What properties can objects in the Discoverer Catalog have? What is the architecture of the Discoverer Catalog? Differences between the Discoverer Catalog and the BI Beans Catalog

5-2 Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer 5.1.1 What is the Discoverer Catalog? The Discoverer Catalog is a repository for storing and retrieving definitions of objects for Discoverer Plus OLAP. There is one Discoverer Catalog per database. The Discoverer Catalog can also be used by applications that are built with Oracle Business Intelligence Beans BI Beans. With Discoverer Plus OLAP, end users store in the Discoverer Catalog objects such as workbooks, calculations, and saved selections and share objects with others who have access to the Discoverer Catalog. In a BI Beans application, a user can create a graph and store it in the Discoverer Catalog. If another user has appropriate access, that user can retrieve the graph that was stored in the Discoverer Catalog and insert the graph into a new worksheet in Discoverer Plus OLAP. Oracle Business Intelligence creates a new user on the Oracle Business Intelligence middle tier installation called D4OSYS to hold the Discoverer Catalog. The Discoverer Catalog provides security at the object level, by allowing users and system administrators to specify privileges for certain objects. The objects are saved in the Oracle database in XML format. Note: Do not confuse the Discoverer Catalog, which contains object definitions, with the OLAP Catalog. 5.1.2 What is the OLAP Catalog? The OLAP Catalog defines logical multidimensional objects that can be mapped either to columns in the tables of a star or snowflake schema or to multidimensional objects in an analytic workspace. Each database instance contains only one OLAP Catalog. An analytic workspace stores multidimensional data objects and procedures that are written in the OLAP DML. The OLAP DML is a data manipulation language that is understood by the Oracle OLAP calculation engine. The OLAP DML extends the analytic capabilities of querying languages such as SQL and the OLAP API to include forecasting, modeling, and what-if scenarios. For more information, see Oracle OLAP Reference. 5.1.3 What properties can objects in the Discoverer Catalog have? The objects in the Discoverer Catalog contain numerous properties. The Name, Description, and Keywords properties can be modified by end users. The Created On, Created By, Modified On, Modified By, and Type properties cannot be modified by users. The values of these properties are assigned by Discoverer Plus OLAP. 5.1.4 What is the architecture of the Discoverer Catalog? The Discoverer Catalog exists in the Oracle database, along with the OLAP Catalog and the EUL schema. The following list describes how Discoverer Plus Relational and Discoverer Plus OLAP access these pieces: ■ Discoverer Plus Relational accesses data and workbooks from the EUL. The database contains multiple EULs, business areas, and folders. ■ Discoverer Plus OLAP accesses data from the OLAP Catalog and accesses workbooks and related objects from the Discoverer Catalog. The OLAP Catalog contains the Measures folder and cubes of OLAP data. The D4OSYS schema holds the Discoverer Catalog and its objects workbooks, calculations, saved selections, and so on. Figure 5–1 provides a visual representation of this architecture. Configuring Discoverer Plus OLAP 5-3 Figure 5–1 Discoverer Catalog architecture

5.1.5 Differences between the Discoverer Catalog and the BI Beans Catalog

The objects in the Discoverer Catalog can be used by BI Beans applications. However, the Discoverer Catalog does differ from the BI Beans Catalog, as described in the following list: ■ The BI Beans Catalog stores many kinds of objects. The Discoverer Catalog stores only folders, workbooks, saved selections, calculations, shortcuts, user preferences, and formats. ■ You can have only one Discoverer Catalog per database instance, but you can have multiple BI Beans Catalogs per database instance. The Discoverer Catalog resides in its own schema called D4OSYS. The objects in the Discoverer Catalog refer only to OLAP metadata objects in the same database instance. ■ The BI Beans Catalog stores user and role information in itself. The Discoverer Catalog obtains user and role information from the database. The database users and roles must be authorized to use the Discoverer Catalog through the assignment of the D4OPUB role. ■ The BI Beans Catalog does not provide user management, so application developers must manage users themselves. The Discoverer Catalog provides powerful user management features. ■ BI Beans offers the use of a remote Catalog and a local, or file-based, Catalog. The Discoverer Catalog functions the same as a BI Beans remote Catalog. Searching of the Discoverer Catalog is not exposed in Discoverer Plus OLAP in the current release but is available in Discoverer Viewer. See the BI Beans Help system for complete information on the BI Beans Catalog.

5.2 Maintaining the Discoverer Catalog