<br>Getting Started

Working with Discoverer

As you become more familiar with Discoverer, you will find a workflow that suits you best. Typically, using Discoverer is a three-part process:

Key concepts and terminology in Discoverer and its documentation use this three-part process to help you make best use of Discoverer.

Getting the data you want

Your company's database contains data that supports your business decisions. However, getting data from a large corporate database can be difficult. Discoverer is designed to help you get data by simply dragging and dropping items in a Wizard dialog. You do not need to understand database concepts, the SQL language, or how your company's database organizes information.

A Discoverer Administrator at your company organizes the data in your database into business areas. A business area contains information that pertains to a particular department or job function. For example, your Discoverer Administrator may create separate business areas for the Accounting, Sales, and Manufacturing departments. With business areas, you see only the data that interests you and do not have to search through all the data that your company's database contains. Click for more information about Getting the Data You Want.

Analyzing your data

Your ultimate goal in using Discoverer is to analyze your business and arrive at a profitable business decision. To do this, you may ask yourself questions about your business. For example, how did Product A sell last month? How does this figure compare to sales in the same month over the last five years? How did Product A sell by branch, region, and territory? Did commissions and pricing affect how sales people sold the product? Did particular sales people do a better job of selling the product? With Discoverer's data analysis tools, you can find the answers to these and other business questions.

After you select the data you want, Discoverer presents it to you in a spreadsheet-like format. Discoverer provides you with powerful tools that help you analyze this data. You may already be familiar with sorting rows and columns. In addition to sorting, you can also pivot your data to create comparisons. You can drill into data to see deeper levels of detail or related information that is also stored in the database. You can create totals, calculate percentages, and even create custom calculations on your data. And whenever you want, you can create graphs from your data. Your end result is a collection of worksheets and graphs that persuasively supports your business decisions. Click for more information about Analyzing Data.

Sharing your data with others

After you get and analyze your data, you will want to share your results with other people at your company, customers, or business partners. If these people also have Discoverer, you can share your workbooks with them. You can store your workbooks in the database and schedule them to update at regular intervals. Or, you can export your workbooks into popular application formats, such as Excel spreadsheets or HTML for the Web. Click for more information about Sharing Results with Others.

Key concepts and terminology

Before using Discoverer, take a moment to familiarize yourself with some key concepts and terminology. The terms below appear in the product's dialogs and in its documentation.

Workbooks.

A workbook is a collection of worksheets. A workbook contains data that is related in some way but organized to show different perspectives. For example, you may decide to create a workbook to show the sales history for Product A. However one worksheet could show sales for last month, another worksheet could show sales compared to the same month five years ago, and another could show sales per region. All three worksheets contain sales data related to Product A, but each is organized to show a different perspective.

Worksheets.

Worksheets contain the data you want and allow you to analyze and share it. Each worksheet is created by its own query. Every time you open a worksheet, Discoverer sends its query to the database to get the most current data.

Queries.

Every time you open a worksheet or create a new one, Discoverer sends a query to your company's database. A query is a question that Discoverer asks the database in order to get the data you want. For example, how did Product A sell last month? Queries are written in SQL, a language that databases understand. You do not need to understand SQL to communicate with the database. Discoverer writes the SQL query for you.

Items.

In the Workbook Wizard, you select items to get the data you want. An item is a name for data that is stored in your company's database; for example, the item "Department" is the name for all the departments at your company. Discoverer uses these items to write a SQL query. When the database returns the data that answers the query, the items you chose appear as row and column headings in a spreadsheet-like format.

Page Items.

This special item groups a worksheet's data into separate "pages". By selecting different Page Items in the Page Item drop-down list, you are actually switching pages within that worksheet.