Category: Business Intelligence

BI Administration, Business Intelligence Platform

Installing OBIEE 11g on Windows XP

I recently installed OBIEE 11g on a Windows XP box.  I followed instructions I found on the deliverbi.blogspot.com Blog site … thank you Shahed Munir.

I would like to add some details to 2 of the steps, in case it helps clarify those steps for others:

 

– The detailed instructions I got from Shahed’s blog can be found here …

http://deliverbi.blogspot.com/2010/11/obiee-11g-windows-xp-installation.html

 

– And the details I would like to add are below …

1. Step 4 (Install Oracle Database 11g). 

Download your Oracle database software to, and run from, a directory without spaces. 

If you get an error such as …

“Windows cannot find ‘C:Documents’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. ….”

then you have downloaded and are trying to run the RCU from a directory under ‘C:Documents and Settings…’ (for example)

As mentioned above, download to and install from a directory such as ‘C:Oracle_rcu…’ (no spaces)

2. In Step 7 (Create RCU Repository), it does not specify how to run the RCU.  Go to the [Extract Directory]rcuHomeBin and run rcu.bat from there  -or-  run it from a command prompt …

for example … C:[Extract Directory]rcuHomeBin> rcu.bat

3. If you get an error in Step 7, verify that the following services have been started and try again:

  • OracleServiceORCL
  • OracleOraDb11g_home1ClrAgent
  • OracleOraDb11g_home1TNSListener

The entire install process took about 90 minutes.  Good luck!

Business Intelligence

OBIEE Best Practices – a collection of resources

There is a lot of great information out there on the web about OBIEE Best Practices.  In this post I create a collection of various blog posts and articles about Best Practices that I have come across.  Some of these are from some of the most popular OBIEE authors/bloggers.  They have done an awesome job sharing their thoughts and advice on various topics.

Reading through these will surely enhance your knowledge about many of the Best Practices for implementing and maintaining an optimal OBIEE environment.  If you come across other great “OBIEE Best Practices” articles, send me a note and I will add it to this list.

Debashis’s OBIEE Blog: OBIEE Best Practices.  He lists best practices for the RPD development (all 3 layers), Report Design, Security, and Performance.

A presentation (in pdf format) about OBIEE Deployment & Change Management Best Practices

555obiee Blog: OBIEE Caching Best Practices

Rittman Mead presentation (in pdf format): OBIEE Systems Management & Best Practices

A white paper on … Best Practices for Tuning OBIEE (applies to versions 11.1.1.3 and 11.1.1.5)

allaboutobiee Blog: OBIEE Best Practices – Presentation Layer

allaboutobiee Blog: OBIEE Best Practices – BMM Layer

allaboutobiee Blog: OBIEE Best Practices – Physical Layer

bidirect Blog: Dashboard Tips and Best Practices

biometrics Blog: OBIEE Best Practices

Peak Indicators: 20 Golden Rules for OBIEE 11g RPD Design  or to go directly to the pdf: 20 Golden Rules for OBIEE 11g RPD Design (pdf)

obieeexpress Blog: OBIEE Presentation Services Best Principles/Practices

oracletechnotalk Blog: Physical Layer Best Practices in OBIEE

varanasisaichand  Blog: Dimensional Hierarchies Best Practices

nerdsofobiee Blog: BI Best Practices. This article focuses on the view of the Business, and discusses items such as dashboards, communication with/involvement of business users on projects, and ease of use.

Rittman Mead: Data Modeling Tips

Rittman Mead: Data Modeling Best Practices

obiee101 Blog: OBIEE Golden Rules by John Minkjan

Business Intelligence (BI) Development, Business Intelligence Platform

Changing the name of a Subject Area in OBIEE 10g (in preparation for upgrade to 11g)

This article shares a few steps for renaming a “Subject Area” in OBIEE 10g.  OBIEE 10g allowed leading spaces in Subject Area names. You may have done this to alter the sort order of your Subject Areas without using leading numbers. This would result in only a Warning message when you checked the repository’s consistency.  However, leading spaces in Subject Area names is not allowed in OBIEE 11g, and will result in an Error.

So, if you are upgrading to OBIEE 11g then you will need to change the Subject Area name(s) to remove leading spaces or you may need to change Subject Area name(s) for other reasons.

Here are a few steps to consider but I recommend that you perform these steps for one subject area first, confirm all is well, then repeat steps for all subject areas.

  1. Stop the Presentation Server.
  2. In the Oracle BI Administration Tool, manually rename the Subject Area(s) in the Presentation Layer (and remove the leading spaces if that was the reason for the rename).
  3. Log into Catalog Manager in online mode, and navigate to Tools –> XML Search and Replace
  4. Carefully set the text you would like to replace with the new text – but make sure the text string is unique enough so that you do not inadvertently changed text that you don’t want to change.  Repeat for each name change that is required.
  5. You may need to manually open your prompts in Answers to change the Subject Area names in the custom SQLs used to generate defaults and drop down lists.
  6. Restart the Presentation Server and test your changes.
BI Administration, Business Intelligence Platform

Upgrading OBIEE 10g to 11g – Information Sources

I am in the process of planning an OBIEE 10g to 11g upgrade.  As you would expect, finding the appropriate documentation is the first step in the process.  Instead of rehashing what is already out there, this article simply shares some of the resources that I found along the way as I prepared for the upgrade.

Learn more about OBIEE 11g new features.

This link takes you to a “menu” of oracle documentation for Oracle Fusion Middleware Release 1 (11.1.1.6) – the latest release at the time of this writing. This is probably the most comprehensive source for information about this topic.

From the link above, click on “Business Intelligence” in the bottom-left and then locate the various documents – such as “Installation Guide”, “Upgrade Guide”, etc.

Specifically, click here for the System Requirements document; and click here for the Certification document.

I found this presentation by Rittman Mead on “Upgrading from OBIEE 10g to OBIEE 11g” useful – it provided a great overview of what’s involved in the upgrade process.   And another short article by Rittman Mead on “How, Why, Should I Upgrade to OBIEE 11.1.1.6?” added a few tidbits of information.

In this article from the howtobi blog, “Upgrading OBIEE 10g content to 11g”, you will find great step-by-step upgrade instructions.  Another step-by-step article, Upgrading OBIEE10g RPD and Web Catalog to OBIEE 11g, was found on the obieefans blog.

This is an article in Oracle Magazine covering the essentials of the upgrade process.

You may also want to view this tutorial on Oracle Learning Library:   Upgrading Oracle Business Intelligence from 10g to 11g

Although some of the information overlaps from article to article, it’s still a good idea to read various articles to pick up a few different bits of information from each.  I would recommend highlighting or capturing important content from each document, and start putting together a task list/project plan that you continuously enhance as you learn more.

When you are ready, the OBIEE 11g software can be downloaded here.

And to get a preview of what 11g looks like and some of the new features, you can check out these two tutorials on the Oracle Learning Library site:  Creating a Repository using Oracle BI 11g Administration Tool and Creating Analyses and Dashboards 11g

And of course, there is a lot more information out there.

Good luck with your upgrade!