OBIEE 11G – Error in Importing Metadata

Recently I start creating a repository (11g version) in offline mode and I want to import metadata which failed by the error ‘The connection has failed’.. I have searched for a solution and I will explain this in the next sections.

We can import some metadata from the Oracle BI Administration Tool > File > Import > from Database …  In the Import dialog box, we have to select a connection type, in my case ‘OCI 10g/11g’. Next step is to enter a Data Source Name (orcl) and a username and password from which you want to import the tables.

By clicking on the ‘next’-button it troughs an error ‘The connection has failed..’ This was very weird because my Oracle DB and Listener were up-and-running. I had checked this before to make a connection via SQLdeveloper.

At this point I had to find a solution before I could go further on my repository modeling. On Oracle forums I found a nice tip which solves the problem.

The root cause can be found in the following directory:

<biee11>\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIApplication\coreapplication\setup

There you will find a file named ‘user.cmd’ respectively ‘user.sh’. When you open the .cmd file you will see that you can set a TNS_ADMIN. This was not done earlier and this causes the problem of importing metadata through the wizard.

Solution: you have to set the TNS_ADMIN to an appropriate path such as <biee11>\Oracle_BI1\network\admin. This is the location where your tnsnames.ora is stored.

Afterwards, you have to save the .cmd file and try again to import some metadata in the Administration Tool.

Note: maybe you have to close the Administration Tool or restart your BI-services. For me it was sufficient to restart the Administration Tool and everything was working fine!

Important remark: when you are creating Dashboards & Answers or you are working in Online mode and you want to retrieve some data for a certain table by selecting the option ‘View Data’, you will also get the error: ‘The connection has failed..’. This problem will only occur when your tnsnames.ora is not stored in the Oracle_BI1 directory.

Oracle BI EE 11g Launch Day!

Introduction:
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g, the new, industry-leading technology platform for business intelligence, which offers:

- A powerful end-user experience with rich visualisation, search, and actionable collaboration
- Advancements in analytics, OLAP, and enterprise reporting, with unmatched performance and scalability
- Simplified system configuration, life-cycle management, and performance optimisation

A first impression of the new BI Suite:

OBIEE 11g Lauch Website on
http://tinyurl.com/3ycsko4

OBIEE 11g – New Features Overview
http://tinyurl.com/34dpp4z

OBIEE 11g – Technical Overview paper
http://tinyurl.com/3yd88l6

OBIEE 11g – New Interface Screenshots
http://tinyurl.com/34bkz9r

Unfortenately still no news on the official product launch date.

Will be continued..

ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 – Must attend event of the year!

The previous year we went to ODTUG to talk about our quality assurance toolkit developed for ApEx. This year we’re going to talk about data integration services delivered using OBI EE, ODI and of course Oracle Warehouse Builder.

And I’m also very pleased to announce the ‘ADF Methodology for the Masses’ community will also present during this developers’ event.
During the sundown session of the ACE’s you will become more familiar with the program and of course we will try and provide the necessary take aways for everyone interested in ADF Development. If you’re interested in what we’ve achieved so far and would like to join our community to exchange experience and knowledge: the Oracle wiki page, the google group.

More than 150 technical sessions, more than 30 hands-on sessions and of course the chance to meet the community and exchange knowledge and experience … the ROI for any developer using Oracle technology is delivered during this conference.

So don’t hesitate, let’s register for ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 !

We’re attending, that’s for sure ;o)

Oracle BI & BPM

When you talk about Business Intelligence, the true added value lies in real-time reporting. The dashboards or reports presented to you need to present accurate information about e.g. stock, human resources, bench marking, etc. This real-time reporting could be augmented even more when you can take action straight away when benchmarks aren’t met, campaigns need to be organised etc. In other words tighter integration with your reporting environment to make your company more agile and lean.

So let’s have a look at both technologies briefly:

1. BPM = Business Process Management

BPM gives you the opportunity to manage the existing business processes End 2 End. In other words you will define a portfolio of all existing business processes, analyse these business processes using the standards based language BPMN (Business Process Modelling Notation), simulate these processes to check if KPI’s are met, if needed re-engineer them, to finally start automating and executing these business processes using the standards based language BPEL (Business Process Execution Language).

2. BI = Business Intelligence

BI gives you the ability to gather and provide access to real-time information. It can deliver dynamically generated content, provide insight regarding benchmarks, forecasting and actionable tasks and most important of all guide users towards insight and action. The focus of BI is moving towards insight-driven business processes, to give users the ability to optimize these processes on unified, real-time and predictive data.

So how can we make this happen, how can we provide insight-driven business processes without loosing the focus on the data?

Some of the functionalities we can perform with the Oracle BIEE Web Services:

1. Extract results from BI and feed them to external applications
2. Execute queries and retrieve results.
3. Execute iBots (BI Alerts).

By invoking these web services from within bpel processes we can interact with in flight business data and react when needed.

For more information regarding this integration and interaction, have a look at Oracle BI Webservices & BPEL.

How Do You start Building up your DataWarehouse & Reporting Environment (Mark Rittman, New Orleans)

The final day of New Orleans 2 different in-depth sessions were organized: ‘Oracle Tools-Application Expres/ADF’ and the other one ‘Business Intelligence’.

I decided to go to Mark Rittman’s session regarding ‘Advanced Development Techniques Using Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition Plus’. It was the first time I had the opportunity to follow a presentation of Mark Rittman and as you could probably figure out yourself, it was very interesting.

So let’s start diging into Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition Plus … I will give you all the Tips & Tricks (T) and Watch-Out’s (WO) Mark has shared with us.

1. Use BI Administrator to define the logical, physical and presentation layer:

• T1: Denormalize dimensional tables into 1 single logical table
• T2: Data needs to be as close to a star schema as possible
• T3: Best Approach: Define logical layer first to define labels and names correctly and then define the map for the physical layer
• T4: Use ‘Direct Query’ in ‘Oracle Answers’ to load Discoverer Workbooks
• T5: Define data-sources at the DWH level to tidy up stuff. You can add functionality, multiple data-sources to report on (Excel & Oracle) and afterwards level these down into your DWH to have 1 single source of thruth.
• T6: Use lgo files on BI Server to have a look at the actual queries being fired. You can define different kinds of log levels depending on your needs at a specific point in time.
• T7: Time-Series Calculations can be used for reporting on historical data but within OBI ther’s limited functionality. If you need this functionality it’s better to use EssBase.
• WO: Errors and Compilation information isn’t well documented, you have a reference guide but no getting started guide. You can have a look at Mark Rittman’s blog and our iAdvise website if you need course material or information regarding walk-throughs, getting started guides.

2. Use EssBase to speed-up your OBIEE Reporting:

• T1: Using cubes can speed up data load and querying. Use OBIEE for front end purposes
• T2: In the next release you can load EssBase Cubes inside your model (in one of the futher releases ;o) )
• T3: Use ‘Analysis Services’ for the same purposes as EssBase, it’s cheaper ;o)
• T4: OBIEE uses the aliases defined in EssBase on the dimensional attributes
• T5: Real Benefit: uses all dimensional metadata defined in EssBase, Analysis Services, … In other words you can have a hybrid OLAP solution integrated in OBIEE
• T6: JDeveloper allows you to access EssBase and get data from different sources

3. Presentation Server:

• T1: You can define conditional formatting on columns, e.g. use images available in ‘Oracle Answers’ (Click on the ‘image button)
• T2: Filter on data using ‘Dashboard Prompt’ defined in the Catalog-tab in ‘Oracle Answers’
• T3: You can define a Dashboard Prompt on Report Level or Page Level
• T4: Use hidden dashboards for guided information using ‘Guided Navigation Link’
• T5: Use Word Add-In to define BI Publisher Reports, best use an older version than Word 2007
• T6: Use existing ‘Oracle Answer Reports’ or Discovere query and base the report on this data, using Word Add-In
• T7: ‘Presentation Variable’ in Dashboards needs to match the parameter name being used in BI Publisher to parameterize and filter on report data

These are all the tips & tricks Mark has shared with use, using his experience and knowledge regarding Business Intelligence. It was a great session and hopefully you will have the ability to attend a session of Mark in the future as well.