I have an existing application written in Perl. Now I need to integrate this application with OBI. The plan is having a button the user can click on to open OBI in an iframe. OBI resides on a different server from the running application.
Has anyone done this before, know what is the best practice for doing this, and what is the effort of doing this?
Another question is is it possible to add customizations to the OBI displayed in the iframe.?
There are two ways to address the problem that I know of and tried out. According to your needs, one or the other might be more appropriate (or both, they're not mutually exclusive). In both cases, the documentation is good and readily available.
The "Go URL"
The Go URL is documented more thoroughly in the Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide. It provides a quick and easy interface to the reports you've already defined, in the form of a URL. All that's needed to get it running is to fill in a few query parameters to direct to the report you want. You might need to include authentication tokens too.
Pros: very easy to try out.
Cons: harder to get security right.
The web services
The presentation server comes with a series of web services that enable a more programmatic way of querying your repository. The functionality offered through this channel goes further: for example most catalog management, including report creation and editing is possible. The full list fills a guide of its own: the Oracle Business Intelligence Web Services Guide.
Pros: better integration (i.e., no need for an IFRAME); easier to get the security right.
Cons: harder to setup; lots of XML; more advanced features (e.g. in-place drilldown) need an HTTP bridge that was a bitch to get right in my case. The generated HTML might clash a bit with yours and require cleaning up, notably in the CSS.
Embedding OBIEE reports inside a non-ADF web app is tough. If you have an option to re-write your web application in ADF, your life will be a lot easier. Just drag and drop reports and visualizations into your web application. Oracle's own Fusion Applications also follow this approach. If your app is analytics heavy, it might be a good option to explore. Here's a link to the Oracle doc.
Related
We've built a SAAS solution, which has a Frontend in PHP/MySQL. The solution uses our in-house "Backend" API to manage user transactions (financial-ish type of stuff). So basically, some of our data is in the "Frontend" database, while all transactional data is in the "Backend" database.
When it comes to reporting, the Frontend requests transactional reports from the Backend, augments it with Frontend data (user attributes, etc), and draws the report. Usually it's slow and cumbersome to create a new report, and they lack robust features like sorting & filtering. This is partially because there is no single data-source for all the info. Also, we are constantly being asked to provide "adhoc" reporting capabilities - the type of thing that is complex, and has the potential to bring a server to its knees if you aren't careful.
I think we're at the point where we need to invest in a Reporting system, which would be responsible for combining data dumps from Frontend/Backend, and would allow a non-developer to create new reports. One thing that would be important to us is to provide as seamless of an interface as possible to the reports via our Frontend. That might mean the Reporting system exposes web widgets, or perhaps has a web interface that can be accessed with SSO between our system and the Reporting system. In a nutshell, we aren't looking for a dinosaur, we need something modern. Hosted solutions are preferred, but we'd consider something we need to run ourselves. Looking for advice. Thanks!
EDIT: A hosted solution might not work for us. We are located in Canada, and many customers have policies about having data reside in the US (Patriot Act).
Have a look at myDBR reporting solution. Reports are built using stored procedures, so anyone familiar with SQL will be able to create reports. There is also a built in wizard to get you started quickly. It is also very easy to link reports to each other allowing for easy drill-down style reports.
The solution is very reasonably priced at 129 EUR (~ 170 USD) and can be installed in minutes on any standard web server (PHP being to only requirement).
myDBR can be easily integrated into your existing web-pages via the built-in SSO and styled via CSS to match your sites overall look and feel.
Good Evening,
I'm building a website which will will look something like this:
So probably a widget-centred web-framework would be best...
Which C++ web-framework supports cookies (for user-login [session] storage+config storage) and SQL (MySQL or SQLite)?
My information about Wt was outdated, it looks like they now have full-support for cookies (http://redmine.webtoolkit.eu/boards/1/topics/2111)
CppCMS however has a vibrant community, and there product seems to scale better.
I will do the diplomatic thing, create a project using both frameworks.
It will be a cutdown version with only:
User registration
User login/logout (including redirect if deauthed and trying to access auth-req page)
Search
Some basic argument passing of results across screen (see initial wireframe for ref)
Should be an interesting project... I wonder if any have done this in the past?!
Cookie support and SQL backend support are basic things, so I guess all web frameworks support them.
I am a very happy user of cppcms and I can assure you it can do all the things you ask for.
Cppcms' SQL backend uses cppdb, created by the same developer, which supports MySQL, SQLite, Postgres, and others, in addition to supporting connection pooling and other nice features.
Config storage is easy, using a json format. The cppcms also has a nice caching framework, as well as a nice API to create forms, asynchronous requests, long pulling, etc. The templating engine is both simple and very powerful, allowing for a separation of the interface and the application logic.
What's more, probably the thing I like the most about cppcms, the support is very good. Subscribe to the official cppcms mailing list: Artyom, the cppcms creator, is always very patiently replying to requests. Personally, I wished the people asking for support were contributing more to the cppcms wiki, so remember that when you join us.
[Edit: Actually, I noticed you asked the very same question on the cppcms mailing list in April this year, posting the very same screenshot. Myself and other kindly took the time to answer you, but you never replied nor thanked us for our time and advice. You may continue asking the same question all over the place, but please try to be more appreciative of the people who are giving a bit of their time to answer you. Good social manners never hurt.]
I recognise these Wt (http://webtoolkit.eu/wt) widgets you can use for your app:
charts: WCartesianChart
dropdown boxes: WComboBox
models and filter proxy models: WSortFilterProxyModel, WAbstractItemModel
the lists (views): WTableView
layout managers with draggable splitters: WHBoxLayout
tabs: WTabWidget
panel on the right: WPanel
suggestion popup on the left: WSuggestionPopup
WLineEdit
database access: Wt::Dbo (an ORM), or anything else you prefer
cookies are well supported in Wt, see cookie related methods in WEnvironment and WApplication
Simply combine them for your application...
BinaryTiers provides a complete web development environment, including all the tools that make common web development tasks easier out of the box. Some of the fundamental tools and features built-in BinaryTiers include:
Forms validation system architecture
Abstract Publishing Architecture with built-in categorization and content translation
User account registration and maintenance
Menu management and friendly URLs
RSS-feed aggregation and syndication
System administration and web interface for the GNU C++ compilers
Coherent programming interface for No-SQL data stores as well as relational databases with Redis and MySQL
Template System and easy page layout customization
Modular design that provides high extensibility
High Speed HTTP Communication (Get, Post, Cookies, Files)
Built-in Encoding and Encryption functions
Multiplatform: Linux, BSD, OSX and Windows
Have look at ffead-cpp, it probably does what you need and provides a lot more...
I would like to create a web page which would allow multiple users to work together on a page, Imagine a web based editor that allowed to users to change the documents as an example of this type of feature.
How would more experienced programmers go about implementing this as i really cant seem to formulate any way to even begin going about this task. Would there be any programming librarys that make implementing this feature easier or is it just too complex to even think about?
I am creating this webapp primarily using GWT and SmartGWT if that helps.
Thanks for any input you may have.
There is indeed a cometd-like library for gwt - http://code.google.com/p/gwteventservice/
Wiki:
In web development, Comet is a neologism to describe a web application model in which a long-held HTTP request allows a web server to push data to a browser, without the browser explicitly requesting it. Comet is an umbrella term for multiple techniques for achieving this interaction. All these methods rely on features included by default in browsers, such as JavaScript, rather than on non-default plugins.
In practice:
In normal way client can receive resources by request->responce. It is no possible to send data directly to client without request. With comet you can hold realtime connection between client and server and exchange data in realtime.
Check out: docs.google.com. They are using comet.
Etherpad.com is a service that used to do this. It has been since bought by Google, and the code released as open-source. You can see several links on the etherpad.com page for the source download and related information.
At the risk of sounding misinformed, I'm under the belief that this is basically useful for RAD and fast sketching of an application.
It feels somewhat Ruby-esque in the sense that it scaffolds pretty much everything you need from a CRUD application. Easier work for us, right; and most people are none the wiser.
I'm fairly green in the workplace, I just start working at an actual job as a developer (cubicles and free coffee) so my opinions might be a bit on the green side, but I'd love some comments from more senior people.
Is this somewhere between MVC2(basic scaffolding) and Microsoft Lightswitch(wizard-driven development)? Is it worth ivesting in?
Personally I like to use Dynamic Data for admin pages, those pages that nobody actually gets to see but need to be there in a usable way for some admin user. In the past those used to take quite some effort on the dev team to craft together but with Dynamic Data it's an almost out of the box experience.
I suggest you take a look at Tailspin travel which is an application in MVC 2 but uses Dynamic Data, integrated in the same UI project, for the admin side.
I was skeptical at first, but now I use Dynamic Data almost as much as I do "standard" ASP.NET sites. Out of the box, it's pretty generic, but it's customizable, and you can include standard ASP.NET pages in it.
At first, I would use it as a separate Admin site when I needed a "back door" into the data from a "standard" app. Lately, however, my approach has been to do some more planning, and decide which of the tables I would like users to access via the Dynamic Data mechanisms, and which data I want more fine control over. You can scaffold only the table you want, and this works good for "lookup" tables where you want an end user to be able to add/delete. An example would be in our email coupon program, where customers can sign up to receive coupons via email. They can choose their coupon categories - hot foods, beverages, gas, produce, etc. The administrator of the overall coupon program needs to be able to add and remove categories, and Dynamic Data is WONDERFUL for this sort of thing.
Dynamic data takes care of the data validation (a huge plus for security AND usability), mapping our relationships (a HUGE time saver) and just "does it right". In the business environment, security and productivity are two very real concerns that are handled poorly by most developers, and Dynamic Data seems to handle the basics well.
So yes, I do think it's worth it. It's very powerful and an excellent tool to have in your toolbox, but one that should be wielded with skill, which takes time and practice. And it should not be the only tool in your toolbox.
One of the best uses I've heard for Dynamic Data was to quickly build up an Django-like admin section for a site. It doesn't have to be "perfect" since it isn't aimed at users, but it does give you some nice usability quickly and easily.
I know very little about it but it doesn't sounds like something I would consider. Whenever I work on a an application we tend to follow some basic architectural guidelines such as layering/reusability etc. Typically I tend to get away from shortcut tools/frameworks as this one. There are a lot of "neat" tools that are available in the .NET world that have their place in certain small business/internal app space perhaps, but are not a great idea for a well designed application. For example embedding SQL into the datasource controls that can be bound directly to GridViews, etc.
I want a real and honest opinion what do you think of Google Visualization API?
Is it reliable to use becasue when i was reading the documentation i noticed that there are alot of issues and defects to overcome and can i use it to retrieve data from mysql database.
Thank you.
I am currently evaluating it. As compared to other javascript data visualization frameworks, i think it has a lot going for it:
dynamic loading is built-in
diverse, many things to choose from.
looks really great!
framework mostly takes care of picking whatever implementation fits the current browser
service based, you don't need to download anything in advance
unified data source: just create one data table, and have multiple visalizations draw from that data.
As a disadvantage, I'd like to mention security. I mean, because it's all service based, it is not so transparent what happens when you pass data into these API calls. And as far as I know, the API is free, but not open source, so I can't really check what is going on behind the covers.
I think the Google visualization API really shines if you want to very quickly whip up a visualization gadget for use in a blog or so, and you are not interested in deploying all kinds of plugins and libraries (for eaxmple, with jQuery based frameworks, you need may need to manage multitple javascript libraries that work together to deliver the goods). If on the other hand you are creating an application that you want to sell, you might want to keep more control over what components you are using, and I would probably consider using something like Flot
But like I said, I am only evaluation atm, I am not using this in production.
Works really great for me. Can be customized fairly easily. Haven't seen any scaling issues. No data is exposed so security should not be an issue. - Arunabh Das
One point I want to add here is that, Google Visualization API cannot be downloaded, its not available for offline usage. So application which is going to use it must be always connected to internet, otherwise I think it wont be able to render charts. Due
to this limitation, this API cannot be used in some applications for which internet connection is not available.
I am currently working on a web based application that will have the Google Visualization API added to it and from the perspective of a developer the Google Visualization API is very limited in what you can do with each individual Chart and if I had a choice I would probably look at dojox charting just because of the extra flexibility that the framework gives you.
If you are doing any kind of large web application that will use charting extensively then I would not recommend the Google Visualizations API it does not have enough flexibility for a large web application.
I am using Google Visualization API and I want to stress that they still won't let you download it, which means if their servers are down, your app will be down if you depend on it. I have been using it for about 4 months, and they have crashed once me once so I'd say they pretty reliable and their documentation is really nice.