Angles for Oracle-Generator for Oracle Analytics

This chapter introduces you to Angles for Oracle-Generator for Oracle Analytics, and provides information about the concepts associated with it.

Overview

The Angles for Oracle-Generator for Oracle Analytics generates NoetixViews metadata into the Oracle Analytics repository. The generation can be done either through the graphical user interface (GUI) or a command prompt interface. The GUI supports attended regeneration and the command prompt supports unattended regeneration. The Angles Generator helps automate the manual process of creating an Oracle Analytics repository, and updating an existing repository after changes are made to the NoetixViews data.

Key Functions

The Angles Generators performs the following key functions:

• Generates NoetixViews metadata into Oracle Analytics
• Helps regenerate NoetixViews metadata whenever the information needs to be updated
• For NoetixViews:
  • Creates dimension objects and logical dimension tables for the key flexfields, which provide automatic drilling capability in Oracle Analytics Answers
  • Creates a logical fact table for each view that includes measures, and creates a logical column in that logical fact table for each fact column found in the view
  • Automatically links list of value views to the associated view columns, improving the performance of parameter prompts in Oracle Analytics Answers
  • Creates prebuilt report and dashboard templates against the generated repository to make data access in Oracle Applications easier
• Allows administrators to add custom objects to the Angles Generator-generated physical schemas, business models, and presentation catalogs

Supporting Concepts

The supporting concepts that are used in this guide are defined in the following sections.

Business Model

In Oracle Analytics, the Business Model and Mapping layer of the repository defines the business model of the NoetixViews data, and specifies the mapping between the business model and the physical layer schemas.

Connection Pool

In Oracle Analytics, the connection pool is an object in the Physical layer that contains information about the connection between the Oracle Analytics and a data source. Connection pools allow multiple concurrent data source requests to a single database connection.

Data Source

A data source is an object that stores information about how to connect to a relational database, a flat-file database, or a text file. In Angles Generator, the data source identifies how to connect to the NoetixViews schema.

Dimension

A dimension represents a hierarchical organization of logical columns (attributes) that belong to a single logical dimension table. Dimensions are present in the Business Model and Mapping (logical) layer and are not visible to users.

In each dimension, attributes are organized into hierarchical levels that represent the organizational rules and reporting needs of your business.

Display Folder

Display folders can be created in the physical or logical layers, and are used to organize physical and logical objects. Placing an object in a display folder will create a shortcut to the object. Administrators can then manage objects through these shortcuts instead of managing them from the consolidated list.

Logical Dimension Table

A business uses facts to measure performance by dimensions, for example, quantity, customer, and service. Every dimension has a set of descriptive attributes. Dimension tables contain attributes that describe business entities, for example, Customer Name, Address, Country, and so on.

Logical Fact Table

A logical fact table is a table with measures. Measures are typically calculated data, such as dollar value or quantity sold, and they can be specified in terms of dimensions. For example, you may want to calculate the price for a product in a market over a time period.

In Oracle Analytics, a table is considered to be a logical fact table if it is at the “Many” end of all one-to-many logical joins that connect it to other logical tables.

Logical Join

In Oracle Analytics, logical joins define the relationship between the logical tables. A key property of a logical join is cardinality, which expresses how rows are related in the joined tables. A one-to-many cardinality means that for every row in the first logical dimension table there are zero, one, or many rows in the second logical table.

Specifying the logical table joins is required so that the OAC can have the metadata to translate a logical request to a business model into SQL queries to the physical data sources.

Metadata

The information about data is known as metadata. The information can be about the system objects, such as virtual tables, users, and roles. Metadata defines the users of the application and the security access for the users. Angles Generator generates NoetixViews metadata into Oracle Analytics so that a user can view this metadata using the Oracle Analytics Answers.

NoetixViews

Views enable you to retrieve and review data stored in a database in a very efficient manner. They are a composite picture of data obtained from base tables and do not contain data that can be manipulated. NoetixViews provides a set of business views that defines the Oracle E-Business Suite or PeopleSoft Enterprise data. These views help you easily query the data with your query tool and present the results in meaningful business terms helping speed up the flow of information.

Physical Layer

In Oracle Analytics, the physical layer of the repository is the place into which Angles Generator imports the NoetixViews schema definition. This layer also defines the data sources that the OAC queries, and the relationships between physical databases and other data sources.

Physical Table

In Oracle Analytics, a physical table is an object in the Physical layer of the Administration Tool that corresponds to a table or view in a database. Physical tables are typically imported from a database or data source and provide the metadata necessary for the OAC to access the tables.

Presentation Catalog

In Oracle Analytics, in the Presentation layer, Presentation Catalogs or Subject Areas enable different views of a business model to be presented to different sets of users. The Presentation Catalog stores the content that users create in Oracle Analytics Answers. This content includes items such as folders, links, and objects.

Presentation Layer

In Oracle Analytics, the Presentation layer helps present customized views of a business model to different users. Presentation Catalogs in the presentation layer are visible as business models to users of Oracle Analytics Presentation Services.

Presentation Table

Presentation tables let you organize columns into categories that help users. Presentation tables typically contain columns from one or more logical tables but may have names and object properties that are different from those of the logical tables.

Repository

A repository is a collection of resources from which you can retrieve information. In Oracle Analytics , the OAC stores its metadata in repositories. The repositories in Oracle Analytics have three layers: Physical layer, Business Model and Mapping layer, and Presentation layer.

Roles

NoetixViews uses roles to control access to data. A role is a collection of privileges that the database administrator can grant to a database user. Roles are used as a security feature to limit and control access to data and to reduce the amount of data that a user can view. NoetixViews roles are predefined but your database administrator can modify them.

To reduce complexity, NoetixViews roles show you only those views that you are entitled to view.

Subject Area

Subject areas are functional groups of NoetixViews Global Extension roles, such as NoetixViews for Oracle Financials. NoetixViews subject areas are generated into Oracle Analytics Presentation Services subject areas.

Top-Level Name

Top-Level Name is a unique name that an administrator provides. This name helps Angles Generators to group NoetixViews objects in the Oracle Analytics repository, and also helps separate different instances of NoetixViews within an Oracle Analytics repository.

Transaction View

The NoetixViews Global Extension provides report authors with two primary types of views: key flexfield views and transaction views. Transaction views provide report authors access to data related to the various topics covered by NoetixViews. For example, the GLG0_Budgets transaction view provides report authors with access to general ledger budget information. Transaction views can be joined to key flexfield views to gain insight into the context of the transactional information with respect to the available key flexfields.

UDML File

The Universal Database Markup Language (UDML) files contain the definition of the repository in Oracle Analytics. The two utilities, nQUDMLGen.exe and nQUDMLExec.exe help generate the contents of the repository into UDML files. The nQUDMLGen.exe utility is used to generate UDML files from an existing repository and the nQUDMLExec.exe utility is used to import existing UDML files into a repository. (Undefined variable: General.ProductShortName) creates the UDML files to generate (Undefined variable: General.ProductNameNV) data into the Oracle Analytics repository.

Z$ Column

“Z$” is a (Undefined variable: General.ProductNameNV) naming convention used for indicating relationships between views. To allow views to be joined safely, most views in (Undefined variable: General.ProductNameNV) have special “Join To” columns. These columns are identified by a prefix of Z$. These Z$ columns can only be used to join to other views which have the same column name.

How the Generation Process Works

The (Undefined variable: General.ProductShortName) uses the two utilities of Oracle Analytics, nQUDMLExec.exe and nqUDMLGen.exe, to generate the (Undefined variable: General.ProductNameNV) metadata.

The generation process is as follows:

1. Angles Generators connects to a (Undefined variable: General.ProductNameNV) metadata schema residing in the Oracle database using SQL*Net.
2. Angles Generators fetches the data pertaining to the (Undefined variable: General.ProductNameNV) roles associated with the schema.
3. Depending on the roles that you select, (Undefined variable: General.ProductShortName) creates UDML files for the physical, business, and presentation layers in the Oracle Analytics repository. These files contain the definition of (Undefined variable: General.ProductNameNV) metadata. Angles Generator also creates files for creating security objects, and to delete objects that are no longer necessary during the start of a regeneration.
4. Once the Oracle Analytics service has been configured to use the generated repository, Angles Generators uses the Oracle Analytics Presentation Services Application Programming Interface (API) to generate report and dashboard templates into the Presentation Catalog.
5. (Optional). The Save option available on the Angles Generators interface lets you save the script into a .xml file, which can be used to regenerate the (Undefined variable: General.ProductNameNV) metadata into the Oracle Analytics repository.