A couple of images which summarize what is New with OBIEE 11.1.1.7:
Making OBIEE as simple as ABC... (dream on)
This post is one of a series of brief posts on some of the “best of” features as judged by my humble self on the latest OBIEE release.
To start with, something that I have been hanging out for a long time: being able to directly create reports in Excel using the Oracle BI subject areas you have painstakingly built. In the past, the Oracle BI excel plugin only allowed you to import existing reports, but not access the Oracle BI semantic layer (Oracle BI Server) directly. Smart View solves this!
Good Youtube video on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2WSmnb—88
You can now create views directly from Excel onto the Oracle BI semantic layer using the Smart View plugin. The plugin can be downloaded from Home->Desktop Tools->Smart View link on the left hand side.
After you have installed Smart View, create a Private Connection to OBIEE from within Excel. Make sure to append /jbips to your usual OBIEE URL.
Eg. http://10.245.2.180:9704/analytics/jbips
Aside from the the ability to import OBIEE analysis that have already been built into Excel, you can also create new ones in Excel proper through Oracle BI EE->View Designer.
Displayed as a Pivot Table in Excel, with all of Excel’s pivoting capabilities:
This can be then published back to the OBIEE presentation catalog with the Publish View link.
And saved as regular OBIEE analysis.
And viewed as such:
Great little plugin it seems!
Oracle recommends the following installation order:
1. Oracle Endeca Server. For instructions on installing Oracle Endeca Server, including system
requirements, see the Oracle Endeca Server Installation Guide.
2. Oracle Endeca Information Discovery Integrator. For instructions on installing Oracle Endeca Information
Discovery Integrator, including system requirements, see the Integrator Installation Guide.
3. Studio (see About the Studio Installation Process on page 13). After installing, to verify the installation, log
in to Studio. Use a created Endeca data domain to provide the data source.
4. Provisioning Service (See Installing the Provisioning Service on page 54).
5. Integrator Server. For instructions about installing Integrator Server, see the Integrator Installation Guide.
6. Integrator Acquisition System. For instructions about installing IAS, see the Integrator Acquisition System
Installation Guide.
As per installation guide
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37502_01/server.751/es_install/toc.htm
EndecaServer7.5.1_1\endeca-cmd>endeca-cmd create-dd testmeEndecaServer7.5.1_1\endeca-cmd>endeca-cmd get-dd-health testme
Data domain: testme
Leader Node Health:
Hostname: DANOBRIE-NZ
Port:7001
Protocol:HTTP
Is available
Follower Nodes Health:
Detail:[]
Total Time excluding downloads = 30 minutes
Download Endeca 3.0 Files from edelivery
Endeca Server
From ServerInstallGuide.pdf
Requires:
Weblogic Server 10.3.6 (wls1036_generic.jar from OTN)
Java version 6 of Oracle JRockit JDK
On my platform: Win 7 x64, Steps 11 & 12 did not materialize – ie. no need to create a Windows Service.
These conventions are based upon Oracle’s BI Applications 7.9.6.3 standards.
The Analytic Data Warehouse (ADW) is an arbitrary name for the performance layer of your data-warehouse. The diagram below shows a typical data warehouse reference architecture with the Performance Layer circled in red.
The ADW schema will predominantly hold tables built by ETL and queried by OBIEE
Columns
Notes on Time Dimensions
Domain | Datatype | Notes |
AMT | Number (12,2) | Amount |
CNT | Integer | Count |
CODE | Varchar2 (20) | Code e.g. TUS, TUD |
DD | Number (2) | Day of month e.g. 1-31 |
DDD | Number (3) | Day of year e.g. 1-366 |
DESC | Varchar2 (200) | Code description |
DS | Number (2) | Datasource e.g. 1=EBS |
DT | Date | Date and time |
FLG | Char (1) | Y/N flag |
ID | Varchar2 (12) | Identifier |
IND | Varchar2 (3) | Indicator e.g. D,W,M,Q,A |
MM | Number (2) | Month of year e.g. 1-12 |
NAME | Varchar2 (250) | Name |
NO | Number (12) | Number |
PCT | Number (3,3) | Percentage |
| Number (2) | Quarter of year e.g. 1-4 |
TS | Timestamp | Timestamp |
TXT | Varchar2 (200) | Text string e.g. +64 4 1234567 |
WW | Number (2) | Week of year e.g. 1-53 |
WID | Number (12) | Warehouse Identifier i.e. rowid |
YYYY | Number (4) | Year e.g. 2012 |
(from Wikipedia)
Further to my previous blog on modelling the RPD, below is a more detailed explanation.
Before you start, make sure you are familiar with OBIEE modelling techniques. A good place to start is the Introduction chapter in the Admin Tool help. Modelling is done with Admin Tool, and the file modelled is name the Repository or RPD (its extension). The RPD can be opened in online mode when there few developers. Backup the RPD regularly.
Oracle's BI Applications RPD file is available as a best practise reference. The conventions in this document follow many of the BI Applications modelling standards. My initial post also lists the basic RPD modelling steps.
BI Applications RPD
This is where access to actual resources are defined, be they databases, files, cubes or other. The main task here is to define databases, connections, physical tables, aliases, keys, and joins of an actual implementation.
This layer is often termed the logical layer and is where the physical layer is simplified into a single business representation.
Work under single business model, eg. HNZC
Tooltip
Set the Content tab for each logical table source to reflect the grain of each fact and dimension
The presentation layer is the exposed layer to ODBC query clients including the OBIEE presentation services component. This is the layer that users will see in the Analysis Editor when they build queries.
It is sometimes useful to have an all in one OBIEE 11g virtual machine for purposes such as training. The following steps show how a bare bones OBIEE 11g and Oracle 11g database was setup on a Windows 2003 SP2 32-bit platform with 3600 MB RAM.
Inventory:
I setup the initial virtual machine with: 3600 MB Ram, 2 CPUs, and 50 GB disk (c: 10 GB, d: 40 GB for OBIEE 11g software, Database software, and database itself).
I setup the network mode to Host Only.
After installing Windows 2003 x32 SP2, copy the software installs to a folder (eg. d:\stage) using a network share.
Then, install the database, there is a minimalist guide to installing Oracle here
ie. Install the db software first, then create a customized, minimalist, database.
Some parameters of note that I used:
Default to standard SID = ORCL
Disabled Enterprise Manager
Install only OLAP and Spatial packages
In Standard Database Components, remove APEX.
Note – do not use 4096 bytes block size, the RCU install will fail. Stick to 8192 bytes.
Create the default listener and local naming entry using Net Configuration Assistant.Install the Microsoft Loopback adaptor on IP address 10.10.10.10
After installing the RCU, do a simple OBIEE 11g Install:
For testing purposes, I install also Firefox and Flash Player.
The results:
I have 4.45 Gb free on my D: drive after all the installations (installer files still present too).
Remove the installers, and this pumps up to circa 22 Gb.
With oracle db, OBIEE running, and Sample App Lite, we have the following memory profile, still 1.5 Gb free:
And we can see that we have about 1.5 Gb of Oracle software memory footprint. (Weblogic, database, BI system components)
The OBIEE Sample Application has a good set of standard Usage Tracking dashboards. It is fairly easy to graft the dashboards, analyses, and RPD objects into your target environment. This will get you up and running quickly with Usage Tracking. You first need to obtain a copy of the Sample App RPD and web catalog.
There are other system based dashboards that can be copied from the Sample App.
Steps:
Usage Tracking RPD: