BI Publisher and APEX The Next Dimension of Oracle Reports

Transcription

1 ??!! BI Publisher and APEX The Next Dimension of Oracle Reports Madi Serban September 20, 2018 DOAG Big Data Days Dresden

2 Who We Are & What We Do Madi Serban Co-Founder, CogniByte Florin Serban Co-Founder, CogniByte Oracle R&D, Project Management Oracle Forms and Reports Migrations Oracle DB, Forms, Reports, Java: Architecture, Performance Tuning, Migration and Upgrade Master of Science Applied Mathematics MBA Technology Management Master of Science Informatics Project Management Professional, PMI

3 AGENDA Reporting future - Trends and technologies - Oracle BI Publisher and APEX positioning 3 technologies side-by-side - About Oracle BI Publisher and APEX - Strengths and weaknesses Migration - Typical wishes, features we do not want to lose, challenges - Case study: 3 reports, 3 technologies - Beyond migration: What comes next

4 Where is the Reporting market going? Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Magic Quadrant Oracle Where to go? - High fluctuation of reporting and business intelligence solutions - Previous main players out of chart - Changing needs: - ease of use, visual-based data discovery, augmented analytics, cloud-based deployments - from IT-centric system of record (SOR) reporting to business-centric, self-service agile analytics

5 What do we need from our reports in the future? More interaction - Business users need to interact with the data, search, rearrange - Data may be presented as a web page, or available to download as a spreadsheet - Less dependence on the IT department - Modern UI, visualization as interactive charts, maps,.. - Eliminate duplicates by combining related reports into common interactive reports Less paper (printed, conventional reports) - Still needed for specific standard forms, legal and financial documents or compliance with specific formats - Here a PDF output is mostly needed - Pixel-perfect capabilities are mandatory in some cases Zero obsolete reports - If not used anymore, then we do not need to migrate them! Yes!

6 Why Oracle Application Express Free + Simple to use/ learn Included with the Oracle database, at no additional cost. Easy mock-ups and web apps, even without knowing HTML, CSS, JavaScript. Offers a rich, browser-based, intuitive development interface. Enables business users to easily search, sort data, add custom filters, generate charts. No special software needed on client machines, other than a supported browser. Scalable, Powerful, Portable, Proven Thousands of applications worldwide, for various industries Applications can scale across the enterprise Highly secure web applications out of the box. The most vibrant, global, and growing communities Oracle has to offer. Runs on the Oracle Cloud, on-premises, or anywhere we have an Oracle DB. Includes native functionality to integrate with REST and SOAP Services. Disadvantages Oracle-dependent Particular attention needed for source control and team development easiest way possible for developers to build great-looking apps against their data

7 Why Oracle BI Publisher Enterprise Oracle reporting solution Easily integrated with Oracle products (including APEX) + virtually any other data source with a JDBC connection Data extraction separated from layout Flexibility, reuse - multiple layouts for a single dataset Layout templates with MS Word/ Excel, Adobe Acrobat, or browser Highly formatted and interactive, pixel-perfect reports Multiple output formats (PDF, RTF, Excel, HTML, etc) and languages from 1 template Scheduling + bursting multiple destinations/ multiple output formats delivery Drag and drop style web-based layout editor Disadvantages Not free at all :)

8 Case Study 1: Orders - Grouped Table - Oracle Reports most-used components in Oracle Reports grouped queries conditional formatting summary/ formula columns

9 Case Study 1: Orders - Grouped Table - Oracle APEX Interactive reports/ grids = modern, customizable onscreen reporting - End-users can show/ hide columns, perform calculations, filter etc. How to get a high level/ pixel perfect formatting? Define an external reporting server such as Oracle BI Publisher Install BI Publisher Desktop Create the report query as an APEX shared component Create report layout in Microsoft Word Upload report layout to APEX as a shared component Add links to run the report What if we need to quickly print/ download the information? Download as PDF, RTF, MS Excel, CSV files - without custom layout/ control breaks/ conditional formatting/ computation/ aggregation Or print directly from browser using custom CSS to eliminate headers, menus and improve overall layout. DEMO

10 Case Study 1: Orders - Grouped Table - Oracle BI Publisher = Data (XML): + Layout (RTF): DEMO

11 Case Study 2: Invoice - Oracle Reports September 20, 2018 Copyright 2018 CogniByte

12 Case Study 2: Invoice - Oracle BI Publisher = Data (XML) + Layout (RTF) (manual redesign) -> How does the Oracle automated conversion look like? -> In this particular example the effort of adapting the automated conversion would be higher than the manual redesign effort.

13 Case Study 3: What about really complex reports? Oracle Reports What can be really complex about the Oracle Reports? Many components: lots of queries, groups, triggers, program units, SRW package, text_io, events Not scary, just more work & refactoring Good that PL/SQL can be reused!! Complex components, such as matrixes Let s see a matrix demo

14 Case Study 3: What about really complex reports? Oracle APEX Matrix with Oracle APEX? No problem, for example the IR Pivot. Naturally!! DEMO

15 Case Study 3: What about really complex reports? Oracle BI Publisher Matrix with Oracle BIP? Again, absolutely no problem = Data (XML): + Layout (RTF): DEMO

16 ??!! Thank You! Q&A Madi Serban September 20, 2018 DOAG Big Data Days Dresden