XML Publisher /BI Publisher Report .

This Post is about  XML Publisher Reports

XML Publisher /BI PublisherBI Publisher (XML Publisher) is one awesome tool introduced by Oracle Corp. It has made report designing a very easy and simple (especially for E-Business reports).

With BI Publisher
We can design Complex Reports in less time (Business User can design the layout with an easy Desktop Tool like Microsoft word/Excel /Adobe etc).
Cost of maintenance will be low.
Total Cost of design and Maintenance will be low.Here we can leverage the workdone by the functional Analyst by utlizing his/her layout design.Technical Analyst in this case has to focus on data model and then mapping the data with the Layout desgined ny Functional analyst.My Exerience says that on an average an IT analyst spend 40% time in layout design.With BI Publisher we can cut that to 10-12%.

With BI Publisher we can Design
Check Printing Reports
Labels
Customer Facing Reports (Invoices etc).
It supports data from the multiple sources e.g. Oracle, Sql Server, People soft, Java etc.
Print the output in pdf, rtf, Excel, HTML etc. format.
Route the report to Fax, email, printer etc.

Examples of Reports in BI Publisher



Other Advantages of BI Publisher is, it separate

• Query (Retrieve data from data base)
• Layout (Layout based on the business Requirement)
• Translation (Translate to Multiple Language)As shown in diagram

This is very Useful for Customer who are using
1. Oracle E-Business Reports (R11i/R12)
2. Oracle Reports.

Apart from replacing “Oracle E-Business Reports “ the BI Publisher provide an opportunity to convert there existing Oracle 6i/9i /10g reports into BI Publisher reports. Oracle has reported that lots of Oracle 6i/9i/10g customers are migrating to BI Publisher.

In my example, I took the Oracle Standard Report “Comprehensive Order Detail Report” and redesign with BI Publisher, Final output is much more productive than Original Report.


Oracle E-Business Standard Comprehensive Order Detail Report


Same Report when design in BI Publisher (Please Note that this is just an example, I have not mapped everything in BI Publisher Report).