Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Business Intelligence Applications may be integrated to allow for sign on into the Oracle EBS application and have the authentication passed to the Oracle Business Intelligence application (Single Sign-On). Links to Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboards and catalogs may be embedded in Oracle EBS application pages, and Action Links may be created within Oracle BI EE reports and dashboards that take you back to Oracle EBS in context. This bulletin describes how to achieve this level of integration.
Single Sign-On (SSO) integration between Oracle E-Business Suite Applications and Oracle Business Intelligence Applications is achieved by means of a shared SSO cookie that is passed from the E-Business Suite Application to Oracle BI EE through the browser.
NOTE: For the SSO cookie-based integration to work, the Oracle E-Business Suite application and the Oracle BI EE URL need to reside in the same domain. For example, if the Oracle E-Business Suite URL is http://EBSAppsServer.us.mycompany.com then the Oracle BI EE URL that you need to access would be http://BI.us.mycompany.com/analytics. It is important to note that Oracle BI Presentation Services and Oracle BI Server can reside anywhere; it is only the Oracle BI Presentation Services Plug-in deployed on a Web or Application server that has to reside on the same domain as the E-Business Suite Application server for the browser to be able to pass the cookie to Oracle BI EE.
Oracle E-Business Suite profile
Follow the following steps noted below to create a form function and to assign it to the right menus and responsibilities:
1. Log on as a user with System Administrator privileges (default sysadmin/sysadmin) into your Oracle E-Business Suite environment.
2. Select responsibility System Administrator from the responsibility navigator (left) pane.
3. After you select the responsibility from the left pane, the available menus are shown in the right pane.
4. Using these menus create the following in the sequence listed below:
a. Function
b. Menu
c. Responsibility
d. User
e. Profile
The following sections describe in brief how to create the function, menu, responsibility, user and profile. It assumes some knowledge of how to navigate the Oracle E-Business Suite Applications.
Create the Function
From the Application menu, choose Function. This takes you to Oracle Applications Function form shown below. Give your function a name, User Function Name and Description and save your changes (using the diskette icon on the toolbar).
Create the Menu
Menus are complied whenever they are updated.
1. Start by selecting Menu under Application OR if you are already in Forms, you can select Menu from the Top Ten list:
2. Create a new Standard menu and give it a Name and User Name. In the Function field, enter the name of the Function created in the previous step.
Note: If a Menu has only one Function, then that is selected by default for the user and intermediate steps like displaying the function may be skipped altogether.
Assigning to a Responsibility
The menu that was created in the previous step needs to be associated with a responsibility. You can either create a new responsibility or reuse an existing responsibility. To create a new responsibility, follow the following steps:
- Choose the application that you are creating the Menu for and for Responsibility Key define any unique value as shown. (Note: To retain the uniqueness property, the responsibility key is not translated into different languages.) This key is used at the Oracle BIEE end because of its uniqueness.
- Choose Oracle Self Service Web Applications under Application From and under Data Group choose Standard and reenter the Application name.
- For Menu, enter the value you created in the previous step.
Assigning Responsibility to the User
You can either create a new user or assign the responsibility created above to an existing user.
Assign a Profile
The profile form can be reached from Top ten list or from Application > Profile.
A profile can be set for a responsibility, a user or a site. In our example we will set profile options for a responsibility. Check the responsibility option and in profile type %oracle business% and click on Find.
Configuring InstanceConfig.xml for External Authentication
1. Modify the instanceconfig.xml file for the Oracle BI Presentation Services as shown below:
<Auth>
<ExternalLogon enabled="true">
<ParamList>
<Param name="NQ_SESSION.ICX_SESSION_COOKIE"
source="cookie"
nameInSource="EBSAppsDatabaseSID"/>
<Param name="NQ_SESSION.ACF"
source="url"
nameInSource="ACF"/>
</ParamList>
</ExternalLogon>
</Auth>
<!-- Other settings here. -->
</ServerInstance>
</WebConfig>
RPD Configuration
The steps described in sub-sections "Setting up the Oracle E-Business Suite connection pool properties" and "Creating Init Block for setting Oracle E-Business Suite Context" below are required for SSO authentication. The steps described in the subsequent sub-sections are required to set up Action Links from Oracle BI EE to Oracle E-Business Suite Applications.
Setting up the Oracle E-Business Suite connection pool properties
Setup the Oracle E-Business Suite OLTP Connection pool to connect to the Oracle E-Business Suite Application database using the super user ID and password (e.g. Apps/Apps) as shown below. The value of the Execute on Connect property should be:
call /* valueof(NQ_SESSION.ACF) */ APP_SESSION.validate_icx_session('valueof(NQ_SESSION.ICX_SESSION_COOKIE)')
Creating Init block for setting Oracle E-Business Suite Context
Create an Initialization Block and make it the first Initialization Block to run. This init block will need to be executed using a connection pool defined as per the previous section. The target variables in the initialization block are shown below.
The SQL for the initialization block should be the following:
select FND_GLOBAL.RESP_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.RESP_APPL_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.SECURITY_GROUP_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.RESP_NAME,
FND_GLOBAL.USER_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.EMPLOYEE_ID,
FND_GLOBAL.USER_NAME from dual
Configure optional Logoff/Logon URLs.
If Single Sign-On (SSO) is enabled, you can configure log out and log on links to appear on Oracle BI Presentation Services screens (Login and logout screens). To do so, we add the elements shown below in the instanceconfig.xml file.
<!– other settings … –>
<Auth>
<SSO enabled=”true”>
<LogoffUrl>http://hostname:port/the_url_to_logoff_sso</LogoffUrl>
<LogonUrl>http://hostname:port/the_url_to_logon_sso</LogonUrl>
<ParamList>
<!–IMPERSONATE param is used to get the authenticated user’s username and is required –>
<Param name=”IMPERSONATE” source=”serverVariable”nameInSource=”REMOTE_USER”/>
</ParamList>
</SSO>
