The Oracle Blog

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Installing Oracle Discoverer 10g

I recently had to do an Oracle Discoverer install and I had forgotten how much fun they can be, so I thought I'd share. I'm going to skip a lot of the explanations and details, this is just to give someone a feel for the install process.

When installing Oracle Discoverer in an Oracle 10g environment you need to go through the following steps:
1. Start the Oracle Application Server 10g install. Install the Oracle Application Server Infrastructure 10g first. This installs Identity Management services as well as the Metadata Repository for the Oracle Application Server Middle-Tier Servers.

Install using the Identity Management and Metadata Repository. This builds the infrastructure.
Make sure and write down all userids/passwords, you are going to need them when installing Oracle 10g Discoverer in the next step. You may need to log into to Application Server Control to get your port number for OID.

2. Then start the Oracle Application Server 10g install again but this time install the Business Intelligence and Forms.

Under Configuration Options choose Oracle Application Server 10g Discoverer. You can install additional options like the 10g Portal, 10g Wireless or 10g Personalization options as well.
Choose the Automatic option for Configure ports unless you understand the manual configuration of ports.
You're now going to need to Register with an Oracle Internet Directory that you will get from your Oracle Application Server Infrastructure install you did previously. You need to provide the Host and port. (i.e. "your host name" and 13060).
Now login using the OID login (Username: cn=orcladmin, password "your password").

3. Install the Oracle Business Intelligence Tools 10g. Select to install the Discoverer Administrator that you will use to install the EUL.

4. Once the Oracle Application Server 10g install is complete you need a Discoverer Administrator to go set up an End User Layer (EUL). Using the Discover Administrator, setup and configure the EUL. The EUL is a user view of the data that hides the complexity of the underlying tables. The Discoverer Administrator will walk you through the process of creating the EUL and then the creation of a new business area.

The Administration Tasklist is a great guideline for the steps you will take to configure an EUL. Steps like: Create business area, Edit items, Create joins, Create calculated items, Create conditions, Create items and date hierarchies, Create item classes, Create new folders, Create summary folders, Grant business area access, etc.

5. Once your EUL is set up, then you can log in using a web URL provided to you by the administrator. It will be something like this: http://tserver01:7778/discoverer/plus. You will then use your userid, password, database and End User Layer information that will be provided to you by your administrator to log in.

This was just a quick summary to help someone that is just getting started. The Oracle Discoverer documentation on otn.oracle.com is pretty straight forward in terms of how to set up an EUL and then give a new Discoverer user permission to access it.

Have fun.