BI Extender

Using the BI Extender to propagate Flex Object changes:

You can configure and enable the BI Extender functionality to propagate changes made on Flex objects to the BI repository and optionally to the data warehouse.

You can use the Administration Tool to propagate data warehouse changes in your ADF applications through the following system components:

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)

The physical and business model and mapping layers of the Oracle BI Repository.

In this scenario, the BI Extender is the driverthat coordinates the information exchange between the ADF objects and the other targets.

The BI Extender feature supports changes made to flexfields in ADF data sources. Flexfields are columns within tables that can be reused based on a user-specified context. There are two types of flexfields:

Key (KFF). These objects are modeled as dimension view objects. KFF segments are imported as new dimensions joined to an existing fact table.

Descriptive (DFF) These objects are modeled as view object attributes. DFF segments are imported as new attributes (on both facts and dimensions) on existing tables.

Overview of BI Extender use with Oracle BI Applications:

1. The Import Metadata Wizard sends XML containing the flexfield object changes to the BI Extender.
2. XSL transform files are applied to the base XML.
   
3. The BI Extender calls ODI.
   
4. The BI Extender writes to the ODI Repository.
   
5. ODI propagates the flexfield changes to the data warehouse.
   
6. The BI Extender propagates the changes to the database object for the data warehouse in the Physical layer of the Oracle BI repository.
   
7. The BI Extender maps the changes to the logical model.

Use cases for propagating flexfield changes:

The BI Extender supports a variety of use cases for propagating changes made to flexfields. The primary use cases include:

1. New attribute added on a dimension (Dimension DFF - DescriptiveFlexExtensionStandard)
2. New attribute added on a fact (Fact DFF - DescriptiveFlexExtensionStandard)
3. New Dimension added, joined to an existing Fact (Dimension KFF - KeyFlexCreationStandard for dimension, KeyFlexExtensionStandard for the fact foreign key)
4. New Dimension added, joined to an existing Dimension (Dimension on Dimension KFF - KeyFlexCreationStandard on the new dimension, KeyFlexExtensionStandard for the foreign key)