Getting started with BI Publisher 11g

Oracle BI Publisher 11g is the new version of Oracle’s frontend application for reporting. As before, it can be used as part of OBIEE (Oracle BI Enterprise Edition) or as an individual application, integrated with Siebel or integrated with any other certified application.

BI Publisher 10g was packaged as a standalone version (with Oracle AS/OC4J) or integrated with OBIEE. With 11g, it’s all part of the OBIEE setup. I’ll explain that bellow.

Oracle has made available a trial version of BI Publisher 11g, which can be used for development and evaluation purposes. It should not be used for production or any other critical live cycle environment. This trial can be installed in Linux, Windows 2008 and 2003, and also in Windows 7.

You can find all about it in the Oracle BI Publisher official page:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-publisher/downloads/index.html.

The trial edition includes:

• Java SE 6 (JRE) 
• WebLogic 11g R1 (that can only be used for this trial) 
• Java DB, with a sample scheduler schema and a reports demo schema

For a fully functional BI Publisher installation, you’ll need to use the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11g setup. This has all the Business Intelligence components, but you can select only the BI Publisher option in the ‘Configure Components’ screen.

Don’t forget that before installing BI Publisher you’ll need to run the Repository Creation Utility.

Please read more about the concepts, installation and administration in the official libraries.

Document References: 

• Oracle BI Publisher 11g Document Library - http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/bi.htm
• Oracle BI Publisher 11g Enterprise Edition Document Library - http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28280_01/bi.htm