Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Installation Guide

Introduction to Installing Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher

Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher offers you the most efficient, scalable reporting solution available for complex, distributed environments. It provides a central architecture for generating and delivering information to employees, customers, and suppliers—both securely and in the right format. Oracle BI Publisher reduces the high costs associated with the development, customization and maintenance of business documents, while increasing the efficiency of reports management.

For the most current information please check:

Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Web Page:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/xml-publisher/index.html

Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Forum:

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=245

About the BI Publisher Installer and Installation Options

The Oracle Universal Installer provided can be used to install BI Publisher with its own standalone Oracle Containers for Java (OC4J) instance or to install BI Publisher into an existing Oracle Application Server 10.1.3.1.0 (or later) Web container. However, you can also deploy BI Publisher on other J2EE application servers, such as Tomcat or Websphere.

BI Publisher has three installation options:

Basic - the Oracle Universal Installer Basic option provides a standalone application server (Oracle Containers for Java 10.1.3.1) and Sun JDK (SUN 1.5.0-b5) with BI Publisher.
Advanced - the Oracle Universal Installer Advanced option installs BI Publisher into an existing Oracle Application Server 10.1.3.1 (or later).
Manual - you can install BI Publisher manually into one of the supported J2EE servers.

For more information on using the Oracle Universal Installer options, see Installing BI Publisher into Oracle Application Server OC4J 10.1.3.1.

For more information on deploying BI Publisher manually into a supported J2EE application server, please refer to Installing Manually into a J2EE Application Server.

Environment Requirements

The Oracle BI Publisher installer supports numerous operating system, including, but not limited to:

Oracle Enterprise Linux 5
Oracle Enterprise Linux 4, Update 4
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft Windows 2003 Server R2 (32 bit)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.x, 5.x
Novell SUSE Linux 9.x
Mac OS X

For the full list of installer platforms, see the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Certification Information 10g Release 3 (10.1.3.4) available from the documentation library for this release on the Oracle Technology Network.

To install BI Publisher on an operating system not supported by the installer, use the manual install option.

Supported Application Servers

The BI Publisher server is supported in any J2EE application server that supports Java 5.0 (JDK 1.5). The following lists the application servers for which BI Publisher has been certified.

Oracle Application Server 10.1.3.1
Oracle Containers for Java 10.1.3.1
BEA WebLogic 8.1, 9.2, 10
Apache Tomcat 5.5.x
IBM Websphere 6.1
Sun Java System Web Server 6.1, 7.0
JBoss Application Server 4.0

Note: The Basic installation provides a standalone Oracle Containers for Java (OC4J) 10.1.3.1.

Supported Databases

Note: The database is optional for setting up BI Publisher, but required if you intend to use BI Publisher's scheduler.

Supported Databases for the BI Publisher Scheduler Schema Repository

Oracle 10g (10.1 and 10.2)
Oracle 9i (9.2.0.4)
IBM DB2 for UDB EE 8.2
IBM DB2 v9
Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2005
MySQL 4.1, 5.0
Sybase ASE 12.5

BI Publisher is supported to run against any database that supports JDBC based on Java 1.4.2 or Java 5.0 (1.5). BI Publisher has certified against the following databases as a source of data:

Databases Supported as Data Sources

Oracle Enterprise Server 9i , 10g, 11g
Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2005
IBM DB2 for UDB EE 8.2
IBM DB2 v9
Informix IDS 9.4, 10.0
MySQL 4.1, 5.0
NCR Teradata V2R6.21
Netezza 4.0
RPAS 13.0.1 int1
Sybase Adaptive Server 15
Sybase IQ 12
TimesTen 7

Web Browser Requirements

The BI Publisher application requires one of the following Web browsers:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, 7.0
Mozilla Firefox 1.5.x, 2.0

About Oracle BI Publisher Desktop Tools

Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher provides Microsoft Office-based design tools that automate the design process for creating templates for Oracle BI Publisher.

The BI Publisher desktop tools include the following:

The Oracle BI Publisher Template Builder for Microsoft Word Add-in facilitates the development of RTF layout templates. The application includes documentation, demos, and samples. The Template Builder enables you to:
- Connect to the Oracle BI Publisher server to retrieve data to build your template.
- Quickly insert common report elements such as data fields, tables, charts, and cross tabulations.
- Upload your template to the Oracle BI Publisher server.
- Extract boilerplate text into an XLIFF translation file and test the translations.
- Validate your template.
The Template Viewer enables you to preview your template in any of the supported output types with your sample data.
The Oracle BI Publisher Analyzer for Microsoft Excel (Excel Analyzer) is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that enables you to:
- Export the results of the report query to an Excel spreadsheet.
- Log in to BI Publisher from Excel to refresh your data, apply new parameters, and apply a template to the report data.
- Create templates in Excel and upload them to the BI Publisher repository.
- Access and run reports from an Excel session.

The system requirements for the Oracle BI Publisher Desktop tools are:

System Requirements for BI Publisher Desktop Tools
Component	Supported Versions
Client Operating System	Windows 2000 Windows 2003 SP1 (32-bit only) Windows XP SP2 and later Windows Vista
Template Builder for Word Add-in	Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007 Requires: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Java Runtime or JDK 1.4 or later
Excel Analyzer	Microsoft Excel 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007 Requires: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

See the topic Installing Oracle BI Publisher Desktop Tools.

About Postinstallation Tasks

After installing the BI Publisher server, perform the following to complete your installation. These tasks are described in detail in Postinstallation Tasks.

Configure the Scheduler database (required for the scheduler)

The scheduler is optional. If you choose to implement BI Publisher's scheduler, you must install the schema to the target database.
Configure the Demo Data sources (optional)

The BI Publisher installation includes demonstration reports. Some reports use a File data source that is automatically configured by the installer. Some reports use a JDBC data source and Oracle database sample schema that you must configure in the BI Publisher Admin screens.
Install the Oracle BI Publisher Template Builder for Microsoft Word Add-in (optional)

Install this template building tool on the client computers of users who will be developing RTF templates.