Home > Insights > Oracle BI Publisher Overview: Everything You Need to Know

Workplace inefficiencies often creep in through the smallest places, but they never fail to make their mark on your business processes.

Missed opportunities or errors, even small ones, can build up over time, and in some cases, even significant losses, issues, or problems can fly under the radar until they’re too big to be ignored.

For these (and many other) reasons, it’s important to get accurate reporting of your business, and for JD Edwards customers, the way to get those reports is through the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (BIP or BI Publisher).

Let’s take a closer look at BI Publisher and what it can do for you, especially when compared to other reporting tools for JD Edwards (JDE), and how our senior-level consultants can help enhance your Oracle E-Business Suite.

What is Oracle BI Publisher?

The Oracle BI Publisher is a web-based reporting solution intended to make building, managing, and sharing reports and documents a little easier. The BI Publisher simplifies the reporting process with its scalable architecture and open reporting standards, saving you time and money when it comes to creating and maintaining report jobs within your business system.

Oracle BI Publisher can take data from multiple, separate data sources – including your own database, an ERP system, the Oracle BI server, or various other web services – and combine them in a singular data model to be delivered anywhere. This way, your data remains accurate and secure as it makes its way into reports and documents and is shared through custom delivery channels.

The Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher also goes one step beyond traditional reporting tools and offers more complex tools that make it possible to generate more reports in a shorter amount of time – without affecting the function and efficiency of your business systems. This Oracle BI publisher engine can also arrange XML data to integrate with other systems that support XML files.

Oracle BI Publisher Capabilities for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Users

Now that you know a little more about what the Oracle BI Publisher enterprise tool is and how it can enhance your reporting solutions, let’s look at some of its most useful features.

  • Create and maintain multiple reports, definitions, filters, and sorting functions
  • Design custom report layouts with easy-to-use Layout Editor (and connect to familiar desktop apps like Word, Excel, or Adobe Acrobat and render XML data based on the templates created)
  • Generate reports based on files, really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, and web services
  • Burst reports to various destinations and users at one time (and base these on a specific data model or custom-built distribution lists)
  • Batch output formats to meet specific report needs (i.e. PDF, HTML, Excel, XML data, or flat text files) and use batch to create and schedule end-user reports
  • Use role-based authorization and data encryption to keep documents and report data secure
  • Schedule reports to run automatically (hourly, daily, weekly, or on a custom basis)

What Can Oracle BI Publisher Do for You?

Used to create and schedule reports for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle BI Publisher gives you two options when it comes to reporting: embedded BI Publisher reporting and interactive BI Publisher reporting with JD Edwards Data Access Drivers.

In the first case, reports in the Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher are created, managed, and processed using the JDE E1 toolset and use data generated by JDE E1 batch applications. The latter allows you to create ad-hoc, dynamic reports with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Data Access Driver, a read-only JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) driver used to accept JDE E1 data for BI Publisher reports.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the options for your organization.

Embedded BI Publisher Reporting

Embedded BI Publisher reports are driven by and created using the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne toolset and batch application function.

Embedded BI reporting is used in three main circumstances:

  1. JDE EnterpriseOne data needs to be modified, updated, or deleted within the report.
  2. The report requires the use of JDE EnterpriseOne Business Logic.
  3. An automatic report is needed to complete an event in JDE EnterpriseOne.

By integrating with your JDE system and having the ability to merge multiple data sources, the Embedded Oracle BI Publisher simplifies data extraction, report creation, and external distribution of information for JDE E1 users.

Interactive BI Publisher Reporting

While Embedded BI reporting focuses on connecting specific aspects of Oracle BI and JD Edwards E1, the Interactive BI Publisher is used in the following situations:

  1. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne data is the only data source read by the report (for example, General Ledger balances, active supplier lists, or single customer activities).
  2. The report has requirements that are subject to change – for example, reports that show current inventory levels in a certain area of your supply chain.
  3. JDE processes do not require the requested report.

Depending on whichever option best fits your needs, Oracle BI Publisher data models have your back.

Advantages of Using BI Publisher for JD Edwards

Of course, BI Publisher isn’t the only reporting option out there for JD Edwards customers. So why stick with BI Publisher as opposed to switching to another data model like Optio or Create!form?

Here are some of the main advantages of using Oracle BI Publisher templates to optimize documentation and reporting within your JD Edwards system.

It’s Free! (Sort of…)

One significant advantage BI Publisher offers JD Edwards customers compared to other reporting tools is that it’s free as a part of the EnterpriseOne developer toolset. This means, as a JDE EnterpriseOne user, gaining access to Oracle BI reporting tools requires no additional cost or licensing. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right?

Hassle-Free Upgrades

Another advantage of Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher, when compared to tools like Optio or Create!form, is its hassle-free upgrades. As a part of the standard EnterpriseOne developer toolkit, the BI Publisher tool is updated every time you upgrade your EnterpriseOne.

With other tools, you’ll have to pay for your upgrades and deal with upgrading the proper versions that each tool supports. For example, the latest version of Create!form or Optio may not work with the most recent E1 tools release. But, because the BI Publisher tool seamlessly integrates with your JDE system, you can save yourself a lot of time, money, and headaches when it comes to keeping your systems and tools up-to-date and synchronized across all platforms.

Familiar Design Tool

Thanks to a plugin from Oracle, you’ll be using familiar desktop tools – like Microsoft Word -for the layout design of your BI Publisher forms. Because Word is an incredibly popular and widespread program, the learning curve for BI Publisher is much smaller than what you might find with other tools.

While you have a wide variety of options when it comes to creating reports for EnterpriseOne, JD Edwards makes things easy with BI Publisher. And, since reporting is an essential piece in making sure your business runs efficiently, you’ll want to make sure you’ve gotten everything set up correctly.

Key Features of the Newest Oracle BI Publisher Update (Version 12.2.1.1)

As industry needs have continued to grow and change, Oracle has continually released new features and system upgrades that allow users to adapt their systems and keep up with change – all while optimizing their reporting processes. Here are some of the key features of the newest Oracle BI Publisher update:

For End-Users

Oracle BI Publisher users are now able to select the Oracle Documents Cloud Service as a delivery channel for multiple reports and output formats.

For System Administrators

At the basic level, administrators can now apply and manage custom fonts for reports, both on-premise and in the cloud. And, for the larger, more complex reports, admins now have control over the type of template used to create reports and the way these reports are processed. The Dynamic Memory Guard will automatically adjust by the pre-defined formula, making the configuration of reports simpler – especially as you face complex data changes and report limits.

Even better, increased encryption functionality within the Oracle Cloud will keep your data model secure no matter what. Data sources (i.e. XML data files, CSV and Excel) are now encrypted as soon as they are uploaded into your system, and they will remain encrypted with no noticeable difference to your UI experience.

For Report Authors

With the new upgrade, report authors can now use standard HTML tags in the body of an email and include the entire report as an attachment – with no complicated formatting requirements. Version 12.2.1.1 also gives users the option of using REST APIs to integrate data and view reports from other applications.

If that’s not enough, the newest version also lets you access data files from WebCenter Content and retrieve those files as PDF documents, making data extraction and sharing between systems much simpler.

How Can We Help?

Whether you need help integrating the Oracle BI Publisher with your JD Edwards EnterpriseOne system or have any other JDE or Oracle OBI needs, our consultants are here to help.

With our wide network of senior-level JD Edwards consultants, we can help get your reporting situation in tip-top shape. We offer unbiased advice—without pressure from our sales team. Just helpful, actionable advice and solid knowledge transfer from us to you.

Even better, we’ve included a sample profile of one of our Oracle BI Publisher consultants to better understand what to expect when partnering with us.

Surety Senior Oracle BI Publisher Consultant

  • 25+ years of Software Development experience
  • 20 years of JDE EnterpriseOne Development experience (UBE, Applications, BSFN, NERs, C, Integrations, Upgrades)
  • Expert with Oracle BI Publisher
  • 10+ years of experience with JDE BI Publisher (Implementing, Teaching, Migrations from Create!form, Optio, etc.)
  • Senior JDE Development Trainer (Reports, Applications, BI Publisher, etc.)

Contact Us

If you’re intrigued by the advantages of BI Publisher reporting or want to learn more about how our technical JDE consultants can meet your Oracle E-Business Suite needs and manage multiple data sources in a single, unified application.

Contact us today for more!