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Oracle® Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Help
11g Release 1 (11.1.1)
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New Features for Oracle BI EE 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.3)

New features in Oracle BI EE 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.3) include:

Key Terminology Changes

In this release, the following terminology changes have been made:

Major User Interface Improvements

The user interface has undergone major improvements in several areas, including a new Home page and redesigned editors and panes. These improvements are intended to make working with Oracle BI EE easier and more consistent. This guide provides detailed information on working with the various pieces of the user interface.

The interface has been enhanced to better serve the needs of users with disabilities. For information, see Appendix C, "Accessibility Features."

New Column Type and Related Operations

In previous releases (prior to 11g), you included presentation columns and measure columns in analyses. With this release, presentation columns have been renamed to attribute columns and a new column type, hierarchical column, is introduced. For information, see "What Are Subject Areas and Columns?"

Along with the new column type comes new ways to do the following:

Enhancements to Views

Several of the view types have been enhanced, including those in the following list:

In addition to view enhancements, this release includes an enhanced Layout pane to accompany those views in which you can manipulate data. See "Modifying the Layout of Data in Views" for information.

In this release, you can also create master-detail relationships among certain view types. For information, see "What Is Master-Detail Linking of Views?"

Calculated Items and Groups

You can continue to create calculated items to perform mathematical operations on members. In previous releases (prior to 11g), you could create a calculated item for an attribute column. In this release, you can create a calculated item for the members of an attribute column or of a hierarchical column.

In this release, you can create a "group" of members to display in a view. The group inherits the aggregation function of the measure column with which it is displayed.

See "Working with Groups and Calculated Items" for information.

Multiple Subject Areas

In this release, you can work with multiple subject areas. In addition to the primary subject area that you select when you create an analysis, filter, or dashboard prompt, you can include additional subject areas that are related to the primary subject area with which to work.

For information, see:

In addition, you can view metadata information for subject areas, folders, columns, and hierarchy levels. See "Viewing Metadata Information from the Subject Areas Pane" for information.

Interaction with Other Oracle Products

In this release:

SQL Functions for Time Series Calculations and Level-Based Measures

The following new and revised SQL functions enable you to create time series calculations and level-based measures:

For more information about these functions, see "Aggregate Functions" and "Calendar Date/Time Functions."

Embedded Database Functions

You can create analyses by directly calling database functions from either Oracle Business Intelligence, or by using a Logical column (in the Logical Table source) within the metadata repository. Key uses for these functions include the ability to pass through expressions to get advanced calculations, as well as the ability to access custom written functions or procedures on the underlying database. Supported functions include EVALUATE, EVALUATE_AGGR, and EVALUATE_PREDICATE. See "Database Functions." for information.

Enhancements to Formatting

This release includes enhancements to the way that default formatting is handled. Conditional formatting has been enhanced to work with pivot tables and with hierarchical columns. For complete information, see Chapter 7, "Formatting Analyses, Views, and Dashboard Pages."

Enhancements to the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog

The Oracle BI Presentation Catalog is a powerful, underlying storage directory-based system that contains the objects (dashboards, scorecards, prompts, and KPIs for example) that you create. If you use BI Publisher, then the catalog also contains BI Publisher data and objects (data models and schedules, for example). Using the catalog, you can:

In addition to these tasks, administrators can:

For complete information, see Chapter 13, "Managing Objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog."

Full-Text Search Capability

This release provides a mechanism for searching for objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog that is similar to a full-text search. You can search for objects by various attributes, such as name and description. See "Full-Text Catalog Search" for information.

Actions

In this release, you can create actions that navigate to related content or that invoke operations, functions, or processes in external systems. You can include actions in analyses, dashboard pages, agents, scorecard objectives, scorecard initiatives, and KPIs. End users can then invoke these actions, for example, as they gain insight from analyzing data in analyses or from viewing dashboards. For information, see Chapter 10, "Working with Actions."

Conditions

In this release, you can create new objects called conditions. Conditions return a single Boolean value that is based on the evaluation of an analysis or of a key performance indicator (KPI). You can use conditions to determine whether agents deliver their content and execute their actions, whether actions links are displayed in dashboard pages, and whether sections and their content are displayed in dashboard pages. For complete information, see Chapter 9, "Working with Conditions."

Enhancements to Agents

In this release, the functionality of agents (previously called iBots) has been enhanced to incorporate support for conditions and for actions. For information, see Chapter 8, "Delivering Content."

Enhancements to Compound Layout

In this release, the use of the compound layout was enhanced. For information, see "Creating Additional Compound Layouts."

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

In this release, you can create KPIs to represent business measures or metrics (Units Shipped, Manufacturing Costs for example) that you want to monitor, improve, and use to evaluate the performance of the objectives and initiatives that comprise levels of organizational strategy. Use KPIs to perform these tasks:

To proactively respond to changes in KPI performance, you can create the following:

See "Using KPIs and KPI Watchlists" and "Creating KPI Watchlists" for information.

Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management

In this release, you can use Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management to articulate, evaluate (scorecard), and evolve the performance of your organization or key business areas. You can use Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management to define, depict, and monitor the progress of the strategic goals and requirements (objectives) key to corporate functions, and the tasks and projects (initiatives) that are required to achieve those goals.

For information, see Chapter 12, "Scorecarding."