Discoverer Installation Instruction & Features

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Download Oracle Discoverer suit from the Oracle website.

Go to the link http://otn.Oracle.com/software/products/discoverer/index.html

Select Oracle9iDS

Click on the highlighted link, in the Oracle9iDS Discoverer, which is the second link, Discoverer Administration Edition 4.1.37 (Part of Oracle9iDS v1.0.2.4)

It will take you to the license page. Check all the ELIGIBILITY EXPORT RESTRICTIONS and click on "I Accept".

When you accept the agreement, it will take you to the download of zip files for both Administration Edition and Desktop Edition. Download both of them.

It may take you to the sign up page for your username and password. Or it may prompt you to file download page. For me, it one time asked for the username password and the other time directed to the download page. If you have username and password enter it or click on "sign up now" to get one.

Download both the zip files in your folder.

 

Administrative Edition

 

Desktop Edition

Now you have zipped file of both administrative and desktop version

Unzip the files to your folder.

Run the setup for Administrative Edition

 

Run the setup to install Desktop Edition versions

Note: Discoverer does not’t support multiple homes so if you have Oracle client installed on your machine uninstall it and Install the discoverer on its DEFAULT_HOME. Don't change anything for Oracle Home when it asks. Take all the defaults as shown in the screen shot. You can install the client again with different HOME.

Now you have discoverer on your machine. You can check- From the Windows Start menu, choose

Programs > Oracle Discoverer 4 > Administration Edition

Programs > Oracle Discoverer 4 > Desktop Edition

You have successfully installed Oracle Discoverer.

 

Oracle Net8 Configuration

From the Windows Start menu, choose

Programs > Oracle for Windows NT > Oracle Net8 Assistant

 

Highlight Service Names and go to Edit. It will give option to create.

It brings to Service Name Wizard. You can give any name you want and click Next. This service name you are going to use it for connect String.

Select networking protocol as TCP/IP and click Next>

 

Give the Host Name. Host Name is for the computer where your database is located. You can contact TA for that. In the example below, dbcourse5.umuc.edu was used for Host Name and 1521 for Port Number. Click Next.

Please make sure that you type an appropriate host name. If you are not sure what UNIX server is used for your class, please consult Server/Course Mapping

Enter database instance name which is also called SID. You can contact your TA or Instructor. Click Next>

When you will click on Test Service it will prompt you for Logon information. Don't hit Finish

Enter your username and password. Hit Test. Don't hit Finish

If the Logon information is correct, it will show the window with successful connection. Make sure your SID is correct. Click Done when finished.

When you are successful your configuration will show in the Service Names. Close the window.

It will ask you to save the Network Configuration that you created. Click Save .

You have successfully done Net Configuration.

 

Next Step is Create End user layer using Administration Edition.

  1. Start the Administrator Edition by choosing Oracle Discoverer 4|Administration Edition from the Start menu. This displays the Connect to Oracle Discoverer Administration Edition dialog box.

Username : Specify a Username with DBA privileges.

Password : Specify the Password for the user ID specified in the Username field.

Connect : (Use the Service Name you gave when doing net configuration. I used test and dbtest). Specify your database, using following guidelines:

ODBC :<data source name>

If there are no existing End User Layers, Discoverer Administration Edition displays a message asking if you want to create an EUL now. Click Yes to open the EUL Manager dialog box.

Note: If one or more End User Layers already exist, Discoverer Administration Edition starts the Load Wizard. EUL Manager allows you to create manage different End User Layer. At this point you can create New EUL.

Click Create an EUL..
The Create EUL Wizard opens. Use this wizard to create your user ID for this tutorial.

Make the following selections and text entries:

Select Create a new user.

Clear Grant access to PUBLIC.

Clear New EUL is for use by Oracle Applications users ONLY

In the User field, specify admintutor[your first and last initials].
This will be your user ID for the tutorial. Click Next

Click Next>
This displays Create EUL Wizard: Step 2.

Select the default and temporary tablespaces.
For example, select USER_DATA as your default tablespace and TEMP as your temporary tablespace.

Click Finish.

When Discoverer Administration Edition builds the EUL, a message displays telling you that the EUL has been created successfully. Click OK.

You have successfully created an EUL.

 

Installing the Tutorial

To get you acquainted with the features of the Discoverer, we will work with the tutorial. Click Yes to the message Do you want to install the tutorial data into your EUL?

Clicking Yes will take you to Install Tutorial Wizard

Click Next>

 

When the tutorial is installed properly, you get this message

 

You have successfully installed tutorial.

Click OK

It will ask you to connect as the owner of the EUL. Click Yes

Create a Business Area.

Select Create a New Business Area.

With this selection, the Load Wizard asks Where do you want to load the metadata from? Your answer to this question tells the Load Wizard where to find the database objects that you want to load into the business area Click Next. Do not click Finish. This opens Load Wizard: Step 2

1. Ensure that the database link is set to Default Database.

2. Tick VIDEO4 only.

The tables and views that will be loaded into the business area are objects owned by the user IDs you select.

3.Ensure that the Load the objects that match field contains %.

Click Next.

This opens Load Wizard: Step 3.

Load Wizard: Step 3 is where you select the specific tables or views that you want to load into the Business Area. The left hand side (marked Available) lists all of the objects in tables and views that are owned by the VIDEO4 user ID.

To include a table or view in your Business Area, you need to move it to the right hand side (marked Selected).

1. Expand the VIDEO4 user ID (click the plus (+) symbol next to VIDEO4).
This reveals the tables owned by VIDEO4.

2.Move the following tables from the Available list to the Selected list.
Ensure that these are selected in the following order:

PRODUCT

STORE

TIMES

SALES_FACT

There are three ways of moving tables from one list to the other:

Drag & Drop
Drag one or more tables from one list to the other.

Include / Exclude buttons
Select one or more tables in a list and then click either the Include (right arrow) or Exclude (left arrow) button.

Double-click
Double-click a table to move it from one list to the other.

Screen Shot shows how the wizard should look when you're finished.

Click Next. This opens Load Wizard: Step 4.

Load Wizard: Step 4 enables you to:

control how the database column names are mapped to Discoverer item names

specify how joins are created between items

specify how date hierarchies are generated

specify the default aggregate on data points

specify which types of items you want Discoverer Administration Edition to generate lists of values for.
Click Next. This opens Load Wizard: Step 5.

1.Specify a name for the Business Area in the Name field.

2.Specify a description for the Business Area in the Description field.
This step is optional.

3.If you want to review or change the settings you have specified on previous pages of the wizard, use the Back button.

4.If you are happy with the settings you have specified, click Finish. It will open up a Work Area.

Click the plus (+) symbol next to New Video Store.

You can read the Administration Guide to learn more features.

You have finished setting up business area.

 

Working with the Desktop Edition

From the Windows Start menu, choose Programs> Oracle Discoverer 4 > Desktop Edition

Note: For the desktop edition, you have to use the username and the password for the End User Layer you created with the Administrative edition. Think...

Clicking on connect opens workbook wizard.

Open an existing work book the one you created in the Administrative edition or you can create a new. For now use the existing one.

Select My computer. Discoverer displays a file Open dialog. Navigate to the file [Oracle_HOME].dis, and click Open. Oracle_HOME] is the directory for your Oracle products set up by your Discoverer Administrator

Select VIDSTR4 and Click Open

 

Open the work book in current database account.

It will ask you to run the query. Clicking yes will execute the query and display it in the tabular form.

Now Video Store Book opens. This is how your workbook will look like.

Play with all the menu buttons and see what all you can do.

You can change the format if you want. The other features that you would be interested in are:

Drilling into Data

Pivoting Data for Comparison and Analysis

Graphing Data Trends

Printing and Saving your Customized Views

Exposing Exceptions in your Data

Drilling to Related Data

Renaming a Worksheet

Exporting your Data to other Formats

Creating a Workbook

Performing Calculations

Scheduling a Workbook

Prerequisites to run Discoverer Desktop

To run Discoverer Desktop, a Discoverer End User Layer must already exist. You need the Admin Tool to create the Discoverer End User Layer - which sits a layer above your database tables - a Meta view of your base tables/views. Discoverer Administrator and Discoverer Desktop are part of Oracle Developer Suite

The Discoverer End user tool can only connect to valid End User layers - which have to be created in the Admin Tool first. So you can't use it without the Admin Tool.

Basically to run a simple Discoverer installation - Client Server - you need the Admin Tool installed on a PC (to create the End User Layer) and the User Tool installed on a PC to view / access the End User Layer (created in the Admin Tool) - and you also need an Oracle database instance and db account to install the EUL tables into - plus some tables and data to actually view/report on.

The Application Server Layer can be used to Web deploy the tools, another layer above the Discoverer EUL and User Tool.

Read the documentation which comes with installation and work with the tutorial example. Explore all the features mentioned above. It's fun !

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