How to create public connections

Managing Oracle BI Discoverer Connections 3-5

3.5 About specifying whether Discoverer end users can create their own private connections

You can specify whether Discoverer end users can create their own private connections. For more information, see Section 3.8, How to specify whether Discoverer end users can create private connections. When you enable Discoverer end users to create their own private connections: ■ End users can specify any login details such as username, password, database, and EUL for the connections that they create. ■ End users can open any workbook in any EUL to which they successfully connect if they have sufficient database privileges. When end users create private connections: ■ If they specify a database by using an alias, they can connect to databases that have an entry in the tnsnames.ora file. ■ If they specify a database by using the full tnsnames entry for the database SID, address, and port, they can connect to databases that do not have an entry in the tnsnames.ora file on the Discoverer middle tier. For example, you might enter the following string in the Database field: DESCRIPTION=ADDRESS_LIST=ADDRESS = PROTOCOL=TCPHOST=machine_ a.company.comPORT=1521CONNECT_DATA=SERVICE_ NAME=database1 Ensure that you remove spaces from the TNS string. For information about the location of the tnsnames.ora file, see Section A.1, Discoverer file locations.

3.6 How to create public connections

You create a public connection when you want to provide predefined login details to Discoverer Plus and Discoverer Viewer users. For example, you might create a public connection called Start tutorial, which connects to the tutorial database as a tutorial user. To create a public connection: 1. Start Fusion Middleware Control. For more information, see Section 4.1.2, How to start Fusion Middleware Control and display the Farm Home page. Note: Public connections are not available to Discoverer Plus OLAP users. If you disallow private connections, Discoverer Plus OLAP users always have to connect to Discoverer directly. Note: When you create a public connection to a multidimensional data source, the public connection is available only to Discoverer Viewer and Discoverer Portlet Provider users. Public OLAP connections are not available to Discoverer Plus OLAP users. 3-6 Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer 2. Navigate to the Fusion Middleware Control Discoverer Home page. For more information, see Section 4.1.3, How to display the Fusion Middleware Control Discoverer Home page and Discoverer component Home pages.

3. From the Discoverer menu, select Administration.

The Discoverer Administration page is displayed. The Database Details column on the Discoverer connections page is visible only in Internet Explorer. If existing public connections are not displayed under Public Connections, then it means that the Oracle Business Intelligence installation is not associated with an Oracle Internet Directory and with the two database schemas that Discoverer requires the PStore and Portlet Provider schemas. For more information, see Section 1.3, About Oracle BI Discoverer installations.

4. Click Create

The Create Public Connection page is displayed.

5. Enter the connection details and then click OK to save the details.

The new connection that you created is displayed in the Discoverer Public Connections list. Managing Oracle BI Discoverer Connections 3-7 When Discoverer end users connect to Discoverer Plus or Discoverer Viewer, they can select the connection that you created. Notes ■ For information about finding out the unique ID of a connection, see Section 12.4.3, How to find out the connection ID of a connection . ■ If you specify a database by using the full tnsnames entry for the database SID, address, and port, you can connect to databases that do not have an entry in the tnsnames.ora file on the Discoverer middle tier. For example, you might enter the following string in the Database field: DESCRIPTION=ADDRESS_LIST=ADDRESS = PROTOCOL=TCPHOST=machine_ a.company.comPORT=1521CONNECT_DATA=SERVICE_ NAME=database1 Ensure that you remove spaces from the TNS string. ■ By default, users must enter the TNS alias of the database when creating connections to Discoverer. You can, however, allow users to enter a connect string rather than a TNS alias, by setting the environment variable DISCOVERER_ ALLOW_DB_CONNECT_STRING to YES.

3.7 How to delete public connections