Connecting to Oracle BI Publisher (extractor)
You can connect your Oracle BI Publisher instance to the Celonis Platform, allowing you to use the data from your reports. By connecting your Oracle BI Publisher instance, you grant the Celonis Platform read-only access to your data, with any data shared through HTTPS, ensuring an encrypted information exchange.
Prerequisites for connecting to Oracle BI Publisher
Before connecting to your Oracle BI Publisher instance, you must meet the following prerequisites:
User permissions: You need access to an Oracle BI Publisher user with the following permissions enabled:
Create and edit Data Model
Access to the tables that should be extracted
Create and Download Report
Access to SOAP service
Allowlist Celonis Platform IPs and domains: If your Coupa instance is only reachable within a certain IP range, you need to allowlist the outbound IPs of the Celonis Platform, otherwise data cannot be extracted. The IPs of the Celonis Platform are different depending on the cluster (eu-1 or us-1).
For more information, see: Allowlisting domain names and IP addresses.
Creating a data connection between Oracle BI Publisher and Celonis Platform
With access to an Oracle BI Publisher user and required permissions, you can create a data connection between your Oracle BI Publisher instance and the Celonis Platform from your data pool diagram:
Click Data Connections.
Click Add Data Connection and select Connect to Data Source.
Select Cloud - Oracle BI Publisher.
Configure the following connection details:
Host: The URL of the Oracle BI publisher that you want to connect to. Use the following format here:
https://ExampleInstanceID.oracle.com
Username and password: The username and password for the user configured in the prerequisites.
Reports: Add each report you want to use in the Celonis Platform as an individual line item using the following format:
/~oracleUsername/nameOfTheReport.xdo
Click Test Connection and correct any issues highlighted.
Click Save.
The connection between your Oracle BI Publisher tenant and the Celonis Platform is establised. You can manage this connection at any time by clicking options:
Filter and delta extractions from Oracle BI Publisher
Filters are only supported for SQL-query based reports which are configured in BI Publisher. When used in the Celonis Platform, filters always need to be passed as a string value.
To set up filters for your Oracle BI Publisher instance:
Defining a filter requires a parameter to be set-up in BI Publisher. The filter is referenced using the name of this parameter.
Filters on Datetimes and Delta Filters can be achieved using two different set-ups:
Defining the Datatype of the respective columns in the column configuration as a STRING: The column can then be used to create a dynamic parameter. This set-up requires the BI Publisher column to have the exact same syntax as the column coming from BI Publisher (e.g. 2024-10-15T19:09:17.0000+00:00)
Defining the Datatype of the respective columns in the column configuration as a DATETIME: Creating a view in Celonis which calculates the maximum of this column and parses it to a String (see example screenshot below). The column of this view can then be used to create a dynamic parameter. This set-up gives you the possibility to “match” the BI Publisher parameter syntax via the syntax definition as part of the view.
For example:
CREATE VIEW parameter_view AS ( select TO_CHAR(max(CREATION_DATE), 'MM-DD-YYYY') as parameter_column from myreport_G_1
Include the parameter in the SQL query that you define in the BI Publisher report.
For example:
When configuring an extraction in the Celonis Platform, you can now define a value for the parameter by using the filter statement.
You can only assign values to this parameter, meaning you need to use the = operator.
You can configure delta filters in the same way by using dynamic extraction parameters. See: Using delta filters with dynamic parameters.
Report configuration and further information
When configuring your reports in Oracle BI Publisher, the following applies:
Format: In order to extract a report it has to be saved in .xml format. This can be done in Oracle via Edit Report > View a list > Output Format: Data (XML) > Default Format: Data (XML) > Save.
Maximum size: 524288000 bytes. To support this, you can create parameters for your reports and then filter the data based on that parameter. We recommend creating a date parameter, ensuring that only data from a defined date range is included (and not all data since the report started running).
For further information about using Oracle BI Publisher, see: Oracle.com - Oracle BI Publisher Overview and Best Practices and Docs.Oracle.com