kesava.chunduri

 Profile Answers by kesava.chunduri 

• Mar 10th, 2008

 

Hi Kishore,

XML/BI Publisher gives the flexibility to users inorder to select the output type in EXCEL/HTML/PDF/FO, etc as per their requirement. If a User ran a report in PDF and wants to get the same in EXCEL, its not required for them to re-run the report, Instead they can republish it using RePublish option in Tools and can select the output type whatever is required.

XML/BI Publisher reports gives you additional features for Reports 6i. You can get the XML Report in EXCEL/HTML/PDF etc as per the output type selected. Data Model in Reports 6i RDF will be the same but you dont require a Layout model in the RDF File. You instead create the Layout in a Word Document using the XML Publisher Destop installed. You can directly implement XML Publisher and is not required to implement Discoverer again.

Before the release of Discoverer 10g, Discoverer is a license free version and after its release the license has become too costly due to which the clients are going for XML Publisher reports ignoring Discoverer.

Advantages of XML/BI Publisher:
*  Cost for implementing is very less compared to the license of Discoverer.
*  Can create complex layouts same as we do it in Report 6i, where as complex reporting is not possible in Discoverer.
*  Can run the report in 5 different Output Formats and export them.
*  If you require the report in 3 different output types, You dont need to run the report 5 times. You can run the report once and can republish it again in other types.
*  You dont require any different web browser for running the report, It can be directly run on the Concurrent Environment itself.
*  You can code the report to dynamically select the layouts (templates) in XML Publisher, Similar to the functionality of Format Trigger in Reports 6i which is not possible in Discoverer.

Limitations/Disadvantages of XML/BI Publisher: 
*  Its not recommended for ad-hoc reporting like Discoverer. 
*  Its very hard to debug a report unlike Discoverer.
*  We cant draw Pie Charts/Graphs as like in Discoverer.

I am not very much aware of the API's in OM. Hope some one can help you out with that.

Regards,
Kesava Rao Chunduri