It's practically impossible to make sound business decisions without access to quality, up-to-date data. In the past decade, Business Intelligence (BI) has become more and more important for companies of all sizes as they search for ways to increase their competitiveness.
Access to your data and the Oracle BI suite are all you need to set up one-stop report shopping.
So how does Oracle manage these feats of reporting? The BI server manages three layers of metadata. The first is the physical location of your data. The second is a simplified logical model built on top of the physical layer. The third is the presentation to the end user. Building a sound logical model allows all users to play by the same business rules – no more wondering if marketing is looking at the same calculations as accounting.
The Oracle BI Suite (Standard Edition One) includes three major elements:
The Oracle BI Server manages a consistent view of all your data, whether it resides in an Oracle database or not. This is a powerful tool to use to model your data into easy-to-use groupings.
Answers is the place to go for ad-hoc reporting and analysis. Drag and drop to create reports or graphs that you can then add to a Dashboard. Answers does not require technical skills to use; it's a great way for business users to access their data. Access to Answers and the Dashboards is all web-based, so there’s no special client tool to install.
If you're looking for highly formatted reports or documents, BI Publisher will meet those needs. Even the most complex files can be created starting with templates built in Microsoft Office tools.
The Oracle BI Suite is an easy-to-use, scalable way to get reliable answers about your data.