Putting It All Together

Oracle Discoverer Tutorial

Tip: Print this page.

The total estimated time you need to complete lesson 5 is 45 minutes.

Overview of Lesson 5

Lesson 5 is a summary of all lessons you have learned in the tutorial. Use lesson 5 as a self-test to determine how well you have learned each lesson and whether you need to repeat a lesson. Each step in the lesson includes a Hint to the section of the previous lesson that covered that task. You do not need to complete an entire lesson, just the particular task that you may be unsure about.

In lesson 5, you will create a simple Worksheet from scratch, analyze the data, and then export the Worksheet to HTML.

 

Connect to a database

  1. Using the connect details given to you by your Discoverer Administrator, connect to the Video Sales Tutorial database. Hint.
  2. Create a new Worksheet as a table. Hint.

 

Get the data you want

  1. In the Workbook Wizard, choose the Video Store Tutorial business area. Hint.
  2. From the Video Analysis Information Folder, choose the following Items: Hint.
  3. Make the Region Item a Page Item. Hint.
  4. Arrange the remaining Items in the following order: Calendar Year, Store Name, Sales SUM, Costs SUM. Hint.
  5. Create a new condition that reduces the data so that you only see Regions with annual sales greater than 40,000 dollars. Hint.
  6. Sort the Worksheet by the Item Store Name in ascending alphabetical order. Hint.
  7. Create a calculation to find the Profit from each store (Sales minus Costs). Hint.
  8. Make sure the calculation Sales Tax is active. Hint. (If you do not have this item, create a Calculation for 8% Sales Tax. Hint)
  9. Click Finish and view the data in your Worksheet.
  10. Duplicate the table as a crosstab. Hint.
  11. Save your Workbook in the database as Summary Workbook. Hint.

 

Analyze your data

  1. Click the tab for the crosstab Worksheet.
  2. Pivot the Item Store Name to the top axis and the Item Calendar Year to the left axis. Hint.
  3. Drill into the Item Calendar Year to see detail at the quarterly level, (to Calendar Quarter). Hint.
  4. Graph the data to visually analyze the Video Stores profit figures. Hint.
  5. Save your work.

 

Share your data with others

  1. Print you Worksheet. Hint.
  2. Export your Worksheet to Microsoft Excel format. Hint.
  3. Export your Worksheet to HTML. Hint.
  4. Compare the original Discoverer Worksheet to the HTML page in you Web browser.

 

Food for thought

Do you have a project that you are working on right now for which you can use Discoverer?

If so, what Items do you need to choose from the database?

How will you arrange them on the Worksheet?

What level of detail do you want to see?

What type of graph will best represent your data?

What format will you use to share your results with others.

Summary of Lesson 5

Congratulations on completing the tutorial! As you use Discoverer, you will find uses for it that you may not have thought of before. You will support your business decisions with empirical data from your company's database; and you will be able to persuade others with your results. And remember, if you have questions about using the product, use Discoverer's online Help and context-sensitive Help buttons.

Return to Tutorial Home Page

Definitions

Axis. Like Page Items, axis Items are special Items on a Worksheet. Axis Items can be moved to another location on a Worksheet. For example, you could move the Item, Department, to the side axis, thus making it a row heading. You could move it to the top axis, making it a column heading. Or you could move the axis Item to the Page Items axis, making Department a Page Item.

 

Business Area. Your Discoverer Administrator arranges data from the database into Business Areas. Business Areas contain data specific to your area of interest; for example, your administrator may have created an Accounts Payable Business Area, a Sales Business Area, and an Operations Business Area. Your Discoverer administrator creates Business Areas for the whole company and grants access privilege to each Business Area.


Condition. Conditions filter data to exclude some information so that the data is more manageable. For example, if you want to analyze stores with the highest profits, you could create a condition that says "Show me regions with annual profit greater than 50,000 dollars".

 

Drill. By using drill icons, you can see deeper levels of detail about your data; for example, you can drill from yearly to quarterly sales detail. If this is too much detail for you, use the drill icon again to collapse the quarterly detail back into yearly totals.


Items. An Item is a name for a specific set of data in the database; for example, if you want to see all departments in the database, you select the Department Item. In a Worksheet, Items appear as column and row headings.

 

Page Item. A Page Item is a special Item that groups all the data on a page; for example, data can be grouped into separate pages by the years 1998, 1999, and 2000. On a Worksheet, a Page Item appears above all the other column headings. This special Item means that all the data currently visible in the Worksheet describes a year (for example 2000). By selecting different Page Items from the Page Item drop-down list, you are actually switching pages within that Worksheet.


Pivot. At any time, you can change the position of Page Items and axis Items so that your data is grouped in a way that is more meaningful for you. Changing the position of Page Items and axis Items is called pivoting.

 

Copyright © 2000, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.