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Technical Note XXXX: Integrating Oracle BI Applications with Oracle E-
Business Suite
Notice
Supported Releases:
Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.2
Oracle BI Applications 7.9
Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10
Background
This document details the steps required to integrate Oracle BI Applications with Oracle E-
Business Suite Applications in the following ways:
1. Single Sign On first into Oracle E-Business Suite and have that authentication passed
through to Oracle BI EE
2. Embed links to Oracle BI EE dashboard/catalog in Oracle E-Business Suite pages
3. Create Action Links within Oracle BI EE reports and dashboards that take you back into
Oracle E-Business Suite in context
Setup is required both on the E-Business Suite Application and Oracle BI EE sides to perform this
integration. These steps are detailed below with an example of how to achieve this in the Oracle
BI Applications. This document does not describe the mechanism to embed Oracle BI EE charts,
dashboards, or reports in the E-Business Suite application. It also does not describe the
mechanism to first log in to Oracle BI EE and then setup your E-Business Suite Application
context.
SSO integration is achieved by means of a shared SSO cookie that is passed from the E-
Business Suite Application to Oracle BI EE through the browser. For the SSO cookie based
integration to work, the E-Business Suite application and the Oracle BI EE URL need to reside in
the same domain. For e.g., the Oracle E-Business Suite URL could be
http://EBSAppsServer.us.oracle.com and the Oracle BI EE URL that you need to access could be
http://AnalyticsPresentationServer.us.oracle.com/analytics. It’s important to note that the Oracle
BI Server can reside anywhere; it’s only the Oracle BI Presentation Services that has to reside on
the same domain as the E-Business Suite Application server for the browser to be able to pass
the cookie to Oracle BI EE.
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Required setup on Oracle E-Business Suite
This section describes the necessary steps to achieve SSO integration and embedding of links to
the Oracle BI EE dashboards and Answers within Oracle E-Business Suite Applications.
Required patches for Oracle BI EE integration
Two ATG patches should be applied on the Oracle E-Business Suite Applications instance.
5556799 and
5473858 (both released as part of 11i.ATG_PF.H RUP5)
The latter patch contains the files necessary for launching Oracle BI EE from the FND menu.
This includes a JSP file and a LDT script for loading the profile option for defining the Oracle BI
EE web URL.
Embedding an URL to open Oracle BI EE dashboards
Follow the following steps to creating a form function and assigning it to the right menus and
responsibilities.
1. Logon as sysadmin/sysadmin into your Oracle E-Business Suite environment
2. Select responsibility System Administrator from the responsibility navigator (left) pane
3. After you select the responsibility from the left pane, the available menus are shown in
the right pane
4. Using these menus create the following in the sequence listed below:
a. Function
b. Menu
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c. Responsibility
d. User
e. Profile
The following sections describe in brief how to create the function, menu, responsibility, user and
profile. It assumes some knowledge of how to navigate the Oracle E-Business Suite Applications.
Creating the Function
1. From the Application menu, choose Function. This takes you to Oracle Applications
Function form shown below. Give your function a name, User Function Name and
Description and save your changes (using the diskette icon on the toolbar).
2. In the Function properties tab ,enter value
Type= SSWA jsp function
3. In the Web HTML tab, enter
HTML Call=OracleOasis.jsp?mode=OBIEE&function=Answers
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(For linking to the dashboard use function=Dashboard)
Creating the Menu
Menus are complied whenever they are updated.
1. Start by selecting Menu under Application OR if you are already in Forms, you can select
Menu from the Top Ten list:
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2. Create a new Standard menu and give it a Name and User Name. In Function enter the
name of the Function created in the previous step.
Note: If a Menu has only one Function, then that is selected by default for the user and
intermediate steps like displaying the function may be skipped altogether.
Assigning to a Responsibility
The menu that was created in the previous step needs to be associated with a responsibility. You
can either create a new responsibility or reuse an existing responsibility. To create a new
responsibility, follow the following steps:
1. Choose the application that you are creating the Menu for and for Responsibility Key
define any unique value as shown. (Note: To retain the uniqueness property, the
responsibility key is not translated into different languages.) This key is used at the
Oracle BIEE end because of its uniqueness
2. Choose Oracle Self Service Web Applications under Application From and under Data
Group choose Standard and reenter the Application name
3. For Menu, enter the value you created in the previous step
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Assigning Responsibility to the User
You can either create a new user or assign the responsibility created above to an existing user.
Assign a Profile
The profile form can be reached from Top ten list or from Application>Profile.
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A profile can be set for a responsibility, a user or a site. In our example we will set profile options
for a responsibility. Check the responsibility option and in profile type %oracle business% and
click on Find.
This will bring you to another screen. Under responsibility, enter the URL of the Oracle BI server
as shown below. The URL should look like
http://AnalyticsPresentationServername.us.oracle.com:port
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Required setup on Oracle BI EE
Configuring InstanceConfig.xml for External Authentication
1. Modify the InstanceConfig.xml file for the Oracle BI Presentation Services as shown
below:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<WebConfig>
<ServerInstance>
<CatalogPath>c:\temp\default</CatalogPath>
<DSN>AnalyticsWeb</DSN>
<Auth>
<ExternalLogon enabled="true">
<ParamList>
<Param name="NQ_SESSION.ICX_SESSION_COOKIE"
source="cookie"
nameInSource="EBSAppsDatabaseSID"/>
<Param name="NQ_SESSION.ACF"
source="url"
nameInSource="ACF"/>
</ParamList>
</ExternalLogon>
</Auth>
<!-- Other settings here. -->
</ServerInstance>
</WebConfig>
2. The nameInSource for the cookie should be the same as the Oracle E-Business Suite
application database SID name. To verify the name of the cookie, using Firefox, check
the name of the cookie created under the us.oracle.com domain (or the domain where
your Oracle E-Business Suite Application server is running).
Once the Presentation Server is setup as above, it will only support external authentication. You
will no longer be able to login directly into Presentation server using http://hostname/analytics. It
will give you a ‘Not logged in’ error. You will first have to login to Oracle E-Business Suite
Applications and then follow the link setup in Oracle E-Business Suite to reach Oracle BI EE.
RPD Configuration Steps
Steps and below are required for SSO authentication. The subsequent steps are required to set
up Action Links from Oracle BI EE to Oracle E-Business Suite Applications.
Setting up the Oracle E-Business Suite connection pool properties
Setup the Oracle E-Business Suite OLTP Connection pool to connect to the Oracle E-Business
Suite Application database using the super user ID and password (e.g. Apps/Apps) as shown
below. The value of the Execute on Connect property should be
call /* valueof(NQ_SESSION.ACF) */
APP_SESSION.validate_icx_session('valueof(NQ_SESSION.ICX_SESSION_COOKIE)')
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If you receive an Oracle database error about not recognizing the
APP_SESSION.VALIDATE_ICX_SESSION function call, that means that the second required
ATG patch mentioned in Section has not been applied.
Creating Init block for setting Oracle E-Business Suite Context
Create an Initialization Block and make it the first Initialization Block to run. This will need to be
executed using a connection pool defined as per the previous section. The target variables in the
initialization block are shown below.
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The SQL for the initialization block should be the following:
select FND_GLOBAL.RESP_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.RESP_APPL_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.SECURITY_GROUP_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.RESP_NAME,
FND_GLOBAL.USER_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.EMPLOYEE_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.USER_NAME from dual
Creating an Opaque view for generating the Action Link URL
In order to generate an Action Link you will first have to do the following:
1. Identify the Oracle E-Business Suite Application page/function that you want to link to.
Obtain the function_id of that page and identify the querystring parameters required by
that page. This will have to be done by going through Oracle E-Business Suite
documentation
2. Identify the Oracle E-Business Suite table that will support the parameters needed for the
Oracle E-Business Suite function (page) that you want to build an Action link to and
create this physical table in the Oracle E-Business Suite OLTP schema as an opaque
view
An example is shown below, here the OE_ORDER_HEADERS_ALL table was chosen because it
is at the grain of the Order Header and supplies the HEADER_ID that we can use to join to the
warehouse tables that contain the Order Header information. The function_id of the Oracle E-
Business Suite page for Order Details and the parameters supported by that page were also
identified from Oracle E-Business Suite documentation.
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The Action Link URL is generated by calling the
FND_RUN_FUNCTION.GET_RUN_FUNCTION_URL() function in the Oracle E-Business Suite
Database Schema. For e.g.:
SELECT
HEADER_ID,
fnd_run_function.get_run_function_url(
CAST(fnd_function.get_function_id('ISC_ORDINF_DETAILS_PMV') AS NUMBER),
CAST( VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.OLTP_EBS_RESP_APPL_ID) AS NUMBER),
CAST( VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.OLTP_EBS_RESP_ID) AS NUMBER),
CAST( VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.OLTP_EBS_SEC_GROUP_ID) AS NUMBER),
'HeaderId='||
HEADER_ID||'&pFunctionName=ISC_ORDINF_DETAILS_PMV&pMode=NO&pageFunctionNam
e=ISC_ORDINF_DETAILS_PMV',
NULL) as ORDER_HEADER_ACTION_LINK_URL
The parameters to the function are
p_function_id in number,
p_resp_appl_id in number,
p_resp_id in number,
p_security_group_id in number,
p_parameters in varchar2 default null,
p_override_agent in varchar2 default null
Here p_function_id is the function_id of the page that you want to navigate to, the next three
parameters pass the security context to Oracle E-Business Suite. The value of these session
variables will be set by the initialization block described in Section . The fourth parameter is
optional and is used if the page you are navigating to accepts parameters. In many cases if you
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want to navigate to a particular record on the page you are navigating to (Action Links typically do
this), you will need to supply those querystring parameters here. The function call returns a URL
to the desired function with encrypted querystring parameters.
The next step is joining this opaque view to the base fact table in the Data Warehouse schema.
This join represents a join of tables in different database schemas and will therefore happen in
the Oracle BI Server. It is therefore very important to ensure sufficient filters are applied
when requesting any columns from this opaque view so that a small data set is returned to
the Oracle BI Server to join with the results from the warehouse schema. For demo
environments, where the EBS table contains only thousands of rows, filters can be
ignored. However, customer implementations will typically contain millions of rows so
appropriate filters are required.
Map into the logical and presentation layers
Map the URL column from the opaque view into the logical star where you want to create the
Action Link. Then expose this logical column in the appropriate presentation catalog. Also ensure
that the user who will be logging into Oracle E-Business Suite Applications is assigned access to
the appropriate presentation catalogs. For e.g.:
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Answers configuration
When including this Action Link column in a report, edit the column properties to indicate this is of
type ‘Hyperlink’. That will automatically make this a clickable link in an Answers report. Further
customization can be done to embed an image instead of the text.
Web Catalogue configuration
Ensure the user who will be logging into Oracle E-Business Suite Applications is set up in the
webcat as a user with the appropriate permissions. You can make the dashboard that you want to
embed into Oracle E-Business Suite the default dashboard for that user so that it takes them
directly to that dashboard when they click on the hyperlink in Oracle E-Business Suite.
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