Before you can start exploring the Discoverer Plus features, though, you need to create a working environment allowing you to look at those features by example.
What you'll need is some data stored in the underlying database as well as an EUL making this data available for use in Discoverer. As for the database data, you will use the database already created in the preceding examples. If you've followed the instructions in the Multidimensional data analysis with SQL section of the previous chapter, you should have a database schema with the tables populated with data.
If you haven't done it yet, do it now. Just to recap, you should have the usr/usr database schema and the salespersons, regions, and orders tables within it, populated with data.
The next step is to create an EUL that holds the metadata required to make the above data available for use in Discoverer. The simplest way to do this is using Discoverer Administrator.
As mentioned earlier, Discoverer Administrator comes with the Oracle Business Intelligence Tools suite, part of Oracle Application Server. However, if you're using Oracle Fusion Middleware, then Discoverer Administrator is shipped with the Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer suite. In either case, though, Discoverer Administrator is a Windows-only tool.
What this means in practice is that, on platforms other than Windows, you have to use other tools to perform administration tasks. For example, to create an EUL, you can use the Discoverer EUL Command Line for Java tool available on either a Windows, UNIX, or Linux machine. For details on how to do this, refer to the Business Intelligence Discoverer EUL Command Line for Java User's Guide, which you can find using the Search Oracle Documentation feature on the Oracle Documentation page at http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/
index.html.
The following are the steps of creating such an EUL with the help of Discoverer Administrator:
1. Launch SQLPlus, connecting to the database /as sysdba Then, issue the following GRANT command:
GRANT CREATE VIEW TO usr;
2. After issuing the above command, you can quit SQLPlus.
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3. Launch Discoverer Administrator by clicking Start | Programs | Oracle Business Intelligence Tools-BIToolsHome1 | Oracle Discoverer Administrator.
4. In the dialog, Connect to Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Administrator, enter the usr/usr username/password pair to connect to the database. In this dialog, you'll also need to enter the service name of the underlying database.
5. After you click Connect, Discoverer Administrator will check if you have access to at least one EUL. If not, it will ask you to create one now. Click Yes, which will open the EUL Manager dialog. If you have access to at least one EUL, you will be immediately connected to Discoverer Administrator. In that case, you can open the EUL Manager dialog by clicking the Tools | EUL manager… menu.
6. In the EUL Manager dialog, you should click the Create an EUL … button to proceed to creating a new EUL. This will launch the Create EUL Wizard.
7. In the first step of the Create EUL Wizard, you can select a user from the list of database users. This can be done in the Select User dialog, which you can open by clicking the Select … button in the wizard screen.
8. In the Select User dialog, click the Go button to see a list of all users available in the Results box. In this box, choose usr by double-clicking it.
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9. After a user has been selected, the Finish button in the Create EUL Wizard should become available. Click it to make Discoverer Administrator create the EUL. This process will continue behind the scenes and should take less than a minute. Once it's completed, you should see a message informing you about it.
10. Close the EUL Manager dialog by clicking Close.
After the above steps are completed, you have the usr EUL, which you can specify in the EUL field on the Discoverer Plus login page. However, the EUL created here is not the only metadata object you'll need to be able to work with the underlying database data in Discoverer Plus. What you also need to create is a business area, grouping the database data for analysis and reporting. If you recall, the concept of business area was briefly touched on the Composing a Business Intelligence system section in Chapter 2, Introducing Oracle Business Intelligence.
The following steps walk you through how to create a business area in Discoverer Administrator:
1. After closing the EUL Manager dialog in Discoverer Administrator, you should see the Administration Tasklist dialog shown in the following screenshot. If you don't see this dialog, click the View | Tasklist menu from the menu bar of Discoverer Administrator.
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As you can see in the screenshot, the list of tasks you can accomplish with Discoverer Administrator is not limited only to creating business areas.
Once a business area is created, you can perform tasks on its items such as creating joins, calculated items, and conditions. As you will learn a little later in this chapter, many of these tasks can be alternatively accomplished with Discoverer Plus when working with a business area.
2. In the Administration Tasklist dialog, click the Create business areas icon. This should launch the Load Wizard dialog shown in the following screenshot:
3. In Load Wizard, click the Create a new business area button. As a result, the Next button of the wizard should become available. Click the Next button to move on to the Step 2 screen of the wizard.
4. In the Step 2 screen of the wizard, choose the usr user in the Select the users whose tables you want to load box, and click Next to move on to the Step 3 screen of the wizard.
5. In the Step 3 screen of the wizard, in the Available box expand the usr list, select the orders item, and click the ► button to move orders to the Selected box. After that, click the Next button to proceed to the Step 4 screen of the wizard.
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7. In the Step 5 screen of the wizard, enter OrdersBusinessArea in the What do you want to name this business area? box, and click the Finish button.
As a result, a four-tab window called the End User Layer USR should appear:
8. Exploring the End User Layer USR window tabs, you can familiarize yourself with the structure of the newly created business area. For example, if you move on to the Hierarchies tab and expand the OrdersBusinessArea list, you should see how the orddate field inherited from the underlying orders table was shredded into the default date hierarchy:
As you might guess, breaking a date item into a date hierarchy lets you drill in the data to view information in more detail.
Instead of the default date hierarchy shown in the figure, you might create a new one to apply to a date item. This can be done with the help of the Hierarchy Wizard. You can launch this wizard by clicking the Insert | Hierarchy… menu item.
For more details on creating and using date hierarchies, you can check Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Administration Guide. This document, like many others related to the Oracle Discoverer components, can be found on the Oracle Discoverer Documentation page at http://www.oracle.com/
technology/documentation/discoverer.html.
9. Now you can quit Discoverer Administrator by clicking the File | Exit menu item.
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With an EUL and business area created as discussed in this section, you can move on and proceed to analyzing and reporting tasks with Discoverer Plus.