Data Analytics Blog: Bing Map Integration with OBIEE 11g

As in OBIEE 10g, OBIEE 11g provides the ability to integrate Bing maps in the presentation layer through HTML and Java Script in the Narrative view. This blog demonstrate this functionality. In the example below, we will plot cities on a Bing map with conditional icons based on profit amounts (blue and red). This demo uses custom data but can be further extended to use real data sets.
Here are the steps to integrate Bing maps:

1. Create a new report that includes city, state, latitude, longitude, and the profit amount measure.

2. Format the columns Latitude and Longitude to have at least 6 decimal places to ensure precise plotting on the map.

3. Now in the Results tab, add the Narrative view to include the custom Java Script shown below. In the Prefix section call the Bing map API and declare the required variables. In our case we used arrays to hold the latitude, longitude and profit.

var v_lat = [];
var v_long = [];
var v_profit = [];

4. In the Narrative section, pass the required columns with @{column_location} with Latitude and Longitude. In our example we have passed Latitude (@4), Longitude (@5) and Profit (@3).

v_lat.push(@4);
v_long.push(@5);
v_profit.push("@3"); // The added "$" makes profit a string value.

5. Define the following two functions in the Postfix section:

GetMap(): Sets the default settings for the map (like 2D mode), initial location (init_x1), default view to Road, and map zoom size to 4.

AddShapes01(): Loops through the array length and drops the push pin icons (custom icons) for each latitude and longitude, and their respective title.