Oracle Government User Group

30/06/2010 by Matt Stocker.

The Oracle Government User Group was held last month (13 May 2010) and we were privileged to be invited to share both the exciting potential of BI Publisher and the ways in which it can transform an organisation’s reporting capabilities. With good overall attendance, it was great see some familiar faces as well as meet some of those who were attending for the first time.

In case you haven’t attended an Oracle User Group before, these groups are run by Oracle users for the benefit of other users and cover topics ranging from the upgrade path to R12 to the specifics of certain functionality such as reporting – which is where BeLife comes in.

For this particular presentation, Simon Tomey (Consulting Director) and Adam Penchoen (Consultant) focused on the specifics of creating a BI Publisher report. Whilst there are some technical elements, it is entirely feasible for a non-technical user to get to grips with the process as it involves use of standard Microsoft Office functionality.  Due to this, use of BI Publisher enables organisations to be much less reliant on technical experts, which in turn leads to internal empowerment, improved reporting capabilities and reduced investment costs.

As you can probably tell, BI Publisher and its capabilities excite us and it was great to see that others were excited too. Those who attended our presentation were, in the main, interested in the free capabilities that BI Publisher offers and were either looking at or were already using it to replace Discoverer, FSG or other third party reporting applications.

Whilst BI Publisher can tend to be a lesser-known capability within EBS, it certainly seems that awareness of it is growing. With BI Publisher’s key role within the Oracle EBS R12 release and, beyond that, the Oracle Fusion upgrade, it would seem that its importance is only set to grow.

Many of those attending our presentation also reported that there are many advantages to BI Publisher when compared to other options. In fact, our presentation followed a presentation by George Gallagher (Jephson Housing Association Group and one of our clients), who shared his experience of converting to BI Publisher. He explained that BI Publisher had reduced reports users’ reliance on himself, as users were able to run reports themselves once they had been created or, in some cases, reports could be run automatically through bursting.

If you’re interested in finding out more about implementing BI Publisher yourself, feel free to get in touch and we’d be more than happy to talk you through what’s involved.

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Fitness or futility?

09/06/2010 by Simon Tomey.

There are at least two dominant world views we could subscribe to.  One is that described by the myth of Sisyphus1 and the other is the story of Jacob as he wrestles with God.  Both stories are of potentially futile activities – but the outcome is significantly different. 

I originally wrote this post for my tri club magazine, but have recently been reminded of its significance.  I hope you enjoy it.

Sisyphus is condemned for eternity to roll a stone to the top of a mountain, and each time he gets the stone almost to the top, it rolls all the way back down again.  Is this your Monday experience?  Do you know that desperate feeling of futility as everything you so carefully planned comes spectacularly unravelled and you fell like you never really make any progress at all?

Contrast this with the story of Jacob.  He is about to meet his brother for the first time in many years and is terrified that his brother will destroy him and all he has (because he cheated him badly many years ago).  In the evening he meets God and wrestles with him all night.  Neither side seems to be winning, but Jacob refuses to let his adversary go until he blesses him.  God does bless Jacob, affirms him for not giving up and Jacob goes on to be very prosperous.

Many times in my life it feels like I am engaged in a wrestle which lasts the night of many months, but I think that when I have not given up, things do work out, (often better than I would have imagined).  An example of this at BeLife is our expertise in BI Publisher and our suite of pre-built reports which was borne from the determination to discover a better way of getting information from Oracle.  In my triathlon training, I feel the pain of a hard ride disappears seconds after its conclusion and the next day my body is fitter.

Postscript.  I recently returned from a training camp where I experienced more pain than ever in my determination to regain my fitness and to keep up with my team mates.  I only recently discovered that my wheel bearings were seized, and a simple mechanical repair has gained me an easy extra 2mph speed.  Sometimes it’s just as well to stop pushing and check out your kit too!

Notes:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus

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Converting FSG’s and Discoverer reports to run in BIP

07/06/2010 by Simon Tomey.

There’s great news for FSG users and Discoverer users – you can emulate the functionality of these packages using BI Publisher.  Not only does this mean you get great output, but you apply some of the cool BIP functionality too (such as “bursting”).

Following on from an earlier presentation at the UKOUG (where I think I rather missed the point) I recently did a fresh presentation at the UKOUG on converting FSG’s and Discoverer reports to run in Oracle BI Publisher.  Loads of people ask me if it is possible to convert FSG’s and discoverer reports to run in BIP.  Well you can, sort of, using data templates.  Read on… 

Not only can Oracle BI Publisher transform existing reports to produce impressive attractive output, but you can write completely new reports too.  Data templates are part of BI Publisher and enable to extract anything at all out of Oracle applications by writing your own SQL and presenting the output as a BI Publisher report.  In BI Publisher, you can include your own parameters and can apply some of the more interesting BIP technology such as bursting reports to email overnight.

One particularly compelling solution is the replace some of your dull routine FSG or Discoverer reports with impressive BI Publisher output (PDF, Excel, HTML, RTF).  You’ve got the SQL already, you just have to lift it into your data template.

We’ve recently converted FSG reports into burstable PDFs or spreadsheets with run time parameters for one client.   For other client’s we’ve replaced routine discoverer reports with attractively formatted impressive scheduled BIP reports. 

Click here to download the presentation and let me know if you’ve got any questions http://oracle.belife.co.uk/UKOUG%20-%20Transforming%20Discoverer%20and%20FSG%20Report%20v1.0.zip

The presentation focuses on data templates and what can be done rather than exactly how it is done.   (Warning BIP is not well suited to ad hoc queries).  If you want to read about data templates in general, you might also like to check out an earlier post of mine (http://blog.belife.co.uk/2009/08/03/data-templates/).

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