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Managing Oracle BI Discoverer Preferences 9-1
9
Managing Oracle BI Discoverer Preferences
This chapter only applies to Discoverer Plus Relational and Discoverer Viewer with relational and OLAP worksheets. For more information about configuring Discoverer
Plus OLAP, see Chapter 5, Configuring Discoverer Plus OLAP
. This chapter explains how to manage Oracle BI Discoverer preferences, and contains
the following topics:
■
Section 9.1, What are Discoverer preferences?
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Section 9.2, About Discoverer system preferences
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Section 9.3, About Discoverer user preferences
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Section 9.8, About migrating Discoverer preferences
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Section 9.4, How to set default user preferences for all users
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Section 9.5, How to set individual preferences for specific users
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Section 9.6, List of Discoverer user preferences
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Section 9.7, How to convert a Discoverer preferences file to a different platform format
9.1 What are Discoverer preferences?
Discoverer preferences are settings that define the Discoverer environment and control the behavior of Discoverer Plus and Discoverer Viewer.
There are two types of Discoverer preferences:
■
Discoverer system preferences for more information, see Section 9.2, About
Discoverer system preferences
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Discoverer user preferences for more information, see Section 9.3, About
Discoverer user preferences
9.2 About Discoverer system preferences
Discoverer system preferences are created and set during installation. Typically you never have to change the Discoverer system preferences. System preferences are stored
as follows:
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On UNIX systems, the Discoverer system preferences are stored in the reg_key.dc file.
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On Windows systems, the Discoverer system preferences are stored in the Windows Registry and the reg_key.dc file.
9-2 Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer
Figure 9–1 Discoverer System preferences?
9.3 About Discoverer user preferences
During installation, Discoverer uses factory-supplied default values stored in defaults.txt to create user preferences for all Discoverer users stored in pref.txt.
Figure 9–2 Discoverer user preferences
When a new user starts an Oracle BI Discoverer session for the first time, the settings in the pref.txt file take effect as that user’s default settings.
After installation, the user preferences can be changed in the following ways:
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Discoverer end users can change their own user preferences using options within Discoverer Plus or Discoverer Viewer. For example, a Discoverer Viewer end user
Managing Oracle BI Discoverer Preferences 9-3
might click Preferences and change their personal preferences. When an individual user changes a preference, this change is stored in the reg_key.dc file on the
Discoverer middle tier to find out the location of this file, see Section A.1,
Discoverer file locations .
Individual preferences are stored for each user as a unique combination of database and userid in the reg_key.dc file, and loaded whenever the user starts a
new session. Therefore, users can log on from different client machines and still have their individual settings take effect.
For example, a Discoverer Plus end user might select Tools | Options to display the Options dialog and change the Number of rows per page value to 15. The
following entry might be stored in reg_key.dc for that user:
RowsPerPage=D4:4:00,00,00,0F where 0F is the hexadecimal value of 15.
Note: Unless a user changes a preference value, the value of that preference is as
specified in the pref.txt file.
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You can change the default preference values that Discoverer end users are presented with by changing the values in the pref.txt file. For the changes to take
effect, you must apply the preferences. For more information about changing default preference values, see
Section 9.4, How to set default user preferences for all users
.
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You can change an individual user’s preferences using the Discoverer preferences command line utility. Changes that you make are stored in the reg_key.dc file for
more information about changing individuals users’ preferences, see Section 9.5,
How to set individual preferences for specific users .
Notes
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On UNIX implementations, the .reg_key.dc is a hidden UNIX file that is, the filename is prefixed with a .. Type the command ls -al to list hidden files.
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Never edit the reg_key.dc file directly. You must only change values in reg_key.dc using the Discoverer preferences command line utility dis51pr to find out the
location of this file, see Section A.1, Discoverer file locations
.
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If you delete the reg_key.dc file, you lose preferences set by Discoverer end users or preferences set using the Discoverer preferences command line utility. Default
preferences stored in pref.txt are applied.
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The factory supplied default values for pref.txt are contained in the defaults.txt file to find out the location of this file, see
Section A.1, Discoverer file locations . If
you make a mistake when editing the pref.txt file or lose or corrupt the file, refer to defaults.txt to restore the content of pref.txt to the original values.
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Maximum values for numeric preferences are documented in the pref.txt file.
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You can edit the pref.txt file without shutting down the Preferences component. In other words, users can continue working while you edit the pref.txt file.
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If you want to deploy Discoverer on multiple machines, you might want to use a centralized set of Discoverer preferences. You do this by specifying one Discoverer
Preferences server machine and turning off the Discoverer Preferences component on the other machines. For more information, see
Section 6.6, About the Discoverer Preferences component in a multiple-machine environment
.
9-4 Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer
9.4 How to set default user preferences for all users
