Before we embark on developing a new repository, let's have a look at how the RPD is structured. The fundamental structure of an RPD is made up of three layers for modeling data:
Physical layer: This contains the information, for example table/column names and keys, for your data sources, as they exist in their database along with their connectivity details. No data is actually stored in the RPD, just references to your data sources, that is, it is metadata that is stored in it.
If needed, we can also connect to other data sources, for example, Flat files and Excel spreadsheets.
Business layer: The main purpose of this layer is to create an abstract and simplified model of the physical layer objects. This is especially valuable if we need to combine data from varying data sources. The business layer allows us to integrate these different sources and then present them to an end user as a coherent and unified whole.
OBIEE supports federated querying, so we can query and...