Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Install and Setup BI Publisher for Siebel Reporting

Siebel Business Applications ship with pre-developed BI Publisher reports. Using views in a Siebel application, you can run such pre-installed reports or create your own custom reports in both the connected and disconnected modes. Please take a look at ‘Siebel Reporting Architecture with BI Publisher’ for the detail architecture of connected and disconnected modes. In disconnected mode, BI Publisher libraries are already installed as part of the Siebel installation by making the core libraries available (in $SIEBEL_HOME/CLASSES) for report generation. However, if you want to use Siebel Reports in connected mode through a Siebel Web Client , you must install and configure BI Publisher Enterprise Server.

So today I’ll talk about how to install the BI Publisher Enterprise Server for Siebel.

Step 1 – Make sure that you have installed necessary pre-requisite software

There are some different software pieces that you need to complete the Siebel reports with BI Publisher development.

  • MS Word

    BI Publisher uses MS Word to develop and design the report layout, RTF Template.
  • BI Publisher Desktop Client – MS Word Add-in (Template Builder)

    This MS Word Add-in called BI Publisher Template Builder provides you a graphical interface to help you develop and design the RTF Template easier and allow you to preview the report final output in many different formats. It is a MS Word Add-in that you launch from inside the MS Word.
  • Siebel Tools

    If you want to create a new Integration Object you need the Siebel Tools.
  • JDK (Java Development Kit)

    BI Publisher Enterprise Server is certified with JDK 1.5. or later so make sure you have installed the JDK 1.5 on a machine where you will install the BI Publisher Enterprise Server.

Step 2 - Download BI Publisher Enterprise Server

You can download the BI Publisher Enterprise Server media from Oracle E-Delivery page.

Step 3 - Install BI Publisher Enterprise Server

Once you have downloaded you can follow the installation guide. The installation itself is pretty simple straight forward for a basic installation. Once you click on setup.exe (for Windows) then you follow the instruction with the installation wizard to complete the installation. For an advanced installation I have written a few posts before, so please take a look at them for the detail.

Change the location of the BI Publisher repository (Optional)

Note that, by default, the Siebel application is looking for the ‘oracle.home’ JVM property value and wants to substitute the value inside the path. If you have installed the BI Publisher Enterprise Server with its embedded OC4 install option then this ‘oracle.home’ property value is automatically set by the installation. If not, then you need to manually change this value after the installation. If you are installation with WebLogic Server then you need to change this value before the installation. Please take a look at ‘Installation for Oracle WebLogic Server’ for the detail. 

How to Change ‘oracle.home’

Open WEB-INF/xmlp-server-config.xml file and change the following to the appropriate path.

<file path="${oracle.home}/xdo/repository"/>

Step 4 - Define the outbound Web service for the BI Publisher Server

  1. Log in to the Siebel application with administrator privileges.
  2. Navigate to the Administration - Web Services screen, then Outbound Web Services view. 

    Admin_webservice
  3. In the Name field, query for ‘PublicReportService’, and then change the BI Publisher Server machine name to your BI Publisher Server using the following format:

    :/xmlpserver/services/PublicReportService">:/xmlpserver/services/PublicReportService">:/xmlpserver/services/PublicReportService">:/xmlpserver/services/PublicReportService">http://<host.domain>:<port>/xmlpserver/services/PublicReportService

    where:
    host is the full path for your BI Publisher Server
    port is the port the BI Publisher Server uses

    Example:
    http://da78112.oracle.com:9074/xmlpserver/services/PublicReportService
  4. Verify that the BI Publisher Server is running and ready to start generating reports.

Step 5 - Copy JAR files to the BI Publisher Server

For successful report generation when running Siebel Reports, you must copy the custom Java classes—that is, the JAR (Java Archive) files—associated with individual reports. By default, these Java functions are not available on the BI Publisher Server.

To copy JAR Files to the BI Publisher Server

  1. Copy the following files from $SIEBEL_HOME/CLASSES to:
    OC4J_HOME/j2ee/home/applications/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/WEB-INF/lib

    - XSLFunctions.JAR
    - SiebelCustomXMLP.JAR
    - SiebelCustomXMLP_SIA.JAR 
  2. Enable external file references by performing the following tasks: 

    2.1. - Log in to the BI Publisher Server.
    2.2. - Click the Admin tab, and then select Runtime Configuration and Properties. 
    2.3. - Change the Default value for the Disable External Reference attribute to FALSE.
  3. Restart OC4J.

Step 6 - Enable Siebel Reports

Before using Siebel Reports, the XMLP Report Server Component component must be enabled. By enabling the XMLP Report Server Component, reports appear in the Reports Menu drop-down list in Siebel Business Applications.

To enable Siebel Reports

  1. Log in to the Siebel application with system administrator privileges
  2. Navigate to Administration - Server Configuration, Enterprises, and then Component Groups
  3. In the Component Groups list, select XMLP Report, and then click Enable.
  4. Click the Synchronize view tab, and then in the Component list, select XMLP Report Server
  5. Click Synchronize
  6. Restart the Siebel Server

Step 7 - Configure Database Authentication and Security

Siebel Reports supports the following two types of authentication:

  • Server Component-based authentication - Administrators must specify the BI Publisher user ID and password at the XMLP Report Server Component level.
  • External authentication (LDAP) - Administrators configure LDAP for both the BI Publisher Server and the Siebel Server. Using external authentication is optional.

In this post I’m going to talk about the ‘Server Component-based Authentication’. In order to call the BI Publisher’s web service you need to pass a pair of username and password. So basically you need to register a proxy user in Siebel so that the XMLP Report Server component within the Siebel application can use this proxy username and password to get authenticated first when it calls the BI Publisher’s web service to generate a report. The password can be encrypted.

To set the BI Publisher Server user ID and password

  1. Log in to your Siebel application.
  2. Navigate to Administration - Server Configuration, Servers, and then Components.
  3. Query for XMLP Report Server, and then select it.
  4. Click the Parameters tab and query for BIP*.
  5. Enter the user ID and password used to access the BI Publisher Server in the Default Value fields of the BIP Server Login and BIP Server Password parameters.

Step 8 - Configure Font Files

To make sure fonts display properly in Siebel Reports, you need to copy the font files, which you want to use in your reports, to a directory on the Siebel Server machine where the XMLP Report Server Component is enabled. This task is typically performed as part of the Siebel Reports installation. However, you can perform this task later or at any given time.

On the Siebel Server machine where the XMLP Report Server Component is enabled, copy the fonts you want to use for your reports from, for example, C:\WINDOWS\Fonts directory, to the $JRE_HOME\fonts directory.

That’s pretty much it. Tomorrow, I’ll talk about some tasks that you as Administrator want to perform for the Siebel reporting. So stay tuned! 

31 comments:

  1. Hi -

    I am using Siebel SEA 8.0.0.5. will this work?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The BI Publisher integration is introduced with 8.1.1. The backport is planned for future.

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  3. Where can i find the list of prepackaged BIP reports provided with Siebel 8.1 ?

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  4. Hello,

    I have siebel 7.8.2 on my Local and want to convert my actuate report to BI publisher.
    Do i need to get some patch which support BI on 7.8.2

    Like we have actuate designer to develop our report and then the ROX file we can put in Report folder of our local Client and test it locally, do we have somthing like this in BI as well.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Embedded version of BI Publisher integration is only available with 8.1.1 today. There is a plan to backport the support for the older versions but the time is not TBD. If your version is 7.8.2 you will either upgrade to 8.1.1 or setup BI Publisher Enterprise server separately and connect to the Siebel database directly through JDBC.

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  6. VJ, let me see if there is such list or not and will get back to you on this.

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  7. In 8.1, if you go to Siebel Client\XMLP directory, you will be able to see all the Pre packaged report templates. You may alternatively see all the report template records in Site Map--> Administration - BIP Reports--> Report Template Registration.

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  8. What are the install steps for getting the dedicated web client to work? I have a prerelease of 8008 but can't figure it out. The README file doesn't mention what changes need to get done to the CFG file etc

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  9. we are using siebel 8.0, we nedd to use BI publisher or e.Actuate reports

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  10. Now there are BI Publisher integration patches for each Siebel release, I will write about this some time this week, so you don't need to upgrade if you can't.

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  11. Hi Rene, What is the 'dedicated web client' ? Is that the web client or it's different ?

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  12. Hi kanichiro nishida,

    In my scenario we have a application on siebel 7.7 which is goin to be upgraded to 8.1.1.
    at present we have actuate 7 reports in siebel 7.7..We are planning to implement Oracle BI publisher reports in 8.1.1..
    Do we need to upgrade actuate 7 reports to actuate 8 reports and then migrate them to Oracle BI publisher or can we migrate actuate 7 reports to Oracle BI Publisher and use them with Siebel 8.1.1 Upgraded application without upgrading reports...
    Please clarify ..
    Your help would be greatful..

    Thank you,
    swetha

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  13. Hi Swetha, I would recommend you upgrade to the latest version 8.1.1.1 and then migrate to BI Publisher reports for the reports you guys have developed. All the canned reports are provided as BI Publisher reports in 8.1.1 (and 8.1.1.1) now so no need for the migration for those reports.

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  14. Hello,

    I'm using Siebel 8.1.1.1 and I've installed BIP (10.1.3.4), but some steps didn't work, like "Upload Pre-Configurated Reports" from Siebel to BIP. While I'm trying to solve this problem, I'm creating some reports direct on BIP, using SQL Querys.

    Do you Know if it's possible to create a Report on BIP (using SQL Query) and after upload on Siebel to be executed directly from Siebel Users ?
    I prefer to use SQL Query instead of IO, because I think it could be faster.

    Thanks in advance

    Tiago

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  15. hi, please help me. BI Publisher X Siebel 8.0
    When generate report by WebService, my report only display data XML, but I want to generate output pdf.
    What is happening?
    Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  16. How are you calling the report ? What do you mean by 'generate report by WebService'. The BI Publisher integration uses the IO. Are you using WebService as a data source from Bi publisher UI ?

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  17. Hi,
    We install the Siebel 8.0.0.8 fix pack and the qf on top of 8.0.0.5. After restarting the services and drill down to the component group and query for XMLP Report Server, we get nothing. what are we missing? Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hello!

    maybe you can help me with the following issue - national characters are not displayed in output PDF (question marks are visible instead).
    We are running BIP reports on Siebel 7.8.2.15, the rtf template is used for the reports generation, in the preview of the report the text is rendered correctly.

    Any ideas??

    Many thanks

    ReplyDelete
  19. you need to configure your font mapping.
    http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12844_01/doc/bip.1013/e12187/T518230T522345.htm#4538355

    ReplyDelete
  20. Dear Kanichiro,

    thanks for the answer. Your advice partially works with one exception - I am not able to create mapping between:

    Times New Roman / Normal / Normal
    and
    Times-Roman / Type 1

    After applying nothing happens but BIP window gets refreshed.

    ReplyDelete
  21. ok, it works... copied the missing fonts to

    \OraHome_1\jdk\jre\lib\fonts

    and created mapping between
    Times New Roman / Normal / Normal
    and
    times.ttf / TrueType

    Best Regards

    ReplyDelete
  22. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  23. Hi, I need to configure Emailing BIP Report pdf as attachment in siebel, can any one guide me on this.

    Thanks
    KN

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  24. Hi All,

    have anyone using BI Publisher with siebel SEA 8.0.0.5 ? cause I am using Siebel SEA 8.0.0.5. and facing some issue. please advice...

    Thanks in advanced

    Rgds,
    GS

    ReplyDelete
  25. Hi Kanichiro,

    I install the Siebel 8.0.0.5 After restarting the services and drill down to the component group and query for XMLP Report Server, we get nothing but when we using srvrmgr and start XMLReport is successful but i still can't find the XMLP Report on siebel server configuration web client. what i'm missing? do you have proper guide document for this case. please advice

    Thanks
    Gs

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  26. Have you followed all the steps described at the document ?
    http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14004_01/books/Reports/ReportsTOC.html
    If you still have the problem I'd recommend you file a SR.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Hi Kanichiro,

    could you give me some clarification how integrates Siebel - OBI Publisher - OBI Standard Edition One server? What I have done: 1) installed OBI Publisher Standalone version and configured Siebel Security Model; 2) some time latter I installed OBI Standard Edition One which overwrote all OBI Publisher Standalone security settings... Now I cannot set "Siebel" security model for my Pubsliher because such option is provided. What is the correct approach for that? Does it mean integration between Siebel and OBI Standard Edition One is not foreseen?

    Many thanks.

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  28. hi team,
    In BIP web application how can we create a user and how we assign roles to that particular user.

    Thanks,
    Maruthi.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Thanks for your posts, Kan. I have made use of lots of what you have shared.
    In a matter related to this post, would you know where I can find information about installation/deployment of BIP Server in a clustered Siebel environment? I was only able to find a document for BIP Enterprise (which is not the case here) from 2007! I would highly appreciate if you know and you could share where I can find more about this. Thanks.

    Roque Daudt

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  30. hello i want xml publisher software where i want to download that plzzzzz
    send to me that site address .to raja.bodiginchela@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete