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Oracle Business Intelligence – ADF Custom Visualizations and Integration

An Oracle White Paper

November 2012

Oracle BIEE - ADF Custom Visualizations and Integration

Oracle Business Intelligence – ADF Custom

Visualizations and Integration

OVERVIEW

Business users often want to consume information in a unified environment that

facilitates information sharing across boundaries. This unified environment could

be a custom application, a portal or business intelligence dashboard. Several times,

there is need for custom visualizations fulfilling a particular use-case for specialized

data representation and discovery. Oracle Business Intelligence (Oracle BI) is the

leading BI suite supporting open standards for information delivery and

consumption. This document outlines several examples illustrating custom

visualizations and integration with Oracle BI.

INTRODUCTION

Oracle BI provides a range of techniques to integrate with external applications.

URL-based approaches are the most direct and easy approaches to integrate Oracle

BI EE into custom applications and portal. Other approaches including SOAP

APIs, RSS and BI ADF (Application Data Framework) component can be

leveraged as integration points with Oracle BI. This whitepaper is not intended to

provide the detailed mechanics of each. Please refer to Oracle BI documentation1

to know more about these approaches. This whitepaper illustrates various examples

and use-cases for the integration leveraging above approaches.

Oracle BI also supports embedding of external content and custom visualizations

into Oracle BI dashboards. This can be done via URL, iFrame or ADF integration.

Some of these approaches are captured in this white paper as examples.

ORACLE BI – ADF CUSTOM VISUALIZATIONS AND INTEGRATION -

EXAMPLES

These examples are not the complete list of all possible integration with Oracle BI.

These are some representative samples and are intended for guidance only. You

may need to modify to fit your use-case and technology.

Oracle BI along with custom ADF visualization in an ADF application

Oracle BI supports native integration with Application Data Framework (ADF).

This allows easy drag and drop of BI content into an ADF application in

JDeveloper. The detail of this approach is documented here. This integration can

Oracle BI offers multiple methods for

custom visualizations and integration for

meeting specific functional need.


be used for consuming OBI content along with non-OBI ADF based rich

visualization in an ADF application.

OBI raw data can also be fetched in ADF View Object by making direct

connection to BI Server. See product documentation here for detail. This approach

is useful for visualizing BI data in ADF visualizations or in-line with other data

coming from various data-sources. This allows consumption of BI data in ADF

view along with other data elements.

Example:

Markimekko chart along with BI content in an ADF application

Architecture:

ADF Visualization (e.g. Treemap/Merimekko chart)

Oracle BI Content

Oracle BI Content

Oracle BI Content

ADF Application


Step 1. Create BI SQL View Object (JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.3 +)

a. New > Applications >Fusion Web Application

b. Right mouse click on Model

c. Click on “Business Intelligence”, select “View Object”

d. Click on “+” next to “Connection” to create a database connection


e. Enter a connection Name

f. Choose Connection Type as “Oracle(JDBC)”

g. Provide Host Name and SID

h. Provide Username and Password

i. Click on Test Connection to test the connection

j. After successful database connection, Click OK in the dialog

k. Click Next in the subsequent dialog


l. Click on “+”next to “Connection” to create a BI Server connection

m. Enter a Connection Name

n. Select BI (JDBC) as Connection Type

o. Enter Host Name and Port for BI Server

p. Click on Test Connection to test the connection

q. After successful connection, click OK

r. Click Next on subsequent dialog

s. Enter logical SQL statement in the Logical SQL wizard

e.g. SELECT

"A - Sample Sales"."Products"."P4 Brand" Brand,

"A - Sample Sales"."Products"."P1 Product" Product,

"A - Sample Sales"."Base Facts"."1- Revenue" Revenue

FROM "A - Sample Sales"


t. Keep clicking Next until Application Module wizard

u. Check Application Module

v. Click Next until finish

w. Confirm that View Object is created under Data Controls >

AppModuleDataControl


Step 2. Create Treemap using BI SQL View Object

a. Under ViewController, right mouse click to bring up New menu

b. Create a new JSF page

c. Give a file name. Make sure to check the Create as XML

Document (*.jspx)


d. Drag view object to the jspx page

e. Pick Treemap from the pop-up menu

f. Use Treemap dialog to configure the value, grouping and labels

Step 3. Customize Treemap properties for Marimekko chart

a. ADF Treemap can be customized to marimekko chart if the data

contains layer or hierarchy. Hierarchy can be created using ADF

ViewLink between BI Logical SQL View objects (e.g. Brand -

>Product).

b. Create two BI Logical SQL View objects (see step-1) : one for the

parent and the other for the child in the hierarchy. Example:

Parent Node SELECT "A - Sample Sales"."Products"."P4 Brand" Brand, "A - Sample Sales"."Base Facts"."1- Revenue" Revenue FROM "A - Sample Sales"

Child Node SELECT "A - Sample Sales"."Products"."P4 Brand" Brand, "A - Sample Sales"."Products"."P1 Product" Product, "A - Sample Sales"."Base Facts"."1- Revenue" Revenue FROM "A - Sample Sales"


c. Right click on Model > New.

d. Choose Business Tier > ADF Business Components > View

Link

e. Provide a name for the view link. Click Next


f. Select the source (parent node) and destination attribute (child

node) for the hierarchy.

g. Keep clicking Next until Application Module. Check

Application Module.

h. Click Finish.

i. Use this View Link object for creating treemap (see step -2).


j. In treemap properties, check the parent and child node. Specify

value, label and grouping rules for both nodes.

k. Click OK


l. Go to Treemap – Properties dialog. Change the Layout to

SliceAndDice for marimekko chart

Step 4. Embed Other BI Content in the jspx page

a. Use Fusion BI View Component for embedding other BI

Content (Analysis or Dashboard) in the same jspx page.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/bi.1111/e10545/embed

ding_adf.htm#BGBGCFJG

b. ADF contextual event can be used for wiring up ADF and BI

Visualizations.

Step 5. Deploy and Run the application

a. Follow the fusion documentation for deployment

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12839_01/web.1111/b31974/depl

oyment_topics.htm#ADFFD1806

Note: Extend BIVO domain extension with WLS

b. Run the jspx page that contains marimekko chart

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12839_01/web.1111/b31974/deployment_topics.htm#ADFFD1806

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12839_01/web.1111/b31974/deployment_topics.htm#ADFFD1806


ADF visualization embedded in Oracle BI Dashboard

Oracle BI dashboard consolidates BI analyses and reports and allows interaction

for further exploration. An external content including ADF visualization can be

embedded as an URL or within an iFrame on a BI dashboard. This will also

support SSO if it is enabled between Oracle BI and ADF application.

ADF Visualization (e.g. Treemap/Merimekko chart)

Oracle BI Content

Oracle BI Content

Oracle BI Content

BI Dashboard


Example:

Marimekko chart embedded in BI Dashboard

Architecture:

Note: This approach will not allow passing the context and filter to ADF

visualization on the dashboard.

Step 1. Create BI SQL View Object (JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.3 +)

Step 2. Create Treemap using BI SQL View Object

Step 3. Customize Treemap properties for Marimekko chart

Step 4. Deploy and Run the application

Step 5. Embed the marimekko chart in BI Dashboard

a. Add Embedded Content to the dashboard

b. Provide the URL of the ADF application


Note: Configure SSO between OBI and ADF application to avoid

login for ADF application in the BI dashboard.

c. Save and run the dashboard.

CONCLUSION

Oracle BI offers multiple methods for integration and custom visualization to meet specific functional need. The approaches and examples mentioned above can be used for achieving use-cases which are not supported out of the box.

REFERENCES

1. Oracle BI Enterprise Edition Documentation -

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/bi.htm

2. Oracle BI Enterprise Edition Integrator’s Guide -

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/bi.1111/e16364/toc.htm

3. Oracle BI Enterprise Edition User’s Guide -

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/bi.1111/e10544/toc.htm

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition

Custom Visualizations and Integration

December 2012

Author: Rashmi Raj

Oracle Corporation

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Redwood Shores, CA 94065

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Phone: +1.650.506.7000

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