Who Uses the Catalog?

Within Oracle BI EE, there are three primary users: content consumers, content designers, and catalog administrators. Each user performs different tasks within the catalog, and, therefore, each user sees a different version of the catalog interface. Functionality that is available for one user might not be available for another. Furthermore, the catalog functionality and objects that are available to a user depend upon the privileges that are specified by the Presentation Services Administrator and the object's individual permissions, which are usually set by the content designer.

Content consumers can use the Catalog page to view the business intelligence objects that are necessary to perform their day-to-day tasks. For example, a sales manager must access an analysis that monitors the weekly sales of a specific brand of beverage in the Central and Eastern regions. The permissions that are set by the content designer and catalog administrator determine what tasks the content consumers can perform both on an individual piece of content and within the catalog. For example, content consumers at Company A can search for, view, and interact with only those objects that have been assigned to them, but content consumers at Company B can search for and interact with content as well as create content and store it to their personal folders.

Content designers are the individuals who create the content for the content consumers. Content designers need broader access to the catalog to efficiently create, edit, test, and troubleshoot objects. Their access to the catalog's functionality is more comprehensive than that of the content consumers. However, like the content consumer, the content designer's permissions are set by the administrator. For example, a content designer must store content in and retrieve content from the public folders for the Sales functional area, but not the Operations functional area. Or a content designer must be assigned to several groups so that the content designer can sign in to Presentation Services as different users to test the new or revised content.

Administrators need the most comprehensive access to the catalog; however, their access is still determined by the privileges that are assigned to their role by the Presentation Services administrator. In general, the catalog tasks that the administrator performs include setting permissions on catalog objects and folders, archiving the catalog, creating and managing directory structures, and managing system and user data.