Which Tool Should Be Used for Reporting?

My clients often wonder which Oracle tool they should use for reporting, building graphs, and generating dashboards. It’s a great question because, as anyone in this realm knows, there are many different options. This blog will touch on the three reporting tools I’m familiar with: Financial Reporting Studio (FRS), Web Analysis (WA), and Oracle Business Intelligence Answers (OBI).

One caveat here is that the bulk of my experience comes from the Oracle Hyperion side, so I have much more familiarity with FRS and WA, and definitely less so with OBI. So, this blog will be written from that perspective.

Below, I’ll give a synopsis of what each tool does, based on my experience, followed by my opinion of when each should be used.

Financial Reporting Studio
FRS is a great tool for producing regular reports, like a monthly reporting package. It allows you to create production level reports with a multitude of formatting options. FRS reports can be viewed in PDF or HTML format, from a client component or over the web. Reports can be gathered together in Books and batch scheduled to run at the frequency of your choosing, and then saved to a particular location or emailed out to a list of users.

FRS is not a tool for producing dashboards, is limited in its chart and graph functionality, and would not generally be used for ad-hoc reporting.

Web Analysis
WA comes from the Hyperion suite of products as the tool for building dashboards. In my experience, it’s most often used to create quick snapshots of data for management or executive level users. WA allows you to create multi-view looks at your critical business metrics, either in graphical or grid format. For example, a dashboard might include a line graph of sales by region in one quadrant, a bar chart of sales by VP in another quadrant, a pie chart of expenses by category, and a grid showing spending by department. WA includes traffic lighting as a feature, allowing you to highlight or color significant variances of data.

WA would not be used for production reporting.

Oracle BI Answers
OBI Answers is a tool for building both reports and dashboards from a variety of sources including relational and multi-dimensional databases. You can build similar dashboards to what WA offers and publish reports similar to what FRS offers. The entire OBI suite has pre-built modules by industry that allow for easier implementation depending on the particular business case.

While OBI Answers can use Oracle Essbase as a data source, there are some issues in doing so that prohibit the use when a particular hierarchy exists. This should be addressed in an upcoming release, but at this point, the OBI link to the Oracle Hyperion suite of products is very limited.

Which Tool?
So, which reporting tool should be used when? With the current releases and functionality available, here is how I would use them:

FRS – Use for regular production reporting such as income statements, operating expenses, headcount, and any other meaningful financial metrics from an Oracle Hyperion data source such as Essbase, Planning, or Financial Management. I generally don’t create charts and graphs using FRS because the options and functionality are fairly limited. But, if you have fairly straightforward and simple chart requirements, then FRS should work fine for you.

WA – I would use Web Analysis for producing grid and chart dashboards from an Oracle Hyperion data source. WA does a good job of incorporating “bells and whistles” that make a dashboard “pop”, providing important metrics quickly.

OBI Answers – OBI is a great tool to use to quickly build reports and dashboards from a data warehouse. In my opinion, this is the easiest tool to learn and use of the three. As I mentioned above, I don’t think it’s currently the right tool to use with Oracle Hyperion data sources, but that very well could change in the near future.

Going Forward
In future releases, I think that OBI will become the tool of choice for reporting and dashboarding, even for Oracle Hyperion data sources. Oracle is very good at creating synergies between their product lines, and while each individual application generally has their own set of tools, eventually, they converge to similar toolset technologies. I think as OBI gets more integrated with the Oracle Hyperion suite of products, it will become the tool of choice for reporting. In my opinion, it is easier to both learn and use compared to both Financial Reporting Studio and Web Analysis.

XOLAP - Virtual cubes against a Data Warehouse Part 1

Can it be true? Real time ad hoc analysis against a Data Warehouse using an Essbase cube that contains no data?

Well with XOLAP, these capabilities a being brought together. I have created a brief tutorial within this article to demonstrate to overall concept relating to XOLAP.

In Part 1 of this article, I'll discuss:

• Setup that needs to occur to emulate sample
  
• Background into XOLAP
  
• Current restrictions relating to XOLAP
  
• Creating Data Sources in Essbase Studio
  
• Defining a MiniSchema
  
• Defining Standard Hierarchies

Due to the number of screen shots and the size of this blog article, I have set the image properties to small. While the screens may be difficult to decipher within the article, each can be clicked on to be rendered in a much larger resolution for viewing.

Setup The Needs to Occur to Emulate Sample

The example delivered in this article involves leveraging AdventureWorksBI.msi on SQL Server 2005 as the Data Warehouse. This database can be downloaded from http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/4004 . The installer for this download requires you to manually attach the database after installation.

Within the dbo.DimCustomer table add a new column called "ProperName" with a property of "nvarchar(100)."

Update the ProperName column within dbo.DimCustomer using a SQL statement similar to the following :

Update dbo.DimCustomer
Set ProperName = LastName + ', ' + FirstName + ' ' + MiddleName

Within the dbo.DimTime table add 3 new columns called "Month", "Day" and "Year" with each having a property of "nchar(10)."

Update the newly added columns within dbo.DimCustomer using a SQL statement similar to the following :

Update dbo.DimTime
Set Month = DatePart(Month,FullDateAlternateKey)
Set Day = DatePart(Day,FullDateAlternateKey)
Set Year = DatePart(Year,FullDateAlternateKey)

A little background into XOLAP

XOLAP (extended online analytic processing) is a variation on the role of OLAP in business intelligence. Specifically, XOLAP is an Essbase multidimensional database that stores only the outline metadata and retrieves data from a relational database at query time. XOLAP thus integrates a source relational database with an Essbase database, leveraging the scalability of the relational database with the more sophisticated analytic capabilities of a multidimensional database.

OLAP and XOLAP store the metadata outline and the underlying data in different locations:

In OLAP, the metadata and the underlying data are located in the Essbase database.

In XOLAP, the metadata is located in the Essbase database and the underlying data remains in your source relational database.

Restrictions For XOLAP

• No editing of an XOLAP cube is allowed. To modify an outline, you must create a new outline in Essbase Studio. XOLAP operations will not automatically incorporate changes in the structures and the contents of the dimension tables after an outline is created.
  
• When derived text measures are used in cube schemas to build an Essbase model, XOLAP is not available for the model.
  
• XOLAP can be used only with aggregate storage. The database is automatically duplicate-member enabled.
  
• Alternate hierarchies and attribute dimensions are supported; however, attribute hierarchies are not supported.
  
• XOLAP supports dimensions that do not have a corresponding schema-mapping in the catalog; however, in such dimensions, only one member can be a stored member.
  
• A model that is designated as XOLAP-enabled must be deployed to a new Essbase database because incremental builds for XOLAP are not supported.
  

Creating a Data Source

• From the "Essbase Studio - Getting Started" page within Essbase Studio, select the hot link "Data Source Wizard", the "Define Connection" portion of the Connection Wizard is displayed.

• Enter a Connection Name.
  
• Enter an optional Description.
  
• Select the appropriate Data Source Type. For example, if you are creating a connection to a Microsoft SQL Server data source, select Microsoft SQL Server from the drop-down list.
  
• In Server Name, enter the name of server where the database resides.
  
• To use a port number other than the default, clear the Default check box next to Port and enter the correct port number in the text box.If you are using the default port number, you can skip this step.
  
• Enter the User Name and Password for this database.
  
• In Database Name, select "AdventureWorksDB"
  
• Click Test Connection. If the information you entered in the wizard is correct, a message confirms a successful connection.If you entered incorrect information in the wizard, a message is displayed explaining that invalid credentials have been provided. Correct the errors and retest until the connection is successful.
  
• Clicking Next takes you to the Select Tables page of the wizard

Select the following tables for the Select Tables dialog box and then select "Next":

• dbo.DimCurrency
• dbo.DimCustomer
• dbo.DimProduct
• dbo.DimProductSubCategory
• dbo.DimPromotion
• dbo.DimSalesTerritory
• dbo.DimTime
• dbo.FactInternetSales
  
  

The Select MiniSchema dialog is now presented.

• Select the radial button for "Create a new schema diagram"
• Enter a name for this schema, In this instance I used "XOLAP Adventure Works DWSchema"
• Leave "Skip Schema" and "Use Introspection to Detect Hierarchies" unchecked
• Select Next
  
  
• The "Populate Schema" dilog box is displayed. Each of the tables that were previosly selected should be displayed on the right hand panel.
• Select "Next"
  
  
• The "Create Metadata Element" dialog box should now be displayed.
• Toggle on the radial button next to the "XOLAP Adventure Works DW", this should toggle on all members displayed in this dialog window
• Select "Next"
  
  
• The "XOLAP Adventure Works DWSchema" should now be displayed.
  
  
• Navigate back to the "Welcome" screen
• Highlight the "DimSalesTerritory" within the Metadata Navigator. Once highlighted, select the "Hierarchies" hotlink from the "Welcome" screen.
  
  
• Above is a representation of the contents from the DimSalesTerritory table. This is provided to deliver an understanding of how the hierarchy will be developed from the underlying relational table
  
  
• The hierarchy wizard should now be displayed at this point.
• Specify the "Dimension Head Name", in this case "Total Sales Territory" and then drag the "SalesTerritoryGroup" data element from the Metadata Navigator into the Data grid.
• The grid should should now contain the "SalesTerritoryGroup" element. Highlight this element and click "Add" and select "Child"
  
  
• Within the "Select Entity" dialog box, select "SalesTerritoryCountry" and then "OK"
  
  
• Leveraging the same approach for you used for adding "SalesTerritoryCountry", now add "SalesTerritoryRegion" to deliver a hierarchy as depicted above.
  
  
• By right clicking on the "Total Sales Territory" hierarchy data element in the MetaData Navigator panel and selecting "Preview Hierarchy" the above sampling of data should be displayed
  
  
• 
  
  Next, we will create the Time hierarchy for the model. This step will be slightly different, we will leverage the newly create columns in SQL server to build out a time hierarchy.
• With the DimTime metadata element highlighted in the MetaData Navigator, right click and select "New" and "Dimension Element"
  
  
  
  
• The "Edit Properties" dialog window for the new data element should appear.
• Enter "Month Day Year" in the name window
• Paste the following syntax into the Caption Binding window:
• 'trim'( connection : \'XOLAP Adventure Works DW'::'AdventureWorksDW.dbo.DimTime'.'Month' ) "/" 'trim'( connection : \'XOLAP Adventure Works DW'::'AdventureWorksDW.dbo.DimTime'.'Day' ) "/" 'trim'( connection : \'XOLAP Adventure Works DW'::'AdventureWorksDW.dbo.DimTime'.'Year' )
  
  
• Repeat the following steps for "Month Year" and place the following syntax in the caption binding window for "Month Year":
• trim'( connection : \'XOLAP Adventure Works DW'::'AdventureWorksDW.dbo.DimTime'.'Month' ) "/" 'trim'( connection : \'XOLAP Adventure Works DW'::'AdventureWorksDW.dbo.DimTime'.'Year' )
  
  
• Repeat the following steps for "Year" and place the following syntax in the caption binding window for "Year":
• 'trim'( connection : \'XOLAP Adventure Works DW'::'AdventureWorksDW.dbo.DimTime'.'Year' )
  

In my next blog, which should be published shortly I'll address the following:

• Completing the Time Hierarchy
• Developing the rest of the standard dimensions
• Developing a measures dimension
• Creating the cube schema
• Deploying the cube
• Querying the data
• Showing real time data updates