BIP Reporting in Oracle Fusion Applications

BI Publisher reports in Fusion Applications are similar to E-Business Suite in having the data model and layouts separated.

What are the two options for BI Publisher Reports?

1.  Create a new custom BI report using data model and layout. 
2.  Seeded BI Publisher reports could be customized to have a custom layout

Data model has the business logic built into it. It can contain different ways of retrieving data for reporting purposes. Report contains the layout for the data model. There are different types of layouts that can be created in Fusion Applications.

Custom BIP report can be created in Fusion Applications using the navigation New à Data Model in the ‘Reports and Analytics’ page as shown below.

Under the Data Model, there are 6 Properties that are available to be used in building the logic for the report.

1.       Data Sets

2.       Event Triggers

3.       Flexfields

4.       List of Values

5.       Parameters

6.       Bursting

Data Sets are the code/queries used for extracting the data for the report. They can also be from existing reports or files with data or objects that can be imported.

Most commonly used data set is the ‘SQL Query’ option where a query can be written to fetch the data as per the report requirement. The source can be Financials and SCM (FSCM), HCM Cloud, CRM Cloud or OBIEE.

The type of SQL can be Standard, Procedure call or Non-standard SQL. Once the query is formed, Click on OK to save it. Also use the Save option to save the data model under ‘My Folders’ which is accessible only by the user. Then use the Data option to view the data of the query. The options for the number of records to be viewed are shown below.

Event Triggers

Events triggers are the triggers where business logic can be called before or after execution of the report data model. It can be beforeReportTrigger or afterReportTrigger.

List of Values

List of values are the value sets equivalent of EBS in Fusion Applications. For parameters that require a defined set of values to be displayed for selection, a ’List of Values’ is created. It can be created from a SQL Query and then attached to a parameter.

Parameters

Parameters can be defined for the reports. They can be of free text where users can enter any value or they can be of date type that will enable users to choose date from a calendar. Parameters can be restricted to a certain set of values by attaching a List of values defined in the previous section.

Parameters can be of various types as shown below. To attach a list of values, the type should be chosen as ‘Menu’. The particular list of values that has to be attached to the parameter can then be selected from the drop down menu.

Report Layout

Create a new Report in Fusion Applications to define a layout for the existing data model. The application requires a sample set of data to be generated for the data model before creating a layout. So it prompts the user to run the data model to generate sample data and save it.

Layouts can be of different types including Excel, RTF, Etext, XSL Stylesheet files that can be uploaded for a specific language. Fusion Applications also have the option of generating the layout based on the columns in the data model. This is the interactive layout where the look & feel of the layout can be modified easily using the editor without having the actually create a layout file as in the case of EBS Applications.

Choosing a simple Blank template would take us to the Interactive layout page where the data model fields would appear to be mapped to the layout. Look & feel can be enhanced using the Layout Grid, Chart, Pivot Table options along with the standard Page break, totals, Page totals etc.