Sharing Schemas Required by Oracle Business Intelligence

The Repository Creation Utility (RCU) creates the BIPLATFORM and MDS schemas that are used when you install OBIEE 11g.

Now if you run a multi-node system what do you do, can you use the same RCU created schemas, or do you have to create parallel ones?

This extract from the Oracle OBIEE documentation (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/bi.1111/e10539/c3_requrmnts.htm#BABBICDA) provides the answer, which states that:

If you scale out a system from a primary node, the new nodes share the same RCU schemas as the primary.
A new OBIEE system needs separate RCU schemas.

------------------- extract ---------------------
If your organization has an MDS schema installed in a supported database, you do not need to install the MDS schema again with the RCU. You can use the existing MDS schema for your Oracle Business Intelligence installation. For this option, deselect the Metadata Services schema in the Select Components screen of the RCU. Then, when you install Oracle Business Intelligence, specify the details for the existing MDS schema in the MDS Schema screen.

However, each Oracle Business Intelligence system (BI domain) requires its own BIPLATFORM schema. Two or more systems cannot share the same BIPLATFORM schema, although they can share the same database. Therefore, you must run the RCU and install the BIPLATFORM schema and the MDS schema (if no MDS schema exists) before installing each distinct Oracle Business Intelligence system (BI domain). For example, if you plan to install two Oracle Business Intelligence systems, you must run the RCU and install the required schemas twice, or once for each system.

This requirement does not apply when you scale out an Oracle Business Intelligence system. In a scaled-out (clustered) system, you only run the RCU and install the database schemas once, before installing the primary node of the Oracle Business Intelligence cluster (the BI domain for the cluster is created at that time). Additional Oracle Business Intelligence nodes that you install during the scale-out process become members of that domain and, therefore, use the same set of schemas.