Oracle BI Applications - Giving the Users the Reports They Really Want

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E : [email protected] : www.rittmanmead.com

Mike Vickers, Consulting Manager, Rittman MeadUKOUG Apps’13 Conference, London, Oct 2013

Oracle BI Applications:Giving Users The Reports They Really Want



About the Speaker

•Mike Vickers, Consulting Manager at Rittman Mead•4 years with Rittman Mead•6 years of Oracle BI, EPM & DW technologies•15+ years experience of implementing BI•Presenter at previous UKOUG events•Contributor to Rittman Mead Blog :http://www.rittmanmead.com/blog

•Email : [email protected]•Twitter : @aneyeonbi

• ...but not Mark Rittman

http://www.rittmanmead.com/blog

mailto:[email protected]



About Rittman Mead

•Oracle BI and DW Gold partner•Winner of five UKOUG Partner of the Year awards in 2013 - including BI•World leading specialist partner for technical excellence, solutions delivery and innovation in Oracle BI

•Approximately 80 consultants worldwide•All expert in Oracle BI and DW•Offices in US (Atlanta), Europe, Australia and India•Skills in broad range of supporting Oracle tools:

‣OBIEE, OBIA‣ODIEE‣Essbase, Oracle OLAP‣GoldenGate‣Endeca



What are the Oracle BI Applications?

•Pre-built and pre-integrated horizontal and industry-specific applications built around OBIEE•Provides pre-built ETL, conformed dimensional data warehouse, RPD and Catalog•Covers Oracle EBS, Peoplesoft, Siebel, SAP and Fusion Applications

IntegratedAnalytic Apps



Oracle BI Applications Packaging

•BI Apps is sold as a series of analytic applications - Financial Analytics, HR Analytics etc•Vertical apps for pharma, banking etc also available•OBIEE, Oracle Database and ETL tool have to be licensed separately •Customers typically license 3-4 applications, then build out from there



Pre-Defined ETL Routines from EBS, PSFT, Siebel, JDE, SAP• Integrated, conformed dimensional data warehouse•Deployable on Oracle, MS SQL, IBM DB/2 and Teradata•Uses embedded ETL tool (historically Informatica) to load data from sources to DW•Staging tables and presentation tables•Allows modular deployment•Lowest grain of information•Prebuilt aggregates •History tracking•Indexing



Role-Based, “Best Practice” Dashboards and Reports

•BI Apps delivers an integrated RPD that maps DW structures into 3-layer OBIEE model•Can be customized or extended by the customer - design patterns and quick-start elements•Suite of “best practice” reports and dashboards, based around BI Apps analytic apps•Built on OBIEE 11g (since BI Apps 7.9.6.3), can also make use of BI Mobile, Scorecard, Essbase etc



Integrated, Enterprise Business Model

•Provides a business-friendly enterprise data model over your BI data warehouse•Includes hierarchies, calculations, subject areas and other data items•Allows you to join data from different areas together•Provides reporting governance, security etc



But ... It’s Usually Not Exactly What You Want!

•The core data items are useful, but it might not include all your hierarchies, flex-fields etc•Certain reports could be useful but with a few changes•It would be useful to be able to link GL and AP numbers, for example...•Or even create new dashboards more aligned with how you do things•Some changes require lots of IT work - whole new data sources, for example•But some can be done at the catalog or data model layer, for example:

‣Linking one report to another - for supplier information contained in separate reports‣Creating links between GL and sub-ledgers‣Altering the standard hierarchies to make reporting more meaningful

•Let’s go through three examples...



Example 1: Report Linking / Workflow

http://www.rittmanmead.com/



General Dashboard Design - Requirement

•Users don’t ask for much - “only” exactly the right information, immediately‣Not an unreasonable request with OBIEE

•Need to act on their findings, often for business critical reasons•Different users have different aims:

‣Managers - broad business decisions‣Operational users - fulfill transactions, make calls etc.

Question Log in to OBIEE

Answer Action



Example - Suppliers At Risk

•Goal is to determine which suppliers are at most risk of deferring.•Do this by analysing who has been paid late most frequently.•Relevance of these suppliers at the current time.•Create a scenario where, in a short time, users can:

‣Identify the suppliers‣Explain the reasons why‣Act on it if necessary

Identify Explain Act



Supplier Risk - OOTB

•Supplier information exists but spread across:‣Payments Due‣Payment Performance‣Supplier Report



Supplier Risk - OOTB

•No single workflow to tackle the problem•Requires a user to go back and forth between several pages



Supplier Risk - Example Solution

•Data exists OOTB‣Web Cat changes

•Create‣New analyses‣New dashboard page

•Features‣Filter based on results of another analysis‣Action Links

Web Catalog

Web Catalog

RPDRPD

ETL & Data WarehouseETL & Data Warehouse




•Basic analysis to find all suppliers which have been paid late•Second analysis from a different subject area•Filter based on the results from the original analysis




•Final analysis to expose greater detail•Action link from dashboard analysis to this report

‣Behaves as drilldown•Action link from the final report to external system

‣HTTP request‣Java Method‣Web Service

•Action link can accept parameters‣Allows for integration with external systems



Supplier Risk - Finished Example



Example 2: Linking GL to Sub-Ledgers




Sub-ledger Linkage - Requirement

•Finance users require linkage between General Ledger and sub-ledgers‣Accounts Payable‣Accounts Receivable‣Revenue‣Purchase Orders

•Validate source system processes have posted transactions to GL correctly

•Navigate from GL to the respective sub-ledger for more specific transaction information

General Ledger Accounts Payable

Purchase Orders

Revenue

Accounts Receivable



Examples - Validation & GL to AP

•Validation‣Compare posted AP payments with the equivalent transactions in GL

‣If the results match, the data is valid•GL to AP

‣Begin with a GL transactions query on a specific day and account

‣Drill down to see the relevant GL Journals and AP invoices

‣Should see the totals matching

General Ledger Accounts Payable



Sub-ledger Linkage - OOTB

•No reports demonstrating sub-ledger linkage•Intersection table in the warehouse

‣W_GL_LINKAGE_INFORMATION_G•Key field GL Journal ID available in most subject areas•Not a proper dimension table

‣Possibility of dropping rows



Sub-ledger Linkage - Example Solution

•Data exists OOTB‣Web Cat changes

•Create‣New analyses‣New dashboard page

•Features‣Filter based on results of another analysis

‣Action Links

Web Catalog

Web Catalog

RPDRPD




Sub-ledger Linkage - Validation Example

•Begin with AP payments query•GL analysis with subquery to get equivalent GL transactions•Validation row

‣Union two result sets to sum to 0



Sub-ledger Linkage - GL to AP Example

•Core GL Transactions report filtered to Payables, split by:‣Account Number‣Date

•Simple GL query, prompted on Date and Account Number

•AP Invoice analysis with subquery on GL Journal ID



Sub-ledger Linkage - GL to AP Example



Sub-ledger Linkage - Finished Example



Example 3: Altering the Standard (“OOTB”) Hierarchies




Account Hierarchy - Requirement

•Need to view the parents of an account‣Category parents‣Account may have multiple parents and be in multiple hierarchies

•Bottom-up view of hierarchy structures‣Parent‣Grandparent‣Great grandparent etc.

•This requirement extends to other segments‣Business Unit‣Department‣Location etc.



Account Hierarchy - OOTB

•Supports up to 20 levels in the hierarchy for each segment‣Allows drilldown through the levels

•But only has a top-down view of the hierarchy•Confusion with which column has the parent

‣B and C have a parent in level 1‣Level 1 is the grandparent of D, E, F, G‣Level 2 is the parent which is required

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4




•Account “Supervision” has two parents as displayed below‣Total Operating Expenses - Level 2‣Total Office Expenses - Level 7

•Each row has same value - the total value attributed to the account‣214,575

•Not appropriate for analysis




•Account groups‣Mandatory in financials deployments‣Managed using CSV files‣Can alleviate the need for category parents

•But requires a full load when groups need changing‣Not ideal



Account Parents - Example Solution

•Not supported by Data Model•Physical

‣New column(s) in database for Account Parent•RPD

‣New select view and physical alias‣New logical table‣New presentation columns

•Web Catalog‣New analyses‣New dashboard

Web Catalog

Web Catalog

RPDRPD




Account Parents - Example - Physical

•Add 2 columns to W_HIERARCHY_DS and W_HIERARCHY_D‣Parent Name: X_PARENT_NAME‣Parent Code: X_PARENT_CODE

•Edit Informatica mappings to populate column:‣SDE_ORA_Stage_ValueSetHier_DeriveRange

-Level2 at the start of this mapping is the immediate parent‣SIL_HierarchyDimension

•This change will apply to all segments



Account Parents - Example - RPD

•Create a physical view in the RPD based on the W_HIERARCHY_D table‣This prevents duplicate rows when querying

•Alternatives‣Physical table using PLP‣Materialised view if on Oracle

SELECT * FROM(SELECT ROW_NUMBER ( ) OVER (PARTITION BY Hier.HIER20_CODE, PARENT_CODE, HIER_CODE ORDER BY HIER_CODE, Hier.HIER20_CODE, PARENT_CODE) AS ROW_NUM,Hier.PARENT_CODE,Hier.PARENT_NAME,Hier.HIER_CODE,Hier.HIER20_CODE,Hier.ROW_WID,Hier.HIER20_NAMEFROMW_HIERARCHY_D Hier)WHERE ROW_NUM = 1




•Join to the correct segment alias, in this case Segment 3 for account‣HIER_CODE = SEGMENT_LOV_ID‣HIER20_CODE = SEGMENT_VAL_CODE

•Create a logical table and associated Hierarchy‣Map to the Segment table alias as well as your view in the table source

‣Join to facts in the business layer•Map columns into presentation layer




•The resulting logical diagram




•The resulting physical diagram•Can use this for other segments

‣Require an alias of the view for each segment - as with W_HIERARCHY_D



Account Parents - Example - Web Catalog

•Simple analyses yields compelling results at the dashboard level•First analysis

‣Account Parent‣Transaction Amount

•Second analysis‣Account Parent (prompted)‣Account‣Transaction Amount

•Action Link from first to the second



Account Parents - Finished Example



Summary

•Oracle BI Applications is a great, quick-start way to deliver analytics to your organization•Main value is in the ETL, and the data warehouse data model•The reports, dashboards, and typically hierarchies etc are usually customized•In this presentation we looked at three examples, all done at the BI layer

‣More fundamental customizations take place at the ETL and DW layer - IT tasks•Rittman Mead have extensive experience implementing and customizing the BI Apps

‣Either full-implementation, from start-to-finish‣Or helping organizations get the best from their existing investment



Thank You for Attending!

•Thank you for attending this presentation, and more information can be found at http://www.rittmanmead.com

•Contact us at [email protected] or [email protected]•Look out for our book, “Oracle Business Intelligence Developers Guide” out now!•Follow-us on Twitter (@rittmanmead) or Facebook (facebook.com/rittmanmead)


mailto:[email protected]



Mike Vickers, Consulting Manager, Rittman MeadUKOUG Apps’13 Conference, London, Oct 2013

Oracle BI Applications:Giving Users The Reports They Really Want

Technology

Oracle BI Applications - Giving the Users the Reports They Really Want