Oracle BI Publisher Blog

A recent enquiry about web service support for Enterprise has promted me to spend some time writing up how to do it here ... our docs are somewhat lacking :o( we'll address that in the next release.
Firstly, it can be done, secondly its pretty simple once you understand the limitations and the of course what the WSDL behind the service can actually do.

Im going to use the service described here, http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx?WSDL. In the WSDL there is a getQuote method that we canuse to get stock quote information. It requires of course a quote parameter value such as 'orcl'. Today it will return:-

  <StockQuotes>
 <Stock>
  <Symbol>ORCL</Symbol> 
  <Last>18.47</Last> 
  <Date>11/1/2006</Date> 
  <Time>4:23pm</Time> 
  <Change>0.00</Change> 
  <Open>18.56</Open> 
  <High>18.65</High> 
  <Low>18.34</Low> 
  <Volume>31724216</Volume> 
  <MktCap>95.960B</MktCap> 
  <PreviousClose>18.47</PreviousClose> 
  <PercentageChange>0.00%</PercentageChange> 
  <AnnRange>11.75 - 19.25</AnnRange> 
  <Earns>0.666</Earns> 
  <P-E>27.73</P-E> 
  <Name>ORACLE CORP</Name> 
 </Stock>
</StockQuotes>

Anyhoo, how do you get this working in Enterprise.
Step 1: Create a new report

So give the report a name, description, etc then add a new Data Model

Step 2: Define the data model 

Give it a name, the type should be set to 'Web Service', the Details section will update for you. now enter:

WSDL URL - http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx?WSDL
Method - GetQuote

At this point we can not add the parameter, we need to create in the UI first andthen add it later.

Step3: Add the quote parameter
Click on Parameters and click New to create a new parameter.

Enter the following:

Identifer - whatever you wish
Data Type - String
Default Value - if you want
Parameter Type - Text
Display Label - the user will see this so make it something obvious
Text Field Size - I guess 4 is going to be the max you'll need

Step 4: Add the parameter to the Data Model

Save your work and go back to your new Data Model and click on the 'Add' link next to the Parameters label. The drop box will default in the new parameter.

You're done. Now click on the 'View'link and enter a stock quote and hit the 'View' button and the quote XML will appear. Now all you need is a layout template.

Of course you can create multiple data sources adding a query to the web service and then combine the result into a single report. For those of you with Enterprise installed you can get the report definition here so you can load it to your instance. Remember that the URL is going to be outside of your company firewall so you'll want to start the server up with the proxy parameters.

-DproxySet=true -DproxyHost=www-proxy.us.oracle.com -DproxyPort=80