Analytics Software

Hi,

I've rolled out a relatively complicated BI Publisher report at a client who is mostly an OBIEE shop. We'd like to add functionality, but I'm unsure of the best way to do this. I thought I'd just jot down the requirements, and see if anyone has a really slick, sophisticated, easy and clean way to do this (because I haven't thought of any).

1. Report must be "pixel perfect", thus why I'm using BI publisher

2. Report combines data from multiple OBIEE queries together. There is no way to simplify this to a single query (right now report requires 6 or 7 queries to get data for all the different sections on it)

3. End users need to be able to select data very flexibly. i.e. Searching by project IDs, finding project descriptions that contain certain words, finding projects belong to all contracts managed by a certain person, etc. Because of this I think I'm limited to using OBIEE dashboards - BI publisher lists of values just aren't flexible enough

4. Currently, there are 8 different "flavors" of the report. This is currently implemented as 8 different BI Publisher templates on a single report / set of queries. For example, users can choose to run either a detail (includes individual transactions) or summary report (no individual transactions listed). They can pick either Life to Date or Year to Date formats, and they can pick "cost only" or "cost plus revenue". Right now, I have a single set of queries in BI publisher - but that's inefficient. If a user wishes to run a Year to Date summary cost only report - the queries are still also pulling back the Life to date numbers and revenue numbers - even though the template won't show them. This is both good and bad...good from a standpoint that if they switch templates the queries don't need to be rerun. But bad because if they only need one template, I'm running a lot of unnecessary queries. Not sure if I want to change this or not.

5. As a new requirement, users would like to be able to select multiple contracts, projects, and/or activities and run a "rollup" report that summarizes whatever was selected. Currently users can pick 1 and only 1 project at a time. But we'd like them to be able to select 5 projects (for instance) and run a "rollup" report. Or maybe pick a project, and then only run a report for 20 of the 30 activities underneath that project.


Right now I've implemented the report as a BI Publisher report that is passed a parameter for the (single) Project ID and a fiscal month, and then runs the required 6 or so queries directly against the OBIEE server. The only way I can think of meeting requirement #5 though would be to actually use answers results sets, filtered on the dashboard prompts. That would allow the ability to select multiple projects, multiple activities, etc and report the rollup amounts in a report.

Can anyone think of a "slicker" way to do this? Having a dashboard page with lots of "hidden" sections for individual answers queries (so end users don't see them) is kinda clunky.

p.s. Will BI Publisher 11g offer any other alternatives?

Thanks!
Scott