One of the biggest new features in BI EE 11g is
the ability to create native mapviewer maps and then overlay reporting
components/visualizations on top of maps. For example if you are doing a
country based sales analysis, its easy to color code each country
across the world right within the maps. It is also possible to overlay
pie charts, bar charts in the maps thereby providing an extensive visual
analysis capability. In 10g, one had to go through some complex java
scripting to achieve BI EE and mapviewer integration. I have blogged
about it here and here. 11g makes this entire integration a lot easier.
Lets try to understand the integration through a
simple example. Shown below is a report of Sales performance of 3 US
states across 4 years.
We would like to depict this using a map as shown below.
As
you see we have 2 visualizations applied on the same map. The first one
is a different color coding for each of the 3 states depending on the
sales performance. The other is a pivot representation of yearly
performance for each state, all within a single map.
To do this we start with enabling the Mapviewer
integration by updating the instanceconfig.xml to include the following
tags (in each presentation server)
/mapviewer
600
Then
we need to restart the presentation service. This enables the
connectivity between BI EE and Mapviewer. After enabling the
integration, we then import the standard spatial MVDemo
schema into the Oracle Database. This schema contains Layers, Themes
and some Base maps for all the major US States, Cities & some
inter-state highways. After importing and installing the MVDemo schema,
we need to download the Mapbuilder application which will enable us to
create a custom map. We will be using this map for rendering in BI EE.
The Mapbuilder application can be downloaded from here.
After downloading the Mapbuilder app, we start
the application and login to the MVDemo schema. By default this schema
contains a lot of built-in themes, Base Maps and Tile Layers.
We
start off with creating a simple Base Map called STATE_MAP which will
be using 2 out of the box themes THEME_DEMO_STATES and
THEME_DEMO_STATES_LINE
This step will enable us to render all the US States and its boundaries within a very simple map as shown below
Once
the base map is created, lets create a new tile layer called
STATE_TILE_MAP which will use this base map for rendering. We can define
all the zoom levels, boundaries etc within the tile layer
Now
we have a map that can show all the US states and its boundaries. We
need to now expose this map to the mapviewer application (as an admin
user through Mapviewer admin screen) by taking it online as shown below
Now
the map is available for consumption through BI EE. Remember, the theme
that we used above, THEME_DEMO_STATES has an identifier called
STATE_ABBR which is basically the key that we need to pass from BI EE.
Relationship between BI EE repository columns/subject areas and
Mapviewer maps are done from the Manage Map Data screen in the
presentation services admin console.
In this screen, we need to import the layers, maps and the images that we want to include as shown below
Edit
the THEME_DEMO_STATES theme and map the State column from the
repository. There need not be any relation between the column used in
spatial and the column mapped in BI EE. All we need to ensure is the
attributes should match. In my case, the State abbreviations come from
the SH schema and the THEME_DEMO_STATES come from STATES table in the
MVDemo schema.
Then navigate to the STATE_TILE_MAP in the background maps and add the THEME_DEMO_STATES again.
This
establishes a relationship between the Subject Area and the Map thereby
enabling us to add the mapview from answers. After doing this, lets
create the report from the SH schema containing just the 3 states for 4
years.
Use the new Map View option to create the map.
This
will render the map that we created in mapviewer. If you notice
carefully, it will automatically apply some color coding to the 3 states
that are part of the report.
The
color coding is actually part of default visualization that Map Views
apply on a map. Lets change this to something as shown below
Lets now create one more pie chart visualization (for obtaining the yearly breakup of sales in all the 3 states)
Lets use the Year as the column providing the necessary slices for the pie charts
This will give us the necessary visualization using Mapviewer.
Though
there are a lot of steps involved, majority of the steps are for
setting up the mapviewer. Once we have the maps set up the entire
process of adding visualization to maps is quite straight forward.
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