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Data Sources, Business Areas, Folders, & Fields
BI Catalog Builder, showing a data source, business area, folder and fields
The following section provides details about data sources and their components: business areas, folders, and fields.
Data Source (Superset of Database Objects)
A data source is a master set of tables and views that have been logically organized into subsets referred to as business areas.
Pop-up window launched when creating a new dashboard in BI Dashboard Builder tool
In BI Dashboard Builder, a data source is selected when creating a new dashboard (as shown above), and its folders (i.e., tables/views), and the results (rows) returned by their joins are used to create the dashboard’s visualizations (i.e., charts, gauges, tables).
Business Area (Subset of Data Source)
A business area is a subset of the data source that contains a logical grouping of tables/views (i.e., folders) pertinent to a dashboard to be created in BI Dashboard Builder.
Folder (Table/View)
A folder is a single table/view, which contains rows of records comprised of fields (i.e., columns).
Field (Column in Row of Table/View)
For a table’s or view’s row, its data is stored in fields (i.e., columns).
CMiC Default Data Source & BI Catalog Builder
In BI Dashboard Builder, a dashboard is created using a particular data source.
A default data source is provided with BI Dashboard Builder titled, CMiC Default Data Source, which contains nearly every table and view in the system, with nearly all the joins that could be required between them optimally predefined. To create new dashboards, this provided data source likely contains the required tables, views and joins.
If the provided data source, CMiC Default Data Source, is not sufficient to create a desired dashboard, because a different join type is required (e.g., Left Outer required instead of Inner) or a required table\view is missing, the BI Catalog Builder tool can be used to create the necessary data source. For details about creating a data source, please refer to the BI Catalog Builder user guide.
Read-Only WebLogic Data Source
In addition to the primary database, a read-only database is supported in Dashboard Builder. It is used for querying BI data only. The main purpose of a read-only database/data source is to alleviate the load on the primary database if desired.
A read-only database can be selected in the Read-Only WebLogic Data Source Name for BI field in the Reporting tab of the System Options screen in the System Data module. The list of available read-only data sources is maintained in the WebLogic Data Source screen (Pgm: SYSWEBLOGICDS), which is only available through the Simply Menu tool and for Enterprise customers only.
For more information, refer to the Reporting tab section in the System Options screen in the System Data module.