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Oracle® Business Intelligence Discoverer Administration Guide
10g Release 2 (10.1.2.1)
B13916-04
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1 Introduction to administering Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer

This chapter introduces you to administering Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer, and includes the following topics:

What is Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer?

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is an intuitive ad-hoc query, reporting, analysis, and Web publishing toolset that gives business users immediate access to information in databases.

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer enables business users at all levels of the organization to make faster and more informed business decisions. Using any standard Web browser, they have secure and immediate access to data from both relational and multidimensional data sources. Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer provides a business view to hide the complexity of the underlying data structures, enabling you to focus on solving business problems.

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer comprises a number of integrated components that work together with the Oracle database to give a complete and integrated Business Intelligence solution.

Figure 1-1 Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer components

Description of Figure 1-1  follows
Description of "Figure 1-1 Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer components"

Which Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer component you use will depend on what you want to do. For example:

The Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer components use definitions of Discoverer objects stored in the Discoverer End User Layer or the Discoverer Catalog.

For more information, see "What are the different components of Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer?".

What are the different components of Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer?

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer comprises the following components:

What is the role of the Discoverer manager

The role of the Discoverer manager is to make sure that end users are able to use Discoverer Plus, Discoverer Plus OLAP, Discoverer Viewer and Discoverer Desktop. The Discoverer manager might be responsible for any of the following tasks:

What tools does the Discoverer manager use?

The Discoverer manager uses the following tools:

What data sources can you use with Discoverer?

You can use the following data source with Discoverer:

Relational data sources differ from multi-dimensional data sources in the following ways:

Basic concepts for Discoverer managers

Before you start administering Discoverer, you will find it helpful to familiarize yourself with some basic concepts:

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence is the ability to analyze data to answer business questions and predict future trends.

Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is a great business intelligence tool because it enables users to analyze data in an ad hoc way. Instead of relying on IT specialists to pre-define queries and reports, Discoverer users can choose the data to analyze and can continue manipulating results until they have the necessary information to take business decisions. Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer also enables users to share the results of their data analysis with their colleagues in different formats (including charts and Excel spreadsheets).

How does Discoverer work?

Users' requests for information from the database are in the form of worksheets.

When a user creates or opens a worksheet, Discoverer:

  • converts the worksheet into the corresponding SQL statements (e.g. by converting folder names and item names to table names and column names respectively)

  • sends the SQL statements to the database

  • displays the result set that is returned from the database

In the case of Discoverer Plus, Discoverer Desktop and Discoverer Viewer, the SQL statements are routed to the database via Discoverer processes running on an application server machine.

Where should I look for more information?

Where you find more information on administering Discoverer will depend on which data source you are using, as follows: