Yesterday I post about how I design my first BI Publisher report in offline mode.

Today I would like to share my understanding about BI Publisher till now.

Just like going from Oracle Forms 6 to Oracle Forms 6i, I felt no difference from programming point of view except few tit-bits here and there.

In reality it was big change. Whole architecture was changed.

Now I am feeling same thing when I am comparing Oracle Reports and BI Publisher.

From designing point of view, I don’t feel any much change. The learning curve is very smooth.

But from architecture point of view, it’s a hell lot of a change.

I think it shows Oracle is looking into future as it has always done.

Starting with BI Publisher, Oracle is now breaking concept of reporting into three parts as follows:

1. Data Source (Query)
2. Layout
3. Translation

Before this all the above components used to be in one file i.e. RDF or REP.

This new approach will make the reporting much more flexible and easier to maintain.

There can be one Data Source, distributed to many layouts and each layout can be translated to many formats.

Maintenance point of view, IT department just need to maintain one Data Source. Functional user can maintain the layout with little practice using ms word and adobe acrobat which can be distributed to number of format without any programming involved.

Sounds good, let’s see how it works out!