OBIEE - Remember Username and Password

I came accross this 'hack' and thought it may be worth a mention if used sparingly on a non-production (i.e. DEVELOPMENT) environment.

Use at your own risk.

Remember Username and Password in Obiee11g

Go to your BIPS config path, for example like below,
D:\OBIEE11G\instances\instance1\config\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1

and the search Security tab in your instanceconfig file and add

<AllowRememberPassword>true</AllowRememberPassword>

Then save it and restart bips servervices.
Include the elements and their ancestor elements as appropriate, as shown in the following example:

<Security>
<!--This Configuration setting is managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control-->
<ClientSessionExpireMinutes>210</ClientSessionExpireMinutes>
<AllowRememberPassword>true</AllowRememberPassword>
<CookieDomain>value</CookieDomain>
<CookiePath>/analytics</CookiePath>
<InIFrameRenderingMode>prohibit</InIFrameRenderingMode>
</Security>

Save your changes and close the file.

Restart Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services using OPMN

Login to your BI Home page ..then logout and login again. OBIEE will remember your Username and Password and go straight to your BI home page.

For More please refer to the Oracle documentation,
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/bi.1111/e10541/psconfigset.htm#BIESG1292

OBIEE 11g: Exceeded configured maximum number of allowed input records

Oracle have limited various numbers of outputs for rows, columns, prompts, cells and pivots to default values. These values are ususally set high enough to never become an issue, but for really large reports you will bump up against an error message saying you have exceeded some maximum.

So what do you do?

Step 1

Edit the instanceconfig.xml file. Typically, this file is located in the following directory: <OBIEE11g_install>\instances\instance1\config\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1
If you are running a load balanced environment please make sure all environments have the same settings (or share the same settings) or you'll be forever chasing down 'weird' customer experiences.

Step 2

There are parts of the instanceconfig.xml you cannot edit directly and those sections will be marked as only being updateable via Oracle Enterprise Manager. The parts we can edit I have marked in bold.

<Views>
<Pivot>
<!--This Configuration setting is managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control-->
<DefaultRowsDisplayedInDelivery>75</DefaultRowsDisplayedInDelivery>
<!--This Configuration setting is managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control-->
<DefaultRowsDisplayedInDownload>2500</DefaultRowsDisplayedInDownload>
<!--This Configuration setting is managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control-->
<DisableAutoPreview>false</DisableAutoPreview>
<MaxCells>10000000</MaxCells>
<MaxVisibleColumns>1000</MaxVisibleColumns>
<MaxVisiblePages>1000</MaxVisiblePages>
<MaxVisibleRows>10000</MaxVisibleRows>
<MaxVisibleSections>25000</MaxVisibleSections>
<DefaultRowsDisplayed>128000</DefaultRowsDisplayed>
</Pivot>
<Table>
<!--This Configuration setting is managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control-->
<DefaultRowsDisplayedInDelivery>75</DefaultRowsDisplayedInDelivery>
<!--This Configuration setting is managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control-->
<DefaultRowsDisplayedInDownload>2500</DefaultRowsDisplayedInDownload>
<MaxVisiblePages>1000</MaxVisiblePages>
<MaxVisibleRows>10000</MaxVisibleRows>
<MaxVisibleSections>2000</MaxVisibleSections>
<DefaultRowsDisplayed>64000</DefaultRowsDisplayed>
<MaxCells>10000000</MaxCells>
</Table>
</Views>

Note that the value you choose for <MaxCells> should never be more than <MaxVisibleColumns> * <MaxVisibleRows>.

In the case above <MaxVisibleColumns>1000</MaxVisibleColumns> * <MaxVisibleRows>10000</MaxVisibleRows> = <MaxCells>10000000</MaxCells>

Please restart all presentation services to pick up the new settings.

OBIEE - Connection Pools

Apart from creating your connection pool, filling in the type of database, username and password, do you give much thought to the connection pool.

If you have heavy usage, you should increase the maximum number of connections from the default of 10.
You will definately need a connection pool seperate from the others to set your session variables.
You will also need a separate connection pool for usage tracking.
Keep a separate connection pool for write back.

Just a few thoughts

OBIEE - Sample Administration Documentation

As I mentioned in Part 1 of a previous article here, you really need to have documentation around your OBIEE environment.


Not the most glamerous of suggestions surely, but your boss and sysadmin will love you. Start by documenting where to find stuff middleware home, logfiles, config files (instanceconfig.xml etc.), the URLs used for administration.

Then move on to documenting the config changes made after the install, what settings were changed and if known what the default values were before and what they are now. What are the connection details for your RCU schemas (BIPLATFORM and MDS). Capture things like server names and directory structures.

Now comes the living documents which you can generate periodically and version. Run off a repository report and catalog reports. This will give you (and your colleagues) a better understanding of what the repository looks like and also what in the catalog is where on the dashboards.

As an added benefit you can now work backwards from the catalog reports through the repository reports to see where data comes from to fill reports, and vice-versa, from a physical column work your way through the repository to the catalog report to see where the data is used.

Remember, having no documentation means a risk to your business.

And keep it up to date, mark your calendar for a monthly review, most times , no change, but there will be that month.......

Here's a suggestion of some topics to get you started!

General Info about your OBIEE Install

Server
URL
DNS Shortcut
WebLogic Console
Enterprise Manager
Repository Name
Catalog Path

Install Type Information

Type
OS
Install Dir

OBIEE Configuration

writeback
EVALUATE_SUPPORT_LEVEL
Usage Tracking
Repository Monitoring

Users/Passwords

Schema Prefix
BIPLATFORM
MDS
weblogic
Repository

Custom Deployments

password_change.ear

Maps

OBIEE - Repository System Session Variables

Session variables are similar to dynamic repository variables in that they obtain their values from initialization blocks. Unlike dynamic repository variables, however, the initialization of session variables is not scheduled. When a user begins a session, the Oracle BI Server creates new instances of session variables and initializes them.

Two types of session  variables:

• System Session Variables
  
• Nonsystem Session Variables
  

Sytem Session Variables : 

System session variables are session variables that the Oracle BI Server and Oracle BI Presentation Services use for specific purposes. System session variables have reserved names that cannot be used for other kinds of variables (such as static or dynamic repository variables and nonsystem session variables).

When you use these variables for Oracle BI Presentation Services, preface their names with NQ_SESSION. For example, to filter a column on the value of the variable LOGLEVEL, set the filter to the variable NQ_SESSION.LOGLEVEL.

 

Variable	Description
USER	Holds the value the user enters as his or her logon name. This variable is typically populated from the LDAP profile of the user.
PROXY	Holds the name of the proxy user. A proxy user is a user that has been authorized to act for another user.
GROUP	Contains the groups to which the user belongs. Exists only for compatibility with previous releases. Legacy groups are mapped to application roles automatically.
WEBGROUPS	Specifies the Catalog groups (Presentation Services groups) to which the user belongs, if any. Note that the recommended practice is to use application roles rather than Catalog groups.
USERGUID	Contains the global unique identifier (GUID) of the user, typically populated from the LDAP profile of the user.
ROLES	Contains the application roles to which the user belongs.
ROLEGUIDS	Contains the global unique identifiers (GUIDs) for the application roles to which the user belongs. GUIDs for application roles are the same as the application role names.
PERMISSIONS	Contains the permissions held by the user, such as oracle.bi.server.impersonateUser or oracle.bi.server.manageRepository.
DISPLAYNAME	Used for Oracle BI Presentation Services. It contains the name that is displayed to the user in the greeting in the Oracle BI Presentation Services user interface. It is also saved as the author field for catalog objects. This variable is typically populated from the LDAP profile of the user.
PORTALPATH	Used for Oracle BI Presentation Services. It identifies the default dashboard the user sees when logging in (the user can override this preference after logged on).
LOGLEVEL	The value of LOGLEVEL (a number between 0 and 5) determines the logging level that the Oracle BI Server uses for user queries. This system session variable overrides a variable defined in the Users object in the Administration Tool. If the administrator user (defined upon install) has a Logging level defined as 4 and the session variable LOGLEVEL defined in the repository has a value of 0 (zero), the value of 0 applies.
REQUESTKEY	Used for Oracle BI Presentation Services. Any users with the same nonblank request key share the same Oracle BI Presentation Services cache entries. This tells Oracle BI Presentation Services that these users have identical content filters and security in the Oracle BI Server. Sharing Oracle BI Presentation Services cache entries is a way to minimize unnecessary communication with the Oracle BI Server.
SKIN	Determines certain elements of the look and feel of the Oracle BI Presentation Services user interface. The user can alter some elements of the user interface by picking a style when logged on to Oracle BI Presentation Services. The SKIN variable points to an Oracle BI Presentation Services folder that contains the nonalterable elements (for example, figures such as GIF files). Such directories begin with sk_. For example, if a folder were called sk_companyx, the SKIN variable would be set to companyx.
DESCRIPTION	Contains a description of the user, typically populated from the LDAP profile of the user.
USERLOCALE	Contains the locale of the user, typically populated from the LDAP profile of the user.
DISABLE_CACHE_HIT	Used to enable or disable Oracle BI Server result cache hits. This variable has a possible value of 0 or 1.
DISABLE_CACHE_SEED	Used to enable or disable Oracle BI Server result cache seeding. This variable has a possible value of 0 or 1.
DISABLE_SUBREQUEST_CACHE	Used to enable or disable Oracle BI Server subrequest cache hits and seeding. This variable has a possible value of 0 or 1.
SELECT_PHYSICAL	Identifies the query as a SELECT_PHYSICAL query..
DISABLE_PLAN_CACHE_HIT	Used to enable or disable Oracle BI Server plan cache hits. This variable has a possible value of 0 or 1.
DISABLE_PLAN_CACHE_SEED	Used to enable or disable Oracle BI Server plan cache seeding. This variable has a possible value of 0 or 1.
TIMEZONE	Contains the time zone of the user, typically populated from the LDAP profile of the user.

The SELECT_PHYSICAL command provides the functionality to directly query objects in the Physical layer of the metadata repository, and to nest such a statement within a query against the Business Model and Mapping layer or the Presentation layer.

Syntax for the SELECT_PHYSICAL Statement

Basic syntax for SELECT_PHYSICAL queries is equivalent to  basic syntax of select statement  with the term

SELECT_PHYSICAL replacing the word SELECT, namely:

SELECT_PHYSICAL [DISTINCT] select_list
FROM from_clause
[WHERE search_condition]
[GROUP BY column {, column}
     [HAVING search_condition]]
[ORDER BY column {, column}] 

 Source:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/bi.1111/e10540/variables.htm#BIEMG3104

Smooth(er) OBIEE Administration

I am one of those people who likes to know how things work. I'm constantly digging through the Oracle guides for OBIEE and trawling the net to find those nuggets of information that will make my life easier.

I have a confession to make at this point. I will go out of my way to avoid doing repetitive (boring) work. Like most people I would rather do  something new and exiting rather than push the same buttons in the same sequence day after day.

OBIEE administration is one of those jobs that could suck up hours and hours of your day unless you think smart. Unfortunately, most environments expect you to 'get stuck in' and then before you know it ......... the same thing day-after-day. Every OBIEE site has common issues that they struggle with; migration across environments, performance, testing, development, lineage.....

Part 1. OBIEE Documentation: 

Not the most glamerous of suggestions surely, but your boss and sysadmin will love you. Start by documenting where to find stuff middleware home, logfiles, config files (instanceconfig.xml etc.), the URLs used for administration.

Then move on to documenting the config changes made after the install, what settings were changed and if known what the default values were before and what they are now. What are the connection details for your RCU schemas (BIPLATFORM and MDS). Capture things like server names and directory structures.

Now comes the living documents which you can generate periodically and version. Run off a repository report and catalog reports. This will give you (and your colleagues) a better understanding of what the repository looks like and also what in the catalog is where on the dashboards.

As an added benefit you can now work backwards from the catalog reports through the repository reports to see where data comes from to fill reports, and vice-versa, from a physical column work your way through the repository to the catalog report to see where the data is used.

Remember, having no documentation means a risk to your business. View sample documentation here.

Part 2.  OBIEE Automation:

You don't already? You will need to think of all those tasks you do and tackle them one-by-one. It may take you some time to get to a state where executing a single script will do an entire day's work, but you can certainly make a start by taking simple startup and shutdown tasks and automating them. Join them together shutdown then startup, there you go you have a script to 'bounce' the environment. How much time did that save?

You will need to have scripts to help with testing connection pools and migrating RPDs and catalogs. You can generate scripts that 'auto-correct', they start up an environment if it is down or restart components of OPMN. How about migrating users and groups across environments.

When you create a script you put all the effort in up front and reap the benefits in the days that follow.

Part 3. OBIEE Procedures:

There is nothing wrong with doing all your tasks in an ad-hoc manner for a Proof of Concept Project. The nature of the POC is to rapidly change things to reflect the change in your customer's requirements.

But what ad-hoc work does is distract you and eats up your time. Before you know it, you've spent an entire day ad-hoccing (is that a word?) and have nothing to show for it.

If you have a thread of automation or a deployment script for promotion across environments then with a little planning and communication you can ease the workload.

So what do you need to know to deploy? What are you deploying, from where to where and what are the configuration details and security settings?

This doesn't have to become something heavy and cumbersome with reams of documentation, a couple of lines and provides project history and documentation as a byproduct.

Each project will have it's own lifecycle and demands but setting up a process and schedule for releases, do you absolutely have to release the latest developer build to test immediately or can it wait until an agreed time where several pieces of work can be batched and planned in. Immediately the level of distraction for you has dropped.

In conclusion, as you start to fill in some of the parts of administration, you start a feedback cycle that will over time reduce your workload, increase your inderstanding of OBIEE and make you more productive

OBIEE BUNDLE PATCH 11.1.1.7.140114

Patch 17886497: BI BUNDLE PATCH 11.1.1.7.140114

The latest patchset for OBIEE 11.1.1.7 has just come out.

The Oracle BI EE Suite Bundle Patch 11.1.1.7.140114 under the top-level patch 17886497 consists of the following component patches:

Patch	Abstract
16913445	Oracle Business Intelligence Installer (BIINST)
17922352	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (BIP)
17300417	Enterprise Performance Management Components Installed from BI Installer 11.1.1.7.0 (BIFNDNEPM)
17922552	Oracle Business Intelligence Server (BISERVER)
17922596	Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services (BIPS)
17300045	Oracle Real-Time Decisions (RTD)
16997936	Oracle Business Intelligence ADF Components (BIADFCOMPS)
17922577	Oracle Business Intelligence Platform Client Installers and MapViewer

This weighs in at a hefty 2.5Gb and includes 8 patches

Don't forget to clear cache and read the readme documentation.

OBIEE New Features in 11.1.1.7

New Presentation Features

1) Recommended Visualizations Feature for Creating Views

• When you create a view, you can choose a recommended view type based on the data in your analysis and, optionally, what you want to use it for (for example, to analyze trends).
• You can choose a suggested “Best Visualization” as well as a “Recommended Subtype”. Or you can instead choose the “Recommended Visualization” option, for which you specify your intent for the new view.

2) Breadcrumbs

• Breadcrumbs have been added to help users understand their current location within Oracle BI content and the path that they have used to navigate Oracle BI content.
• Breadcrumbs display at the bottom of the page, and users can click a breadcrumb or the breadcrumb overflow button to navigate to a specific location on their breadcrumb trail.

3) Enhancement to Dashboards

• The ability to create custom print layouts for high-fidelity printing of dashboard pages (i.e. automatic creation BI Publisher reports)
• A new default style called FusionFX (instead of “blaf”)
• The addition of the Freeze Column option to the Column Properties menu. This option allows you to freeze a column at an edge (top or left) of a dashboard layout
• The addition of “Size” and “Page Size” options that allow you to control the position and size of columns and sections
• The ability to export an entire dashboard or a single dashboard page to Microsoft Excel 2007+
• A new “Replace Analysis in <Dashboard>” option added to Answers to replace an analysis on a dashboard
• A new “Return to <Dashboard>” option within Answers to return to a dashboard from the Analysis editor

4) Enhancements to Graphs

• 3 new graph types:  Waterfall graph, Stacked graph and 100% Stacked graph (the latter two are subtypes of Bar and Area graphs)
• Zoom to data range. This option lets the system evaluate the range of values on an axis, and choose appropriate minimum and maximum values for the scale. This is useful when graphing a set of large values that are all within a small percentage of each other
• Hide sliders in graph views that listen to master-detail events. For graphs in master-detail relationships, if you want to simplify the appearance of an analysis or dashboard, you can hide the slider that is created to accommodate detail columns

5) Enhancements to Views

• A new view type named performance tile. This view type displays a single aggregate measure value in a manner that is both visually simple and prominent
• Action links in trellis views. In simple trellis views, action links can now be used on inner graphs per unit, including the context of the outer edges. Action links can also be used in legends and in axis labels. In advanced trellis views, action links can be used in microcharts, where the microchart functions as a single unit (such as an aggregate number), including the context of the outer edges
• For map views, you can now vary the width of a line by measure to accentuate a feature
• You can link a map view as a detail in a master-detail relationship
• Auto Correct option for Map views (as errors in Map views can occur for various reasons). If the issue appears to be related to missing layers, maps, or styles, then it might be possible to correct the map by replacing the missing map view components with similar items that exist in the spatial metadata
• Legend and formatting highlighting
• Null suppression at view and analysis levels. You can set null suppression options at the view level (which overrides the analysis level) for data views including: table, pivot table, trellis (both simple and advanced), graph, gauge, and funnel views when the entire row or column contains nulls
• Ability to include or exclude calculated items and groups at the view level for columns and column headers. Specifically, two new options have been added: Include Custom Member and Exclude Custom Member

For tables, pivot tables, and advanced trellises:

• The ability to ◦specify the method to be used to browse data — either scrolling or paging controls
• Resize rows and columns
• Row count. If your table or pivot table view contains a grand total or subtotal on the row edge, the display totals, that is the grand total and subtotals, are now included in the Rows per Page count for content paging. In prior releases, if you had the Rows per Page count set to 10 for example, the table or pivot table would display more than 10 records if display totals were shown in the view results
• For right-click interactions, the ability to specify whether the Hide Columns interaction is available at runtime

6) Enhancements to Prompts

• This release includes an enhancement to the SQL Results prompt option. If you are working with double columns, you can now write the SQL statement so that filtering is done on code values rather than display values
• An enhancement to the prompt constraint option. The prompts designer can now limit a column prompt value list by more than one column
• This release includes enhancements to the parameters for prompted links

7) New Menu Options for Exporting Views and Results
This release adds the Excel 2007+ and Powerpoint 2007+ options for exporting views and results

8) Total Member Placement for Hierarchical Columns
This release includes an enhancement that allows placement of total members on a hierarchy

9) Browse Catalog Search Results by Object Attributes
The capability to use full-text search to find catalog objects and then filter the search results by attributes. This search is available when the administrator integrates Oracle BI Enterprise Edition with Oracle Endeca Server. After the full-text search results are returned, the Catalog area displays a list of matching items, and the Search pane displays the search results grouped by attribute (that is, Type, Name, Path, and Created By)

10) Navigate from the Total or Grand Total in a Table or Pivot Table
If an analysis contains a total or grand total and the associated attribute or hierarchical column contains an action link or a conditional action link, the action link (or conditional action link) is applied to both the column and the total or grand total

11) New BI Desktop Tools Available for Download

• Oracle Hyperion Smart View for Office
• Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting Studio (if Essbase is installed)
• Oracle Essbase Studio Console (if Essbase is installed)
• Oracle Essbase Administrative Services Console (if Essbase is installed)

12) Enhancement to Favorites
This release provides the capability to organize your favorites from the Category Tree area and the Selected Category area in the Manage Favorites dialog. In previous releases, you could organize favorites from the Category Tree area, only

13) Integration of Oracle BI EE with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System
With this release, OBIEE is integrated with Enterprise Performance Management Workspace (as part of the installation process)
Recommended Visualizations Feature for Creating Views
Breadcrumbs
Enhancement to Dashboards
Enhancements to Graphs
Enhancements to Views
Enhancements to Prompts
New Menu Options for Exporting Views and Results
Total Member Placement for Hierarchical Columns
Browse Catalog Search Results by Object Attributes
Navigate from the Total or Grand Total in a Table or Pivot Table
New BI Desktop Tools Available for Download
Enhancement to Favorites
Integration of Oracle BI EE with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System

New BI Mobile Features

14) Maximize views with double-tap gesture
With this new feature, you can access on your iPad more data—even within dense dashboards—without the restrictions of the smaller form factor. You expand an individual view by double-tapping on it. The individual view then displays within the full screen of the iPad. This maximizing of views can be done on views accessed within a dashboard, and also when viewing an analysis independent of a dashboard. See “Working with Analyses and Dashboards.”

15) New view and graph types
The following new graph types are supported with BI Mobile: Performance tiles, Waterfall graphs, 100% stacked graph, Stacked graph

16) Fixed headers
In analyses with fixed headers, you can use a single-finger drag gesture to scroll through data in all directions

17) Changing Orientation
It is now possible to change between landscape and portrait orientation while viewing Oracle BI content

18) Breadcrumbs
You can see the navigation path you have taken while moving through the catalog as a trail of breadcrumbs (near the top of the screen by the Back arrow). In this way, you can see your current location and how you got there, then decide whether to use the Back arrow to navigate in reverse, or to use the Home icon to quickly return to the Home screen

19) Security toolkit
The Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile Security Toolkit provides the ability to generate a signed version of the Oracle BI Mobile HD application. The toolkit includes the instructions and necessary content to build this application making use of Apple’s Xcode and the IOS SDKs. The Oracle BI Mobile Security Toolkit will be updated on a regular basis in order to synchronize with the Oracle BI Mobile HD application available on the Apple App store. See “Using the Security Toolkit for Mobile Device Management.”

20) Viewing of Oracle BI Publisher reports in dashboards

21) Integrated Full-Text Catalog Search
As in the desktop version of Oracle BI EE, you can use full-text search to find catalog objects in Oracle BI Mobile based on attributes such as author and column name. This search is available after the administrator integrates Oracle BI Enterprise Edition with Oracle Endeca Server

New BI Server Features

22) Changing the Repository Password From the Command Line
You can now change the repository password from the command line using the obieerpdpwdchg utility

23) New Options to Enforce Consistent Versions in Multiuser Development Environments
You can now add options to the multiuser development option file to enforce Administration Tool, MUD protocol, and RPD version consistency among MUD developers

24) New Utilities Available to Generate and Compare Logical Column Type Information
You can use the Administration Tool utilities Generate Logical Column Type Document and Compare Logical Column Types to generate a list of logical column types, and then compare it with logical column types in a subsequent version of the repository. You can also use the command-line utility biservergentypexml to generate the list of logical column types

25) Additional Database Support for Cardinality Estimates in Oracle BI Summary Advisor
The Prefer Optimizer Estimates feature, which improves performance by using cardinality estimates during the Summary Advisor process, is now available for Microsoft SQL Server and IBM DB2

26) Oracle BI Summary Advisor Measure Subset Recommendations
Oracle BI Summary Advisor now recommends only aggregates that contain specific measures that are both present in the analyzed query workload, and that can optimize the query workload if aggregates are created

27) Model Check Manager Enhancements
Model Check Manager now runs parallel queries against the database for better performance. In addition, you can now check models from the command line using the validaterpd utility with the -L option

28) Access to Apache Hadoop Data Sources
Oracle BI EE now supports Apache Hadoop as a data source

29) Support for Multi-Source Session Variables
Oracle BI EE now supports session variables that can be populated from multiple data sources and retain values from all source systems

30) NUMERIC Data Type Support for Oracle Database and TimesTen
You can now change a configuration setting to enable NUMERIC data type support for Oracle Database and TimesTen

31) Ability to Map Flex Object Changes Using the biserverextender Utility
You can now use the biserverextender utility to import flex object changes from ADF data sources and map them to the Business Model and Mapping layer and Presentation layer

32) Support for Servlet Communication Between the Oracle BI Server and Oracle OLAP
The Oracle BI Server now uses a servlet for communication with Oracle OLAP data sources, rather than relying on the JavaHost service

New Features for Administrators

33) Support for Oracle Endeca Server
You can configure Oracle Endeca Server as a search engine for full-text searching

34) Support for Multitenancy
You can configure Oracle BI EE so that it supports the use of multiple tenants  (Dont confuse with multi-instance installs!)

New BI Publisher Features

• Connect Directly to Oracle BIEE Subject Areas to Create Reports
• Excel Template Builder Enhancements (supports automatic insertion of fields and repeating groups)
• Layout Editor Enhancements (Time series axis formatting, Hide axis option, Independent axis formatting)
• Enhanced Create Report Guide
• PDF to PCL Conversion for Embedding PCL Commands in RTF Templates
• Support for PDF 1.7 Specification
• MDX Query Builder
• Support for Local XML File Data Source
• Support for CSV File as a Data Source
• Support for Endeca as a Data Source
• Support for Private Data Sources
• Enhancements for Sample Data Usability

OBIEE Maintenance Mode

Setting the maintenance on makes the system readonly. This feature is of particular importance to us when you want to do maintenance activities but still allow the users to access the application. Users will not be able to save any reports and thus maintain the consistancy of the webcatalog.

You need to be able to access the Administration page from your answers login.

The maintenance mode can be toggled ON/OFF on the main OBIEE page when you login to analytics with the link http://servername:port/analytics. At the top right corner of the page click administration link, on the resulting page under Maintenance and Troubleshooting section, you will notice the link toggle Maintenance Mode. Click the link to turn ON/OFF. In a clustered environment the mode can be toggled on each node separatley.

When set ON, users will recieve a message saying the "System is in Maintenance Mode. Please Try again later". whenever any user tries to save a report.

This means that you as administrator can lock down changes to the dashboard and catalog while a release is underway, a backup is taking place, .... Usually some activity where it is ideal that no changes are being made until the operation completes.

Auto Complete Functionality in Prompts

Available now in OBIEE 11.1.1.6 is the ability for prompts to suggest and highlight matching values as the user types in a value for the prompt.

 At the moment this functionality is limited to Choice lists only, and even then only when you allow the "Enable User to Type Value" checkbox. This you'll find in the prompt properties.

So how do we turn this functionality on, as it doesn't happen out the box.

Step 1.

Edit the instanceconfig.xml file in the \instances\instance1\config\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1 directory. Between the <serverinstance></serverinstance> tags add the following. 

<prompts>
<maxdropdownvalues>256</maxdropdownvalues>
<autoapplydashboardpromptvalues>true</autoapplydashboardpromptvalues>
<autosearchpromptdialogbox>true</autosearchpromptdialogbox>
<autocompletepromptdropdowns>
<supportautocomplete>true</supportautocomplete>
<caseinsensitive>true</caseinsensitive>
<matchinglevel>MatchAll</matchinglevel>
<resultslimit>50</resultslimit>
</autocompletepromptdropdowns>
</prompts>

This will allow autocomplete and ignore case, returning a list of 50 (at most) matches. 

Step 2.

Restart the BI component either through Enterprise Manager or opmnctl. 

Step 3. 

Now create a prompt ensuring that your settings are similar to those below.

 When you come to test the prompt, enter two or more letters and the dropdown below the prompt should fill. Note that the pattern of letters you enter can occur anywhere in the entries in the list returned, even in the middle of a word.

OBIEE Migrating Users and Security

So you have built your repository in development, tested how users interact with the data in the presentation layer, and now is the time to promote your work to the live environment.

If you have done your homework, you'll have put some effort into security while building the repository in development (it's always more difficult to bolt on security than it is to pause and design in security from the start).

So here you are in development, you've created your roles and some representative users. You could unpick the security behind the roles and users, or you could export them (users and roles) from your development environment and import them up the line into a pre-production environment. (Probably best to test that it all works before you do it for real.)

So, how does this all work; the security model is maintained in the weblogic console side of OBIEE, and the whole process of importing settings is additive only. By this I mean, that existing settings remain untouched, if a user is in one group prior to the new security import, and the import has that user in another group, the user will end up in two groups - test it for yourself - probably the best way to learn.

Exporting Weblogic OBIEE Users and Groups

So to export:
Login to your console and in the left hand side click on "Security Realms", then, when the screen refreshes, click on "myrealm" in the right panel. Select the Migration tab.

The process is the same for both export and import. For export select the export sub-tab. Designate a directory ON THE SERVER, not your machine, the server. This directory must exist. Click the button and within a second or two the job's done.

Weblogic Security Files

If you navigate to the server directory you designated you'll see 5 files.

Importing Weblogic OBIEE Users and Groups

Move the directory and files to the server where they are to be imported and open the console for that server, and navigate to the Migration tab, just as you did when exporting the security realm.

This time select the "Import" sub-tab, fill in the directory details and click "save". You should then be presented with a screen like below.

Now, the actual testing of permissions I'll leave to you but you will immediately be able to see the new users and groups by select from the tabs on the screen.

bicontentserver(11.1.1) down - an update and fix

Following on from a previous post here.

It turns out that all you have to do is create a new environment variable

BI_ORACLE_HOME and give the value of your middleware install ..\Oracle_BI1 directory.

You then need to restart the service and ..... yay.

Explaining OBIEE to Your Boss!

To explain all the details behind OBIEE would take a long time, probably bore a non-technical person half-way to death, yet still not provide them with any details they can conceptually grasp.

There is tons of documentation - the problem is wading through it all, and all your boss wants is-

"OBIEE in a Nutshell".

The OBIEE server exposes to an end user their business focussed measures and dimensions that can be used to assemble analyses of interest.

Assuming that your boss wants to find out how many cars were sold last month and whether they were new or used would assembling a theoretical query of:

"Calendar.Month", "Car.Condition", "Sales.UnitsSold"

with a filter of last month on "Calendar.Month"

The OBIEE server will now organise how the raw data sources are to be queried. It generates one, or more, queries against the data source(s). retreives the results, applies some post processing, and presents back to the user a result set that can be used to generate not only tables, but graphs, pivot tables and maps.

The OBIEE server has modelled physical raw data, applied calculations and transformations, all interwoven with a consistent security model, ensuring data access is seamless and controlled.

In discoverer or reports and to some extent in publisher you design a query. In OBIEE we no longer hand-craft individual queries, rather we model relationships and the ineractions between heirarchical behaviours. This allows for any possible random query entered by a user in the presentation layer to be transformed from a logical to a physical query, transparent to the user, and the results returned and displayed in the manner requested.