Expert and Novice modes to report writing

Julian Challenger-Oracle

Description

Experts use more advanced features, novices are protected from making illegal queries

Use Case and Business Need

Customer can decide which users are experts and which are novices.  Novices should be prevented by the system from making illegal queries (for example), making the report creation process more basic, but also safer and less intimidating for those users.  Expert users will have the full functionality of Answers available to them.

Original Idea Number: c35df8dc9a

Christopher Bridge-Oracle

Great idea!

You mean a little like how Oracle Discoverer folders would turn grey if unavailable from the current selection / dependency graph?

Julian Challenger-Oracle

That is exactly what I had in mind.  Either become disabled or be hidden.

Carlyne Lynch-8590

 This is something that sounds reasonable but the application of it would not be. Some are experts in some areas and novice in yet other areas. I wish we just used sql calls and did not have these dumb engines interfer with us. If there is a field in my table I want to be able to call it not depend on someone else writing my query.

Raghavendra Raghunath-Oracle

Julian,
it would be helpful if you can narrate a specific use case from OTBI context here
Thanks
Raghu

Julian Challenger-Oracle

Customer may want both Line Managers and HR Analysts to be able to create reports, however, line managers are only likely to author reports occasionally and they are mostly less technically able so the tool needs to prevent them from making choices that will cause errors they may not understand.  One such example is the ability to create an illegal query when reporting across subject areas.  In this example, OBIEE should either prevent the user from creating the query by disabling folders and attributes (like Discoverer did) or it should automatically make the query valid (by pulling in one measure from each subject area and checking the enable dimensionality flag).  On the other hand HR Analysts will frequently author reports and they are usually more technically able, so OBIEE should allow them expert access where they can even define joins.

Such a change to OBIEE would require a far reaching review.  I have only highlighted one (the most obvious) use case.