(Answers 10g|Analyses 11g) is the base component of BI Presentation Service to create Web report . It provides:
The definition of an answer is principally composed of :
All visual data representations are interactive and drillable and can be saved, shared, modified, formatted, or embedded in the user’s personalized Dashboard or Enterprise Portal.
Answer is also the entry point component to write back data in the data source.
The GUI of answer is composed of 5 tabs.
The first aim of the criteria tab is to create a logical SQL which contains:
To choose the columns needed, the user interact the subject area. A subject area is generally the Presentation Layer of BI Server which is a logical view of the data but you may access directly the source database through the direct database request subject area.
As the user selects columns, Oracle BI Answers builds a query. This query is referred to as “logical SQL”, since it expresses the logical content of the request. This logical query will be sent to the Oracle BI Server, which will interpret the logical query and create subsequent physical queries to the underlying data sources where the data is stored.
Oracle BI Answers simplifies the use of derived measures i.e. measures that are computed on a query result set such as ranks, Ntiles, standard deviations, running totals, moving averages, and moving medians. These derived measures are difficult to compute in SQL but are very useful — moving average and moving median are valuable functions for smoothing data and discerning trends.
Once the query created, the results tab permit to show the data and to format them through different views:
The advanced tab permits the definition of answer manually when:
You can in this area define your own logical sql without using the criteria tab which allow for instance the use of multiple subject area in one answer in 10g.
The analysis must not contain features such as hierarchical columns, selections, or groups.