BI Publisher Licensing considerations

By Paul Bullen, Senior License Consultant for Rocela

Recently we’ve heard about the many advantages and considerations of using BI/XML Publisher against Oracle E-Business Suite. Like many Oracle products, this provides some very powerful functionality which once mastered can revolutionise your use of applications. However, this functionality comes at a cost. As part of any (correctly) licensed Oracle E-Business Suite applications, you receive a restricted use license for Business Intelligence Publisher. What does this mean? Well, unfortunately the restrictions really are quite significant. Looking at standard terms and conditions, you are allowed to use Business Intelligence Publisher to publish and/or view:

1)      Shipped Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher reports: you are allowed to make changes to the layout of these reports

2)      Shipped or newly created Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher reports that are modified to access data from existing Oracle E-Business Suite Applications schemas that have not been customized

So, you can use the shipped reports and change their layout. Or you can create new reports which access non-customised schemas. In order to gain most business benefit from the BI Publisher, you’re probably going to want to create your own reports or query against schemas which have customisations.

Oracle provide further clarification:

Full use of Business Intelligence Publisher is required if any shipped, modified or newly created Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher report:

1)      Accesses data from a non-Oracle E-Business Suite Applications data source, or

2)      Accesses data from a new schema within the Oracle E-Business Suite Applications that is not shipped by Oracle, or

3)       Accesses data from a modified Oracle E-Business Suite Applications schema (e.g., by adding columns to an existing table).

Given how BI Publisher is Oracle’s strategic enterprise reporting tool, and may well become yours, it is imperative that you understand how you are licensed for using it. As a separately licensed product, it is available in either Named User Plus (£308 each, list price, minimum of 50) processor metric (nearly £31k per processor, list price), or Employee metrics.

The above restrictions are standard terms and conditions, they do vary and so it is worth checking your license documentation, bearing in mind your license may have been purchased before BI Publisher was released. If you are in any doubt, contact Rocela!

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