Business Intelligence in Oracle APEX: Transition of BI from IT to End Users

Today is the most tiring day for John who is the only Oracle APEX developer in his company. He is exhausted because he answered several analytic queries raised by different departments of his organization. Addressing such queries from colleagues has become a daily routine for John. And, there is not a single day when he is not privileged to see Karen – the sales manager. As expected, she hops into John’s office, and as usual, with a list of her simple but time-consuming queries.

Tired John is seriously considering developing a solution to lighten his load. The solution will serve the following objectives:

• Put the company data at the fingertips of end users with the help of a business intelligence application so that they could get insight from this data themselves anytime, anywhere.
• In contrast to the traditional sophisticated business intelligence solutions that everyone in John’s organization is not able to run, the self-serving business intelligence application should be simple and user-friendly that a user with no technical skills could also use easily.

The flexible business intelligence application John is planning to develop will have two broad features:

1. Analyses creation – This includes the selection of columns from multiple tables, application of filters and aggregate functions, and generation of dynamic SQL queries through a user-friendly interface.
2. Visualization – Dig intelligence from data mine and visualize the analyses results on-the-fly via simple tables, multi-dimensional pivot tables, different types of charts, and master/detail maps.

John will develop this self-service app single-handedly, and will also provide some simple hands-on training to his colleagues on the development side to make them self-reliant. Let’s see how John undertakes this unique project in Oracle Application Express that will act as the first stepping-stone toward business intelligence.