be distributed wherever you need

it. You could generate a PDF file of the report for every

department and push it into OracleAS Portal or email the

reports to the managers of each department.

The rules for distribution are defined in a distribution-file

in XML format and passed to the report-request. OracleAS

Reports Services will then render the report and distribute

the output to the specified destinations. You can distribute

to as many destinations as you want at the same time. For

example, you could send the report by email to the

department managers and archive them at the same time in

OracleAS Portal.

The email-destination allows you to assemble your email

however you want it. You can decide if you want the report

output as attachment or as the body and add static files asattachments as well.

Please find attached the InventoryOverview of your warehouse for your

convenience.


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Example distribution file

This examples will create one email for each record in the

bursting-group of the report, use fields from the data model

to populate the TO field as well as enhance the content of

the SUBJECT. The email will have a static text in the bodyand will have a PDF file attached, which name is enhanced

using a field of the data model, and will contain only the

data, for the current record of the bursting group. It will

contain only the main section of the report.

Distribute your report to any kind of destination, printer,

file, web and if you cant find the one you need, you can

create it in Java.

All destinations are built against another interface, the

Pluggable Destination API. This allows you to extend this

functionality as well. You can write your own destination

and plug it into the reports infrastructure. If you for example

want to push the report output directly into Oracle iFS orsend it to a remote location via FTP, you can implement this

functionality as new Pluggable Destinations.

CONCLUSION

In a modern IT environment, reporting is no longer just

about simple representation of data; reporting is also about

how and where the data is presented. High fidelity,

boardroom-quality reports that are usually printed or at least

designed in a way, so they are paper oriented to be printable

later on, stand against the growing area of online data

publishing; the ad-hoc way of presenting data in a Web-

browser as the point of service.

Modern enterprise data publishing is all about online.

Online presentation of data and online servicing even the

boardroom report requests. Oracle Reports offers a solution


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for both areas. The traditional Paper Layout gives you high-

quality, paper oriented output with options to generate this

output in many different online formats like PDF, HTML,

HTMLCSS as well as print it directly, while the new Web-

oriented publishing solution, based on JavaServerPages,

allows you to easily integrate dynamic report content into

your regular Web page so it fits your website look and feel

100%.

Opening up the complete infrastructure by exposing and

documenting certain APIs, you can even extend reports

functionality by adding data-sources, destinations or other

components of the Oracle Reports framework.

Oracle Reports has become the complete solution for all

your Enterprise Data Publishing needs ofany data in any

formatanywhere.


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Enterprise Data Publishing with Oracle Reports

February 2002

Authors: Philipp Weckerle

Copyright Oracle Corporation 2001

All Rights Reserved Printed in the U.S.A.

This document is provided for informational purposes

only and the information herein is subject to change

without notice. Please report any errors herein to

Oracle Corporation. Oracle Corporation does not

provide any warranties covering and specifically

disclaims any liability in connection with this document.

Oracle is a registered trademark and Enabling the

Information Age and Software Powers the Internet are trademarks

of Oracle Corporation.

All other company or product names are mentioned for identification

purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Oracle Corporation

World Headquarters

500 Oracle Parkway

Redwood Shores, CA 94065

U.S.A.

Worldwide Inquiries:

650.506.7000

Fax 650.506.7200

Copyright Oracle Corporation 1995

All Rights Reserved

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