iTunes e-book

Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Reports and Dashboards Labs

by Antony Heljula

Looks like a cracking read, most stuff by Antony Heljula is :-)

You'll need an iPad with iBooks 2.

Here's the blurb.

"This book is the second in the series and puts the knowledge and skills learned in Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Reports and Dashboards into practise.

This book contains in-depth demonstrations, showing the reader how to design and build sophisticated Interactive Reports and Dashboards using a wide range of exciting features, such as Embedded Maps, Pivot Tables, Graphs, Conditional Formatting and Actions."

available here.

OBIEE Mobile logs

OBIEE 11.1.1 - How to obtain Crash logs for BI Mobile app in iPhone/iPad

a. First synchronize your mobile device (iPhone/iPad) with your computer

b. Crash logs stored under:

•          Windows 7

–        C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\Logs\CrashReporter\MobileDevice\iPad2

•          Windows XP

–        C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Apple computer\Logs\CrashReporter\

•          Mac OS X

–        /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice//

Original article here.

OBIEE - Enable evaluate

In the most recent incarnations of OBIEE, when you install, by default all EVALUATE functionality is disabled.

That means that any analysis that uses the evaluate functionality will throw an error like

"[nQSError: 43113] Message returned from OBIS. EVALUATE_SUPPORT_LEVEL inside NQSConfig.INI is not set to support EVALUATE. (HY000)

To enable this again you will need to edit the NQSConfig.ini file in
{MW_HOME}\instances\instance1\config\OracleBIServerComponent\coreapplication_obis1

and edit the EVALUATE_SUPPORT_LEVEL from the zero default to one of the settings allowed.

# EVALUATE_SUPPORT_LEVEL:
# 1: evaluate is supported for users with manageRepositories permssion
# 2: evaluate is supported for any user.
# other: evaluate is not supported if the value is anything else.

EVALUATE_SUPPORT_LEVEL = 2;  

The evaluate functionality is seen a potential security weakness, as it allows the analyses running as abstracted entities to dive right into the database.

OBIEE Graph - Trellis View

There is a new view available in OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 - Trellis

This allows us to create the spark graphs (mini inline graphs) that allow us to compress thousands of data points into some fairly digestible graphics.

I've only played with this for a few minutes, but must admit I am impressed. 

Before this you used to have to perform several contortions, invoke the GO URL, .... and now it's available out the box.

Good one.

OBIEE Patch 11.1.1.6.2 BP1

This patchset went in a lot easier than the patch to 11.1.1.6.2.

Opatch threw a couple of warnings, mainly to do with having to 'unpatch' the previous patch before applying the current patch.

Here's a list of patch numbers.

14223977 Patch 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 (1 of 7) Oracle Business Intelligence Installer
14226980 Patch 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 (2 of 7) Oracle Real Time Decisions
13960955 Patch 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 (3 of 7) Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
14226993 Patch 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 (4 of 7) Oracle Business Intelligence ADF Components
14228505 Patch 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 (5 of 7) Enterprise Performance Management Components Installed from BI Installer 11.1.1.6.x
13867143 Patch 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 (6 of 7) Oracle Business Intelligence
14142868 Patch 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 (7 of 7) Oracle Business Intelligence Platform Client Installers and MapViewer and
13952743 JDeveloper

See, Even Other People do it.

Catch a glimpse of the video here.

Ignoring that fact that OBIEE is not mentioned, this covers the general theory behind designing for data extraction. All the main idea are covered from extraction to start schemas.

A nice touch is the chalk board, so old school that no batteries are required.

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.