Rittman Mead - Delivered Intelligence

A new Oracle product that I initially saw whilst over at Open World, that
sounds like it might be interesting, is "Oracle XML Publisher". According to the
product homepage, "Oracle XML Publisher is a new java
based product available within the technology stack of the E-Business suite.
Utilizing a set of familiar desktop tools such as Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft
Word users can create and maintain their own report formats based on development
delivered xml data extracts. XML Publisher will then convert these documents to
the XSL-FO format. Users can also obtain 3rd party provided PDF forms e.g.
government tax forms and merge xml data generated from the E-Business Suite to
fill the forms with the required data." Sounds
interesting and not a million miles away from some of the idea’s in Jon Mead’s
recent XML, XQuery and XDS
presentation, which is why it caught my eye.

According to this

powerpoint presentation on the technology behind XML Publisher:

"The classic approach to reporting is to
combine all of the elements of a report into a single entity, the data
definition, the layout and the translation. This report file is very
unwieldy and causes problems due to its inflexibility. If a report is
required that has even a minor layout change a new report file must be
created to support the new requirement even thou the data definition is
exactly the same. If another version of a report is required at runtime in a
different language then a new report file must be created to support the new
language.  This approach leads to more time and expense in maintaining
the report files.

XML Publisher breaks the three components apart
and treats them separately at design time, at runtime the three are brought
back together by XML Publisher to generate the final formatted, translated
output. There is an immediate gain in that this model is far more flexible
i.e. a single data definition can support multiple layouts, multiple
translations can be applied at runtime to generate translated output. This
leads to a reduction in maintenance costs for all concerned.

This slide [below] summarizes the modules that make up XML
Publisher.

• Data Data engines are registered with the data handler, these
  can be any engine that generates XML such as Oracle Reports, Service
  Beans, etc.
• Template – the layout templates to be used for the final output
  are stored and managed in the Template Manager. These templates are
  created using familiar desktop tools such as MS Word, MS Excel or Adobe
  Acrobat.
• Translation the translation handler will manage the translation
  that is required at runtime.
• Deliver the delivery server will take the output document and
  deliver to various destinations such as printer, email, fax, etc.

XML Publisher will integrate tightly with other Applications
modules.

• Common Regions – Other products will incorporate XML Publisher
  regions inside their own pages, users will then see a consistent
  user interface for submitting reports.
• Workflow XML Publisher will integrate with the workflow
  product, this will allow teams to build workflows incorporating
  xml publisher functionality.
• Concurrent Manager XML Publisher will integrate with the
  concurrent manager allowing user to schedule and execute reports
  and publish documents from the CM interface."

All sounds very interesting. Lots of buzzwords and mention of industry
standards as well – "The underlying technology is based on an
implementation of the W3C XSL-FO standard. XML Publisher also provides
improved performance, added security and extensions to the FO standard to
support more complex reporting requirements.". Performance (always an
issue when you’re dealing with the verbose XML format) seems to have been
addressed as well – "The XSL-FO engine that has been developed is not
only robust but also fast, this is vital. XML data by its nature generates
large objects or files and these can cause serious memory issues during
processing. XML publisher has a stream based implementation that reduces
this memory footprint allowing large XML input files to be processed."

So, I wonder how this fits in with Oracle’s existing reporting
technology, Oracle Reports? Does it have any link in with
XBRL, the
"reporting standard of
the moment" and the focus of a
recent
enhancement to Oracle General Ledger? I guess we’ll have to wait and
see, but until then here’s some additional XML Publisher resources:

• 
  Oracle XML Publisher homepage
• 
  Introduction to XML Publisher PDF document
• 
  XML Publisher Technology powerpoint presentation
• 
  XML Publisher Business Applications powerpoint presentation
• 
  Concurrent program integration Demo flash demo
• 
  "XML publisher: a new way of reporting" presentation by Oracle’s Les
  Burchill (UKOUG membership required)
• 
  "Oracle XML
  Publisher: Enterprise
  Reporting and Delivery Platform" presentation at the 2004 Oracle
  Open World

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