Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition
(OBIEE) is an enterprise Business Intelligence platform with the ability to
source from multiple heterogeneous data sources to enable pervasive business
analytics. It consists of a broad set of
capabilities including ad-hoc query and analysis, interactive dashboards,
reporting, proactive intelligence and alerts, mobile analytics, and more. The Oracle BI Server, the foundation of
Oracle BI Suite EE, generates queries optimized for Teradata, appropriately
aggregates data and presents the results to users within a familiar web browser
via easy to use dashboards and reports.
While the Oracle BI Server also provides powerful analytic calculation
functions it also understands when it should leverage the Teradata database for
computation if it would yield better performance.
Oracle has
4 suites of BI tools with similar and confusing names:
1) OBIEE is often
considered to be a single product; however, OBIEE is an integrated suite
consisting of several interdependent components. OBIEE stands for Oracle
Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition – but the S for Suite is
dropped. OBIEE is based on the acquired Siebel Analytics technology.
2) OBIEE Plus
is the same suite as OBIEE but it also includes the acquired Hyperion reporting
tools (SQR and IR).
3) Oracle
Business Intelligence Standard Edition One is a suite that has nothing in
common with Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition (description follows).
Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition One is a suite designed for the
small to medium sized business. It is based on the exact same technology
platform as OBIEE.
4) Oracle
Business Intelligence Standard Edition (OBISE) is a suite with completely
different components.
This document deals with the first 3 tools listed above.
Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (OBI Apps) is
another Oracle product that includes OBIEE as part of the solution. OBI Apps is an end-to-end solution that takes
data from various source systems such as Siebel CRM, Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, et
al, loads it into Teradata and delivers Business Intelligence (BI) content to
end-users. OBI Apps includes pre-defined
data integration mappings from the source system, an optimized physical star
schema data model for Teradata, as well as pre-defined OBIEE reports and
dashboards for end users. OBI
Applications is described in the “Teradata Corporation and Oracle Corporation
Strategic Partnership Technical FAQ” available on TKO and the Oracle InfoHub.
Teradata integrates easily with the OBIEE architecture. As a warehouse, Teradata provides the data
and the power to support the business analytics.
Oracle Architecture
Not shown in the diagram below, Oracle BI EE Plus also bundles key Oracle
Hyperion reporting products (SQR and IR) for integrated reporting with Oracle
Hyperion financial applications.
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition components:
·
Oracle BI Server – As the foundation of OBIEE
Plus, the Oracle Business Intelligence Server generates queries optimized for
each data source, appropriately aggregates them, and presents the results to
end users. A flexible, enterprise
metadata layer spans all of the underlying data sources.
·
Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards – Provides
fully interactive collections of analytic content with a rich variety of
visualizations. Running on a Web-based
architecture, the dashboards provide users with information filtered and
personalized for their identity, function or role based on predefined security
rules.
·
Oracle BI Answers – Self-service ad-hoc
capabilities allowing end users to easily create charts, pivot tables, reports,
and visually appealing dashboards, all of which are fully interactive with
drill down capabilities.
·
Oracle BI Delivers – Near real-time, multi-step
alert engine can trigger workflows based on business events and notify
stakeholders via their preferred medium and channel (email, dashboards, and
mobile devices). This means field sales
representatives can receive a short message service alert on their cell phone,
warehouse managers get a PDF attachment via e-mail, and financial analysts
obtain the report as an Excel spreadsheet saved to their shared corporate file
system.
·
Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics – Full business
intelligence functionality for the mobile professional, enabling fully
interactive dashboards and ad hoc analysis while disconnected from the
corporate network. Intelligent
synchronization of relevant data, analytic metadata, dashboards and saved
selections occurs once a user reconnects to the enterprise network.
·
Oracle BI Publisher – Pixel-perfect reporting
component allows the creation of highly formatted templates, reports, and
documents such as checks, government form, and more. It provides a central architecture for
generating and delivering information to employees, customers and business
partners – securely and in the right format.
·
Oracle BI for Microsoft Office – Allows users of
Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint to access and run Oracle BI reports directly from
within these familiar tools. Refreshable reports leverage native Microsoft
Office functionality and the scalability and performance of the Oracle BI
Server. Reports also reference a consistent and single source of truth as
defined in the Oracle BI Server metadata - a critical requirement for pervasive
use across the enterprise.
·
Hyperion Web Analysis – Delivers out-of-the-box
OLAP analysis, presentation and reporting.
Hyperion Web Analysis take advantage of the many powerful and advanced
analytics features provided in Oracle Essbase or other multidimensional
sources.
·
Hyperion Interactive Reporting – Pulls data from
operational or analytic sources to create easily comprehensible charts, pivots,
and reports. Hyperion Interactive Reporting adds the option of direct access to
relational sources without the need to create and access a semantic layer via
the Oracle Business Intelligence Server.
·
Hyperion SQR Production Reporting – Generates
massive reports within specified time frames and connects to a wide variety of
enterprise data sources.
