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Archive for the ‘Business Intelligence’ Category

PHP Analaytics – Filter data on user input

31 Jan

Just today I have got a question about the chance to add prompts to the wordpress page in order to filter dinamically a particular view.

Due to lack of time I didn’t develop any administration interface to add input boxes, but it’s possible to achieve it by using the PHP Analytics’ variables.

1. A simple single value filter

First of all we create one or more variables that will dynamically change the where condition that refers to the query we want to be affected by the user input.

Then we modify the query itself to pick up values from the variable(s).

A PHP Analytics variable is initialized with a GET or a POST action, so in order to pass the user input to the variable we have to create an HTML form that contains an HTML input component with the same name of the variable (see the example below):

<form method="post">
<select name="country">
      <option value="France">France</option>      <option value="Germany">Germany</option>      <option value="Greece">Greece</option>      <option value="Italy">Italy</option>      <option value="Portugal">Portugal</option>      <option value="Spain">Spain</option>      <option value="UK">UK</option></select>
    <input id="button" name="button" type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

Then we just have to add to our WordPress page/post the HTML code above and the view it belongs to (see the example below).

COUNTRY USERS
Italy 653

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RTD Tips #2 – Performance Log

12 Oct

In this brief post we will see how RTD provides information about performances.

The RTD server logs all the statistical information related with performances in its server log directory and precisely in the following file: ds_perf.csv

This file is a tab-separeted values file, pretty unreadable if opened with a common text editor.
Fortunately RTD provides us a Ms Excel spreadsheet that is able to parse all the information contained in the csv file into a readable format.

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RTD Tips #1 – Deployment in production

12 Oct

Finally I am publishing my first article about Oracle Real Time Decisions.
It’s not a huge post, just a tip about how to perform  a deployment in production environment following the best practice.

In fact, using Decision Studio is not the only way RTD provide us to deploy Inline Services within RTD.
Effectively, in a real situation, it’s common that the deployment phase it’s not a developer’s responsability; it’s more usual that the IT departement from the customer side is in charge of performing the deployment by following the guidelines provided by the developer.

So in most cases we don’t want the customer’s IT departement to access the Decision Studio, but it’s easier to give them a way to execute a script performs the deployment automatically.

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PHP Analytics: Variables

11 Aug

1. Introduction

I want to introduce a new feature that has been added to PHP Analytics: the variables.

In PHP Analytics, variables are keywords that can be used in your queries by using the following syntax: $variable_name

2. Create a Variable

In order to use a variable, first we have to define it trough the administration panel; to define a variable we just have to specify it’s own name and a default value.

At the time of the query execution, every variable that has been previously defined in the administration tool, is replaced with the values passed trough a GET or a POST method; if none of them is used, a default value (specified at the variable definition phase) is used.

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Oracle BIEE-like reporting tool by using low cost web technologies

06 Jun

1. Introduction

In this interesting post we will see how to mount an OBIEE-like reporting tool by using low cost web technologies.

In the example we are going to see how to combinate PHP Analytics and WordPress templates to get close to that objective.

2. The idea

PHP Analytics is a plugin that transform your WordPress platform in a reporting tool. It allows you to build views (tables and chart) that you can publish in a WordPress page/post.

Once we have our defined reports (see the offical documentation to use PHP Analytics), we just need to modify a WordPress template to give to our platform the OBIEE look&feel.
Moreover we have to play a little bit with the code in order to emulate the OBIEE frontend main logic.

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