Everything Oracle

This section contains a set of disparate articles on various aspects of OBIEE, aimed at project managers, IT Directors, and anyone else involved with the procurement of business intelligence platforms.

Overview:

OBIEE 11g: Preview

Overview of OBIEE Features and Functionality

Custom Build, Fusion Intelligence, or BI Applications?

Managing Complex Data Source Integration

How OBIEE works: An Executive Overview

OBIEE: The Big Picture

... more to come ...

Productivity:

Guided Analytics: the Future of Decision Making

The Business Benefits of “Do it yourself” Reporting

OBIEE: Re-engineering Business for a New Age

... more to come ...

Training:

End User Training: Realizing OBIEE Productivity Gains

Developer Training: Adapting Oracle’s OBE Tutorials

... more to come ...

Deployment:

Developer Skill Sets: Who needs to do what, when

Maximizing OBIEE Performance

Single Sign-On: Diversionary and Reflexive Solutions

... more to come ...

BI Publisher:

Developer Productivity and Ease of Use

... more to come ...

Hyperion / Essbase:

Integrating Hyperion into OBIEE

Hyperion: The “Plus” in OBIEE Plus

Bidirectional Integration: OBIEE and Hyperion (11.1.x)

... more to come ...

Oracle Applications / E-Business Suite Interfacing:

Fusion Intelligence

... more to come ...

OBIEE Developer Articles

The articles in this section are aimed at OBIEE developers. If you’re a seasoned OBIEE developer then most of what you’ll find here will be “déjà vu”. However, you may find articles marked with an asterisk of interest. These articles contain information, techniques, and workarounds that are not found in the OBIEE documentation, and which we have not seen discussed on the major OBIEE blogs.

In particular, you may find the following articles of interest: “Pivot Table Formatting – Javascript & HTML DOM”, which describes a generic technique that can be used to solve most formatting problems within Answers and Dashboards; “Manipulating Session Variables from Answers”, which describes how to use session variables for persistent storage, so that, for example, values can be passed between different dashboards; “Making ‘Evaluate’ MDX-Friendly”, which describes a simple method to avoid adding dummy code to MDX expressions in order to overcome the syntactic limitations of “Evaluate” column substitution; and “Syntactic Bypass – ‘Duplicate Symbol’ Workaround”, which describes an easy to implement workaround for the infamous “Duplicate Symbol” bug, greatly extending the range of Essbase reporting that is possible from within OBIEE.

Answers and Dashboards:

Writing HTML Everywhere *

Generating Dynamic SQL *

Customizing Skins and Styles

Banner Image Customization

Conditional Formatting – Computed Lag and Evaluate

Pivot Table Formatting – Javascript & HTML DOM *

Exactly what is a Request Variable? *

Parsing the Web Browser URL *

Hiding Web Pages on Processing-Only Calls *

Intra-Session ODBC Function Calls *

Manipulating Session Variables from Answers *

Understanding OBIEE Cookies *

... more to come ...

Repository Construction:

Logical Decomposition Diagrams *

Horizontal (Column) Partitioning

Chasm and Fan Traps

Understanding Connection Pools

... more to come ...

Aggregations:

The Integer Division Bug *

... more to come ...

Architecture and Configuration:

Overview

BI Presentation Services

BI Server

... more to come ...

Security:

The “Evaluate” Security Loophole *

“Evaluate” Security Loophole – Client Perspective *

“Evaluate” Security Loophole – Repository Perspective *

Virtual Private Database – Fine Grained Access Control

... more to come ...

Hyperion / Essbase Integration:

Reporting against Essbase – An Introduction

Essbase as an OBIEE Data Source

Measure Hierarchies in OBIEE

Making “Evaluate” MDX-Friendly *

Multi-Member MDX – The Duplicate Symbol Bug

Syntactic Bypass – “Duplicate Symbol” Workaround *

... more to come ...

Oracle Applications / Fusion Intelligence:

Repository, Catalog, and Custom Messages Configuration

Single Sign-On EBS Authentication

... more to come ...

OBE OBIEE Tutorials Developer FAQ

This section contains answers to some of the problems you may encounter when trying to follow Oracle’s OBE OBIEE tutorials. For a discussion of the merits of using this material to develop and supplement OBIEE developer training courses see the article “Developer Training: Adapting Oracle’s OBE Tutorials”.

Tutorial Prerequisites:

Where is the “SetupFiles” directory?

Where is “sh.rpd” / “SH_PartTwo.rpd”?

... more to come ...

Installing OBIEE on Windows:

“TNS: could not resolve” error during ODBC configuration

“Could not connect” during update of row count for Products

... more to come ...

Interactive Dashboards and Business Intelligence Answers:

Cannot display web page at http://localhost/analytics

“Amount Sold” displayed in the wrong units

Pivot table missing “Amount Sold (000) Current Month” column

Don’t know how to modify the report format

“Access denied for user to path /shared/Learn/Category Sales”

Oracle gets its sums wrong

... more to come ...

Creating a Repository:

“Connection Pool” window doesn’t appear during import

No row count in Physical Layer after import

Can’t bring up BI Server – control request exception

Can’t log back into repository tutorial

Global Consistency Check: Database features do not match the defaults

Global Consistency Check: no warnings for missing keys

Could not connect due to missing username/password

No messages during consistency check

“Gross Profit Physical” not present in “SALES Logical Table Source”

“Share of Category” report missing decimal places, percent, and currency

“Matching table key does not exist in <table>”

... more to come ...

Sending Alerts using Oracle BI Delivers:

“Creating the Metadata for BI Answers” tutorial not found

Can’t find “agsmail.exe”

“No Repository” when opening Job Manager

Pivot table not displayed when “Manage Display” is pressed

Can’t save iBot: “[nQSError: 68019] Authentication Failed”

... more to come ...

Using Oracle BI Office Add-Ins:

Setting up the “Paint” repository and catalog

Location of configuration file "bioffice.xml"

Can’t find “Chart Object” menu item"

... more to come ...

Setting Up a Multiuser Development Environment (MUDE):

“SH.zip” for “MUDE” tutorial has gone “AWOL”

“SH.prd exists do you want to overwrite it”?

“You are already attempting to check in the file”

This MUDE tutorial is doing my head in?

... more to come ...

Merging Objects from different Repositories:

Multiuser menu items are not available

... more to come ...

Creating and Modelling Aggregate Tables:

“Unable to connect to port 9705 on machine localhost”

Aggregate job never seems to complete

Which Connection Pool to use

... more to come ...

Setting up Usage Tracking:

Which is it: “sh_usagetracking.rpd” or “sh_usage.rpd”?

Physical Table Name Format for Usage Tracking

“SQL Statement preparation failed”

... more to come ...

Integrating Essbase with OBIEE:

What about Version 9.3.1?

Missing Bars in Chart

... more to come ...

OBE BI Publisher Tutorials Developer FAQ

Oracle provides a set of OBE tutorials for BI Publisher (you'll find them here). There is certain degree of overlap and repetition between the different tutorials, but they still offer a useful introduction to BI Publisher. Unfortunately, the design of BI Publisher has been changed since these tutorials were written, so you’ll notice many differences in the screen layout compared to the screen dumps found in the tutorials (for information on these and on other changes see the Oracle Business Intelligence New Features Guide Release 10.1.3.3). If you encounter any errors while trying to follow the instructions, then you might find the answer in this section.

Getting Started with Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher:

“Template Builder” link not found in BI Publisher

“Windows cannot access specified device path” from “Template Builder”

“Admin” tab is missing in BI Publisher

Query Builder wants to run add-on “MSXLM 5.0”

“Publish Template As” menu item does not exist

“Text Form Fields Options” dialog box does not exist

MS Word Bug: “A valid date or time is required”

Can’t see “Title” field in BI Publisher Chart editor

... more to come ...

Integration of Oracle BI Publisher with OBIEE:

The role of hint text when inserting charts and tables

“On Grouping” option disabled for “Calendar Month Name” field

“ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException” when previewing report

... more to come ...

General Developer FAQ

This section contains answers to some of the questions that I’ve been asked by developers new to OBIEE. I’ll add to the collection as time permits. If you’re stuck in the meantime, just remember that OBIEE is far from being a stable product, and that the same action repeated on different occasions often leads to different results – in other words, if it doesn’t work first time around, reboot the system and try again.

OBIEE Installation:

OBI 11g Installation

OC4J starts automatically on reboot after installation

Data source and logon for post-installation BI Client Test

Configuring BI Scheduler with Oracle 11g database

... more to come ...

OBIEE Configuration:

OBIEE won’t work!

Presentation Services has HTTP 500 Internal Server Error

Error: 1064: An exception occurred ... when starting the BI Scheduler

“Account is locked by OCI call ... Could not connect to Oracle database”

Reordering items on Dashboard Properties page forces logoff

... more to come ...

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