This article is applicable for BI Connector v 6.x and above.

BI Connector supports connectivity to Subject Areas in the following applications:

• Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) that's available as a part of
  • Oracle Fusion Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Applications
  • Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management (SCM) Applications
  • Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) Applications
  • Oracle Fusion Customer Experience (CX) Applications
• Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC)
• Oracle Analytics Server (OAS)
• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 
• Oracle OPERA Cloud
• Taleo
• NetSuite

The following is a general tutorial to create a connection to your Oracle Subject Areas in the BI Connector app, which you can leverage in Tableau to visualize the data and automate scheduled refreshes.

In BI Connector, the process of creating a connection to the Oracle Subject Areas comprises 2 steps - 

Create Data Source 

Add Table

Let's see how to execute these steps below. Before we start, please have the following handy:

For Oracle OTBI, OAC, Fusion Analytics users 

• Oracle Account URL or Server URL - The URL up to "oraclecloud.com" after logging into you Oracle application. In essence, the URL will be something like
  https://xx-xx-xx-xx.oraclecloud.com (or)
  https://[RandomID].oraclecloud.com
• Your Login credentials

For Oracle OBIEE, OAS users

• Oracle Account URL or  Server URL - The URL after logging into the application, along with the port number. The URL could look something like this:
  http://obiee.CompanyName.com:9502/analytics
  (or) an IP address with a port number like
  http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9704/analytics
  In the above examples, the server names are http://obiee.CompanyName.com and http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx respectively. And the port numbers are 9502, and 9704 respectively.
  In essence, the final Server URL would be ServerName:PortNumber, which is the following for the above examples:
  http://obiee.CompanyName.com:9502
  http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9704
  Note: If there is no port number visible in the url, the Port number used behind the scenes is usually 443 if the url starts with HTTPS or 80 if the URL starts with HTTP
   
• Your Login credentials

Step1: Create Data Source

In the BI Connector app, click on the Data Sources menu in the pane on the left side, and click on the New Data Source button.

In the next screen, give the Data Source a name (that's easy for you to identify in Tableau) in the Data Source Name field. Then select the Data Source Type as Subject Area. Then enter the Server URL in the Oracle Account URL field, and enter your Oracle login credentials in the User Name and Password fields. Finally, click on the Test & Save button.

You can confirm the Data Source creation in the BI Connector application is successful by the notification displayed at the top right, and the Data Source being listed on the application.

Step2: Add Table

Now that you've successfully created a Data Source for your Oracle Analysis in the BI Connector application, it's time to add the specific Subject Areas that you want to analyze in Tableau. This step is a MUST for OTBI / Fusion application users, whereas for users of other Oracle applications it is optional (but a highly recommended step, especially if your Oracle application has a huge number of Subject Areas).

To do this, click on the Tables menu in the left side pane, and click on the Add Table button.

Next, in the Data set name field, give the Dataset a name that's easy for you to identify. Then select the Data Source you created for the Subject Area in the Data Source field from the drop-down. Next, its recommended to leave the number of rows per fetch field with the default value shown, and click Next:Manage Subject Area button.

Note: The No. of rows per fetch is to help you avoid time out errors when dealing with large datasets. For example, if a Subject Area table has 2 Million rows, a no. of rows per fetch setting of 100,000 will help you fetch all the 2 Million rows in batches of 100,000 rows at a time for 20 fetches, instead of fetching all the 2 Million rows at once in a single fetch, which would most likely result in time out errors. In most cases, the default 100,000 value would work seamlessly. But if you face time out errors, you can reduce the value in this setting at anytime.

Next, you need to enter the names of the specific Subject Areas (which you want to analyze in Tableau), one at a time.

IMPORTANT: The name of the Subject Areas are case-sensitive, and hence must be exactly pasted in the Subject Area field. Also, remove the extra trailing and preceding Subject Area's name in the pasted path, if any.  

To do this, please enter the name of the Subject Area in the Subject Area box, and click on Verify & Add button.
IMPORTANT: The path copied is case-sensitive, and hence must be pasted as in the Report or Folder Path. Also, remove the extra trailing and preceding spaces in the pasted path, if any.

Now the added Subject Area will be shown in the Added Subject Areas section. You can add multiple Subject Areas to the same Table. Finally, click on the Save button.

Upon saving, you can confirm the Table is successfully added in the next screen, as highlighted below. 

Now you're all set to visualize the Oracle Subject Areas data in Tableau!

The next step is to connect Tableau to Oracle Subject Areas, and start visualizing the data and automate the reports in Tableau ServerCloud.

Connect Tableau Desktop to Oracle Subject Areas via ODBC

Connect Tableau Desktop to Oracle Subject Areas via the BI Connector plugin