BI Style Sheet Designer

The BI Style Sheet Designer is a tool to support you in changing the look of your BI Web Applications.

In principle you can form the visual appearance of your BI Web Applications by editing the cascading style sheet as you are used to do in other web pages. Therefore you can use any HTML / style sheet editor of your choice. But you have to know the name of the CSS classes and the HTML passage in which they are used.

With the BI Style Sheet Designer you can change your design directly. It presents you all the elements of the BI web items in a preview for changing them. Therefore you can immediately see your changes in the corresponding BI context. After having finished the design, you can save it. Now the BI Style Sheet Designer creates a CSS for you which you can use for your productive BI Web Applications.

It's a pre-version of BI Style Sheet Designer for testing and evaluation purposes. That means, all your feedback about bugs and usability will be considered for the official version which will be available in the beginning of 2003.

Installation of BI Style Sheet Designer

Requirements of your PC

  • Minimum Hardware Requirements

    400 MHz CPU
    > 256 MB RAM
    600 MB free Diskspace

  • Operating System

    Windows NT
    > Windows 2000

  • ZIP Tool

    We recommend a program (Winzip or "compatible") capable to create and read compressed files in ZIP, JAR and PAR format.

Installation of BI Style Sheet Designer (Installation of Java Development Kit, J2EE Servlet Engine and Portal Development Kit)

  1. You have to install the Java Development Kit Version 1.3.1. You can download this version from the Sun - Java homepage: http://java.sun.com/j2se/downloads.html.
     
  2. You need a Servlet Engine. The PDK is build and tested on the Tomcat Servlet Engine. In case you use any other J2EE Servlet Engine we can offer no support. The PDK will use Tomcat Version 3.3 or latest patches 3.3.x. Please install Tomcat on your PC. To install Tomcat download the installation file (zip format) from Jakarta Project: http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/. The download page of Tomcat 3.3 you will find under http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-tomcat/release/v3.3/bin/. Please use the file jakarta-tomcat-3.3a.zip.

    You can check if your tomcat is installed correctly by calling the URL http://localhost:8080. A page with information about Jakarta Project / Tomcat should appear.

    Remark: During the installation you have been asked where (in which folder of your local hard disk) you want to install the tomcat. It is up to you. But for the further understanding of this description let us assume that the tomcat has been installed in the folder c:\tomcat.

  3. Don't forget to set the environment variable TOMCAT_HOME according your Tomcat installation.
    Environment variables can be set in System Properties:
    • Select Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System.
    • Select the tab Advanced.
    • Click on the button Environment Variables

       

    • Under System variables create or edit the variable TOMCAT_HOME.

    • Insert the path to your folder where you have installed your tomcat.

  4. The JSP engine also uses 'javac' therefore the tools.jar file needs to be in the CLASSPATH. To do that you have 3 options:
    • Put "tools.jar" in your CLASSPATH.
    • Copy "tools.jar" into the Tomcat lib/apps folder.
    • Set JAVA_HOME to the directory where JDK is installed.

      Do to this act the way you have done for TOMCAT_HOME:

      Set the environment variable for JAVA_HOME


  5. Download the Portal Development Kit from the iView Studio.
    > If you aren't a registered user you will be able to register yourself in the Log On area.
    > You can find the PDK under DevZone.
     
  6. Extract the zip file tomcat_pdk.zip in your tomcat root folder (e.g. c:\tomcat).
     
  7. Start Tomcat (execute c:\tomcat\bin\startup.bat).
    This will automatically deploy all components and services. Among other things the folder tomcat\webapps\irj will be created.
    You will get the following "error" message in the dos console: 
    Jul 31, 2002 7:54:21 PM # IRJ Init thread    Fatal       LOCK_CLIENT - OK: Lock client connected.
    Server: xxx client: xxx port: 3299 pid: 1 #
    This is not an error message but a success message. But the message seems to have the wrong log level ;-)
     
  8. Start your local BI Style Sheet Designer with http://localhost:8080/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/BIStyleSheetDesigner.default
     
    Please be patient. It will take a really long time in the first run because of the unpacking process. Following usage of BI Style Sheet Designer will run much more faster.

Working the BI Style Sheet Designer

  1. Start the design process on the page (Design Selection) by selecting one of the Color Templates.
    > You can find your previously defined style sheets under Your Designs.
     
  2. Create your own style sheet by adapting the values.
     
  3. Save your settings by specifying Name and Folder Name.
    > The Name of the style sheet will be displayed in the Your Designs area on the starting page.

Please don't use the Related Tools in this provisional solution. In the full version you will be able to use them.

Using the style sheet for your BI Web Applications

A style sheet version for each browser (Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 4.7 and Netscape 6.x) will be stored under tomcat\webapps\irj\services\laf\themes\portal\Folder Name\BIReports30

  1. Copy this style sheet into your MIME Repository under BW\Customer\Stylesheets.
     
  2. You can select this style sheet for your Web Applications as you are used to with delivered BEx style sheets.
    • Using the selection of style sheets in the Web Application Designer
    • Adding the parameter &style_sheet=BW\Customer\Stylesheets\Yours.css to the URL of your Web Application.