OBIEE

                                        Oracle BI Architecture Components

This lesson describes the following architecture components and their relationships:

• Clients

• Oracle BI Presentation Services

• Oracle BI Server

• Oracle BI Repository

• Data sources

Oracle BI Architecture Components

This lesson provides a high-level overview of the Oracle BI architecture components that are critical to understanding the subject matter in this course.

Clients : 

Provide access to business intelligence information

• Oracle BI Answers

- Is a set of graphical tools used to build, view, and modify
Oracle BI requests

• Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards

- Display the results of Answers requests and other items

• Oracle BI Administration Tool

- Is used to build an Oracle BI repository 

Clients :

Oracle BI Answers and Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards are examples of clients that provide access to business intelligence information via a Web browser. The Oracle BI Administration Tool is a
Windows application.

Oracle BI Answers

Oracle BI Answers is a set of graphical tools used to build, view, and modify Oracle BI requests. The requests are queries against an organization’s data.

Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard

An Oracle BI Dashboard is used to display the results of Answers requests that are embedded in the
dashboard, and other items, such as links to saved requests in Answers, links to Web sites, Active-X
objects, HTML Text, and links to documents. Dashboards are typically created by users with
administrator permissions. However, dashboards are simple to create via the user-friendly Oracle BI
interface. After dashboards are created, they can be shared by common groups of users or can be
personal (not shared).

Oracle BI Administration Tool

The Oracle BI Administration Tool is used to build the Oracle BI repository and is the focus of this
course.


Oracle BI Presentation Services :

• Provides the processing to visualize the information for
client consumption

• Is implemented as an extension to a Web server

• Uses a catalog to store saved content

• Receives data from Oracle BI Server and provides it to
the client that requested it

Oracle BI Presentation Services :

Oracle BI Presentation Services is an extension to an existing Web server. It receives processing

instructions from an Oracle BI client, retrieves the requested information from Oracle BI server, and
then renders the information inside the requesting client. Oracle BI Presentation Services uses a
catalog to store saved content, such as Oracle BI requests and Oracle BI Interactive dashboards.
Oracle BI Presentation Services runs as a service in the Windows environment on your classroom
machine.

Oracle BI Server :

• Is the core server behind Oracle Business Intelligence

• Provides efficient processing to intelligently access
physical data sources and structure information

- Uses metadata to direct processing

- Generates dynamic SQL to query data in the physical
data sources

- Connects natively or through ODBC to the RDBMS

- Structures results to satisfy requests

- Provides BI data to Oracle BI Presentation Services

Oracle BI Server :

Oracle BI Server is the core server behind Oracle Business Intelligence. It is an optimized query

engine that receives analytical requests, intelligently accesses multiple physical data sources,

generates SQL to query data in the data sources, and then structures the results to satisfy the requests. It also handles requests from a variety of front ends, including Oracle BI applications as well as
third-party tools. Oracle BI Server allows a single information request to query multiple data sources, providing information access to members of the enterprise and, in Web-based applications, to
suppliers, customers, prospects, or any authorized user with Web access.

Oracle BI Server serves as a portal to structured data that resides in one or more data sources:

multiple data marts, the Oracle BI Data Warehouse, an enterprise data warehouse, an operational

data store, transaction system databases, personal databases, and more. Transparent to both end users and query tools, Oracle BI Server functions as the integrating component of a complex decision
support system by acting as a layer of abstraction and unification over the underlying databases. This offers users a simplified query environment in which they can ask business questions that span
information sources across the enterprise and beyond.

Oracle BI Server runs as a service in the Windows environment on your classroom machine.

Oracle BI Repository :

• Stores the metadata used by Oracle BI Server

• Is accessed and configured using the Oracle BI
Administration Tool, which you use to:

- Import metadata from databases and other data sources

- Simplify and reorganize the metadata into business
models

- Structure the business model for presentation to users
who request information

Oracle Repository BI

Oracle BI Server stores metadata in repositories. The Administration Tool has a graphical user

interface that allows server administrators to set up these repositories. An Oracle BI Server repository consists of three layers. Each layer appears in a separate pane in the Administration Tool user
interface and has a tree structure. You can expand each object to see a list of its components. These layers are not visible to the end user.

Building an Oracle BI repository is the focus of this course. You learn how to import metadata from
databases and other data sources; how to simplify and reorganize the imported metadata into business
models; and then how to structure the business model for presentation to users who request business
intelligence information via Oracle BI clients, such as Oracle BI Answers and Interactive
Dashboards.

Data Sources :

• Contain the business data that users want to analyze

• Are accessed by Oracle BI Server

• Can be in any format, such as:

- Relational databases

- Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) databases

- Flat files

- Spreadsheets

- XMLA

Data Sources
     Data sources are the physical sources where the business data is stored. They can be in any format, including transactional databases, online analytical processing databases, text files, XMLA,
spreadsheets, and so forth. A connection to the data source is created and then used by Oracle BI Server. The data source connection can be defined to use native drivers or ODBC. You learn more about this when you create the Physical layer for a repository in the lesson titled “Building the
Physical Layer of a Repository.”

SQL is generated by Oracle BI Server against the data sources using the data source connection,

information from the repository, and database-specific parameters stored in a DBFeatures.INI file. Thus, Oracle BI Server is not just a SQL generator. It figures out the best source and the optimal way to access data. In some cases, Oracle BI Server takes on operations that are more efficient for it to do rather than the host data source.



Sample Request Processing :

1. User views a dashboard or submits a request.

2. Oracle BI Presentation Services makes a request to Oracle
BI Server to retrieve the requested data.

3. Oracle BI Server, using the repository file, optimizes
functions to request the data from the data sources.

4. Oracle BI Server receives the data from the data sources and
processes as necessary.

5. Oracle BI Server passes the data to Oracle BI Presentation
Services.

6. Oracle BI Presentation Services formats the data and sends
it to the client.

Sample Request Processing :

This is a simplified example of how an Oracle BI request is processed. A user accesses a dashboard
or submits a request in Answers. The request is received by Oracle BI Presentation Services, which
routes the request to Oracle BI Server. Oracle BI Server uses the repository to determine the best way
to access the requested data. Next it sends the SQL or other requests to the sources and then
combines the results or provides further processing. It then sends the data back to Oracle BI
Presentation Services, which formats the data as appropriate and sends it to the client for display.