Update 19C

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Overview

This guide outlines the information you need to know about new or improved functionality in this update.

Disclaimer

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BI Cloud Connector

Inactive and Unavailable BI View Objects (BIVOs) and BIVO Columns for Exclusion from Extraction in BI Cloud Connector

Beginning with update 18B, there are BI View Objects and BI View Object columns that are unavailable or marked inactive in Oracle Applications Cloud. These objects are unavailable for extraction using BICC in Oracle Applications Cloud.

Multiple Job Profiles Support

BI Cloud Connector (BICC) now supports multiple job profiles. You can use the Manage Jobs feature if you use BICC to extract data from Oracle Applications Cloud to support multiple downstream integrations.

Support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Object Storage

Beginning with update 19C, BI Cloud Connector (BICC) now supports Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Object Storage as an external storage option. You can use this external storage for your BICC extracts if you have a subscription to OCI Object Storage.

OTBI Metadata Independent Mode for Extraction

In update 19C, BI View Objects may now be extracted in OTBI Metadata Independent Mode.

Oracle Development strongly recommends that you switch your BICC extracts to use OTBI Metadata Independent mode by update 20C.

Extensibility

Unified Sandboxes

You can now opt in for Unified Sandboxes to enhance your user experience and productivity when working with sandboxes. With Unified Sandboxes, you can refresh and merge sandboxes with changes in the mainline environment, and perform many other new and versatile sandbox activities. In addition to making the sandbox experience more consistent across all configuration tools, this feature also introduces a more robust user interface. Additionally, you get a new UI for Configuration Set Migration, and new migration options with this feature.

Reporting and Analytics

New Search Type Parameter in Data Model

When you create a parameter using List of Value (LOV), the LOV query is executed to populate the LOV selections. At times this can cause performance bottleneck when the LOV queries are very complex and fetches huge amount of data. To handle this scenario, a new Search type parameter has been added that allows user to enter few characters to narrow down the parameter selection. You can even use the search icon to navigate to search window where you can enter few characters, and select the value required for the report, thereby keeping the parameter selection minimal and applying a single selection value.

Password Protect and Zip Your Output Delivery

Now you can safeguard the output file by adding password protection and then include the file in a zip archive format before delivery. The password protection will apply to Microsoft office file formats (XSLX, PPTX, DOCX)  which can be applied from the runtime properties page. PDF password protection has been there for a while. The password protection will apply to both online viewed reports and scheduled jobs.

NOTE: Excel output in .XLS format generated from Excel templates do not support password protection.

Also at the time of scheduling a job, you can select the option "Compress output prior to delivery" to archive the output file in a zip file format before it is sent through a delivery channel. Compress output feature is not supported for PDFZ format as it is already a zipped file format and HTML format for email delivery.

So you can choose to apply only password protection, only compression or both.

Use relogon=1 in URL Parameter to Apply Fusion Apps User Preferences

When you make a change to User Preferences from Fusion Applications User Preferences UI, the change does not immediately reflect in BI Publisher reports if the session is not renewed. To make this work, one has to navigate to BI Publisher server and logout the user. With a new login session, the updated user preferences starts working correctly.

To eliminate this dependency, now you can simply append relogon=1 parameter in the URL of BI Publisher report it will pick up the latest Fusion Apps User Preference, without session renewal.

XML Data Chunking for Extremely Large Data Sets

The XML data chunking capability in BI Publisher reduces the time and memory used for processing large data of size greater than 2 GB.  The concepts are similar to bursting where a single large XML data will be split into several smaller chunks of XML data of manageable size, be executed as multiple sub-jobs in parallel to process the individual XML data chunks, and finally merges the outputs to create a single consolidated output.