Bringing the two worlds together
It's been almost a month since my last post on geo-spatial analysis in OBIEE (GeoSpatial Analytics in Oracle Business Intelligence (4)). We still have this and one more to go, so let's not waste any more time.So far, we have prepared database spatial objects, prepared maps to be used as a background in our analysis and created all required map objects. Now we need to bring those objects into OBIEE and map that to column in subject areas.
From your Home page click on Administration link and select Manage Map Data link.
To perform the task described above, we need to set up Layers and then link these with Backgrounds. You will notice that terminology used in Map Builder has changed slightly. We now talk about Layers which we created in Map Builder as Geometry Themes. We created Tile Layers in Map Viewers, which are now called Backgrounds. Quite innovative, isn't it? But nevertheless these terminology games should not stop us here as we are quite close.
So let's import Layers first and link them to Subject Areas.
Click Import Layers icon.
In previous post we used electronics connection to create three geometry themes, now called layers:
- 0_PREFECTURE_LEVEL
- 0_CHIHO_LEVEL
- 0_SALES_REGIONS_LEVEL
We will use these objects in this post as well.
Select electronics from Look in pull down list to select connection. Then select 0_PREFECTURE_LEVEL from available layers. You can also change Preview Map to preview ELECTRONICS_TILE_LAYER.
Click OK and check if new layer has been added to the list.
In the next step we have to define how just imported layer maps to existing subject areas.
To accomplish that open/edit new layer.
You can see that imported Layer Key is already populated. You can check this also by clicking Sample Data to verify if that really works. The fact is that our database table contain the data that describe Polygon Geometry Types. We could set Geometry Type to point or line.
Click on plus and select 00 Electronics subject area.
From available columns in Available area select column from 00 Electronics subject area that corresponds to selected Layer Key. In this case, this is Prefecture and move it to Selected area.
Rename layer to EL_Prefecture.
Click OK to close the window. You check if your mapping has been successfully stored.
If there are any other subject areas which could also use this layer, this is the place to add them to the list. For our example, we can simply close the window by clicking OK.
With this we have completed one layer import, there are still two to go. So repeat the process of importing layers and mapping them to BI Columns for the remaining two Geometry Themes, 0_CHIHO_LEVEL and 0_SALES_REGIONS_LEVEL, so that you have at the end the following layers defined:
We are almost there. We just have to link and put layers onto the background map. Therefore navigate to Background Maps tab and click on Import Background Map (icons on the right top above the list of background maps).
Select electronics again from the Look In pull down list and then select ELECTRONICS_TILE_LAYER map from Available Maps.
Click OK to close.
Once closed, click Edit icon to reopen and Edit Background Map. You can rename the map to Electronics Map and start adding individual layers to it.
Click on Zoom level boxes to define at which zoom level each layer is going to be displayed. You might spend some time here, to adjust layers to the proper zoom levels. It is quite possible, that you will have to return here to reset the zoom levels. But once you're satisfied, you click OK to close Edit Background Map window.
Your maps are now ready to be used with analyses in OBIEE. We will describe this in our last post on
GeoSpatial Analytics in Oracle Business Intelligence.