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Discoverer Overview

Discoverer aids business professionals to efficiently "discover" and analyze the exact data they need to make better business decisions. The Discoverer administrator defines the subsets of data that business professionals need to support their decision-making, and presents it to them in a logical and clearly understandable way.

This chapter consists of the following sections:

• 1.1 New Discoverer Features

• 1.2 Why do you need Discoverer?

• 1.3 Discoverer Features and Benefits

• 1.4 Your Role as Discoverer Administrator

1.1 New Discoverer Features

Discoverer Administration Edition Release 4.1 supports the following new features:

• Automated Summary Management - improving query performance in Discoverer Plus is now easier with this new feature. See Chapter 16, "Automated Summary Management" for details.

• Oracle Applications support - for users using Oracle Applications security. This enables you to connect to Oracle Applications EULs as well as standard Discoverer EULs. See Chapter 17, "Using Discoverer with Oracle Applications" for details.

• Identifiers - all objects in a Business Area are now uniquely defined within each EUL by an Identifier. Import now uses Identifiers to match up identical EUL elements. For further details relating to Import see Chapter 7.5, "Importing EUL elements from a file". See references to Identifiers in other sections of this guide regarding EUL or Business Area elements.

• Change schema owner - you can now manually edit the schema Owner attribute (for a Folder) or leave it blank. See Chapter 6.6.3, "The Owner attribute" for details.

• Support for Oracle 8i Materialized Views.

• Analytic Functions - perform complex mathematical analysis with this extended range of statistical functions. Refer to the Oracle Discoverer 4i Plus User's Guide for details.

1.2 Why do you need Discoverer?

Databases are designed by information systems professionals whose primary goal is often transaction efficiency, not ease of use by people who want to examine and analyze the data. For example, the database designer usually groups data elements into tables to optimize data capture, but rarely is that grouping the best for people who want to view and use the data. Often the names of the database tables and their columns are cryptic or confusing.

In fact, almost universally, the design of an efficient transaction database is in conflict with the information needs of the people responsible for making strategic and day-to-day decisions about topics such as product mix, profit margins, vendor selection, quality assurance, and work-force resources. Business analysts need a way to access a relatively small amount of data, and usually just a few specific records essential for their decision-making.

That's where Discoverer comes in. Discoverer lets the business professional find the data he/she needs, analyze it easily, and get answers to support business decisions. Thus, Discoverer provides an efficient way to retrieve a few select records or small amount of specific data from the database.

1.2.1 Discoverer's Components

Discoverer operates in a client/server and web browser environment and has three main components:

Discoverer Plus, Discoverer 4i Plus and Discoverer 4i Viewer

The component for end users comprises the Discoverer Plus (Windows), the Discoverer 4i Plus and Discoverer Viewer; these provide the interface that professionals in your company use on a day-to-day basis to access, view and analyze data. See Section 1.2.2, Section 1.2.3 and Section 1.2.4 for more information.

Administration Edition

This component is for you, the Discoverer administrator; it is the tool you use to design and present the subsets of data--called business areas--that end users access from the Discoverer Plus. See Section 1.2.5 for more information.

End User Layer^TM

The metalayer that shields end users from the complexity of the database. Conceptually, the EUL resides between the database dictionary/table definitions and Discoverer. Physically, it comprises a number of database tables and views. See Section 1.2.6 for more information.

Figure 1-1 Discoverer Components

1.2.2 Discoverer Plus

Designed for business professionals who do not have a computer programming or database background, Discoverer Plus is an easy-to-use read-only data access tool. It provides logical and intuitive access to information from your organization's relational databases for ad hoc query, analysis, and reporting.

1.2.3 Discoverer 4i Plus

Discoverer 4i Plus is the internet version of the award-winning Windows product. The two versions are compatible; and you can share workbooks between them.

1.2.4 Discoverer 4i Viewer

Discoverer 4i Viewer is designed for viewing workbooks created by users of the Windows or Web releases of the Discoverer Plus. Using Oracle Discoverer's easy to use interface via a web browser, you can view database data.

1.2.5 Administration Edition

Discoverer Administration Edition builds and maintains the End User Layer. Its design determines how users access and view data. This is where administrators define the business areas used by Discoverer Plus.

1.2.6 End User Layer (EUL)

The End User Layer (EUL) insulates end users from database complexity and constant change. It provides an intuitive, business-focused view of the database that can be tailored to suit each user or user group. As such, the EUL lets end users focus on business issues instead, not data access issues.

From an operating standpoint, the EUL generates SQL statements on the client and communicates with the database using SQL*Net (see Figure 1-1). When a user selects objects in the business area, the EUL generates the appropriate SQL statements that define the selections from a table, view, or column. When a user executes a query, the EUL executes that SQL statement and sends it to the database, which in turn sends the results to the Discoverer Plus interface. Thus, the end user does not have to understand any SQL to access and retrieve data. It is all handled by the EUL.

1.2.7 What is a Business Area?

A business area is a set of folders containing related information with a common business purpose. For example, Figure 1-2 shows information about budget and revenue stored in a business area for the accounting department, while information about projects is stored in a business area for project leaders. Although some of the data that these professionals need may be the same, such as the budgets folder, the exact combination of tables and views for each department is usually unique.

Figure 1-2 Business Area Concepts

Using Discoverer Administration Edition, you can tailor the grouping of data to provide users with the proper access to the precise data they need for ad hoc query, decision support, and presentation of results.

Business Areas:

• Meet the specific data needs of the users

• Usually contain data from several different tables or views

• Have tables or views and their associated columns mapped to "folders" and "items" respectively

• Can contain many simple folders and complex folders

• May contain folders from one or more physical databases

• Include conditions, joins, calculations, formatting, hierarchy structures, and other custom features

• May be accessible to one or many user IDs or roles; also, a user ID or role may be granted access to many business areas

• Let users access data, without having to understand the database structure

1.2.7.1 Business Area Terminology

To shield users from the complexity of a database, business areas use more familiar terminology as shown here.

Figure 1-3 Business Area Terminology

Thus, a Business Area is a cohesive set of Folders, Items, and other functions designed specifically for professional business people so they can more effectively use the data in their company's databases.

The time invested in creating a well-designed business area has a significant payback in reduced administration and maintenance. It can help you eliminate or greatly reduce the amount of time spent tailoring each user's environment at the database level. For more information on this topic, read Chapter 7, "Business Areas".

1.3 Discoverer Features and Benefits

Discoverer Administration Edition lets you quickly and easily create an effective business area. It has these features and benefits:

Table 1-1 Administration Edition Features and Benefits

Feature	Benefits
Load tables and views individually or use "bulk load"	Reduces End User Layer setup time; increases design flexibility.
Load tables and views by user IDs or roles	Reduces End User Layer setup time; increases design flexibility.
Online help	Reduces the need to reference paper material. Context-sensitive help lets users find information more quickly.
"One-button" load and "wizard-style" interface	Provides fast, easy mechanisms for defining and maintaining business areas that significantly reduces administration overhead. Wizards are resizable, making their information easy to read.
Grant privileges to user IDs and roles	Reuses database security mechanisms, reducing the workload involved in maintaining access control.
Specify default properties for items	Reinforces corporate reporting standards from one centralized repository.
Define formulas/conditions and the logical grouping of items within a business area	Improves ease-of-use for end users; provides for corporate reporting standards.
Automatically define join relationships based on primary/foreign keys or matching column names	Reuses information stored in the data dictionary; reduces administration overhead.
Automatically define date hierarchies for all date items	Enables users traverse easily through date structures without requiring additional work by the database administrator.
Automatically define a list of values for items	Enables users to easily create error-free inputs for conditions; reduces administration overhead.
Define alternative sorting	Conventional sorting presents data in either ascending or descending order. Use alternative sorting to tailor how data is presented. For example, sort data by days of the week, or region, or season, or department.
Define hierarchies between items	Lets users easily navigate through the data, to drill down for more detail, or drill up for more summary information.
Define hyperdrills	Enables users to drill to information in terms of how it is related, rather than through levels in a hierarchy.
Automatically create and maintain summary tables or use an external summary table	Enables users to quickly access data; reduces administration overhead for maintaining summary tables
Use Discoverer with non-Oracle databases	Provides users with the advantages of Discoverer's business analysis tools with any database.
Schedule workbooks for processing	Enables you to monitor the status of workbooks scheduled to run automatically. Enables users to run workbooks in batch.
Advanced features	Custom folders that support advanced SQL syntax; command-line shortcuts; and use of PL/SQL functions defined to meet the requirements of your users.

1.4 Your Role as Discoverer Administrator

As a Discoverer administrator, you need to understand how to design business areas that support your company's decision-makers. On the database side, you need to know what data is in the database, where it's located, how it's stored, and how it relates to other data. On the business side, you need to know what data the decision-makers require, what kinds of analysis are necessary, and how the final results should be presented for easy comprehension.

This means interviewing end users to find out the types of analysis they need to do and the data they need to do it. Your job is to enable the users to fulfill as many of their requirements as possible with Discoverer Plus connected to one or more business areas. For tips and suggestions on defining user requirements, see the next section, "Before You Begin."

In addition, you may be responsible for database security. You can use Discoverer Administration Edition to control user access to business areas. The business area forms a secondary security layer. All primary access to database objects (for example, tables and views) is controlled by the database administrator.

As the Discoverer administrator, you should:

• Identify user requirements

• Choose the database tables that best meet the requirement

• Build useful and robust business areas

• Create meaningful names for business areas, folders, and items

• Control user access to business areas

• Create a usable relational structure in the EUL with joins and complex folders

• Create calculations, conditions and drills that support end-user analysis

• Create summary tables to improve performance

1.4.1 Before You Begin

Implementing Discoverer is like implementing any other IT project--you need to start with some idea of what the user requirements are. Hold interviews with key users to establish the kinds of queries they want to perform. Be prepared to do some relational design to work out the result sets needed. Requests from users do not have to be precise or even very detailed, but answers to these questions will give some direction when developing the End User Layer:

• What information do they use now?

• What's wrong and right with that information?

• What information would they like to see?

• What format would they like?

• Where can this information be found or derived from?

• What folders, items, and joins would be useful for representing and accessing the information?

• What are their performance requirements?

This does not mean that user requirements have to be static--they will certainly change over time, and you can modify the EUL over time to support new requirements, but it is important to have a good idea of current business requirements on which to base future changes.

Using Discoverer Plus yourself will help you help users meet as many of their own requirements as possible. There may still be some standard reports that you need to create on their behalf. You can provide these in the form of public queries.

Often the biggest changes are requested by users once a system goes "live." When users see what Discoverer can do for them, they soon have suggestions for other areas where it could be useful!

Above all, most successful systems start off by delivering a simple subset of requirements first, and then extending it over time, once users see what can be achieved.

1.4.2 Next Steps

• Read Chapter 3, "Getting Started" to introduce yourself to the Discoverer Administration Edition user interface.

• Take the tutorial in Chapter 4 to become familiar with Discoverer Administration Edition features.

• Take the Discoverer Plus tutorial to learn about Discoverer from the user's point of view.

As you work with Discoverer, use the online help for quick answers, or return to this guide for detailed information.