Oracle has added UPK’s for PeopleTools 8.52 Reporting Tools besides the already available UPK’s for PeopleTools 8.51 Reporting Tools and Test Framework. Available for download on Oracle Software Delivery Cloud (formally known as eDelivery).

Yesterday (January 7th 2012), I attended the online Web Seminar  Why to use BI Publisher? New Features in PeopleTools 8.52 and a few interesting topics were handled that are introduced in PeopleTools 8.52 for BI Publisher

• Data entered in PeopleSoft using a Rich Text Editor for Long fields can now be incorporated in BI Publisher sustaining the formatting
• Ability to transform data, using JDeveloper XSL mapper or any third party tool

My previous post was about the integration between Siebel and BI Publisher that was available since Siebel 8.1. As I mentioned back then, the integration is promising, but presented  some serious limitations to BI as a report generation tool for Siebel, and I promised to touch this issue again in a new post. Well, here we go.

With the patch to Siebel 8.1.1.1, some of the isssues have been resolved, while some serious new ones have been created. Our main reason to upgrade (Siebel to 8.1.1.1 and BI Publisher to  10.1.3.4.1) were issues with Active Directory. The Siebel Security Model provided by BI was not documented nor functioning properly in the earlier version. This has been resolved in the new version. The Siebel Security Model basically works like this: a user requests a report, BI then checks in Siebel whether the user has the right responsibility (yes, you need to add the XMLP_DEVELOPER responsibility to each user that needs to create reports) and then BI creates the report and sends it back to Siebel. Works a like charm!

As of version 8.1, Oracle BI Publisher (formerly known as XMLP Publisher) has replaced Actuate as report generating tool for Siebel. During a Siebel Case Management implementation, I got some insights which I’d like to share.

The first step was a rather smooth installation and configuration process. We had BI Publisher up and running within no-time, and only very minimal configuration was required to integrate it with Siebel. By pointing the web services to the right URL’s and adjusting some BI settings, we could start making the first reports.

Siebel ships with a large number of out-of-the-box reports, and it’s easy to create your own. The reports combine RTF-templates from the BI Server with XML data from Siebel into various document types, such as PDF. The templates are easy to maintain using BI Publisher Desktop, a simple plugin for MS Word. XML data is composed by Siebel Integration Objects.

Did you ever had to revise custom reports? DId you ever try to move the address a few millimetres to the right because off the introduction of new corporate stationery? Did you ever get headaches because the reporting tool Oracle Reports Developer was crashing once more destroying your recent modifications?

There is a new kid in (reporting) town…

With the introduction of the reporting tool BI Publisher (formerly XML Publisher) these problems are history. Using the tool introduced by Oracle in 2004 as XML Publisher the main disadvantages of the classic reporting environment become outdated:

1. No open standard
2. Not a user-friendly interface
3. No automatic report translations
4. No support for all formats
5. Extraction of data from a non-Oracle DB is problematic
6. Extensive tool training
7. High development costs
8. ‘Eternal’ maintenance
9. High upgrade costs