Monday 31 August 2015

Toggling the database in OBIEE 11g at runtime

We have a replication and the primary database server. Replicating the data takes some time so the replication server is usually a few mins behind the primary server. The requirement for one of the report was to get the data from the primary server if the replication is lagging by over 1 min. This blog talks about a method to implement this business use case.

Oracle VM file sharing with Windows host

This article talks about the process to share files between Oracle VM and windows host.

Monday 8 June 2015

Using Internet Explorer to customize OBIEE 11g UI

We recently had a requirement that the button sizes in OBIEE had to be increased. The reasoning was that the users of some of these reports are old and they hate smaller sized buttons. Now we know the properties of buttons such as the size are set in the css files which together form the skin. While it is possible to copy the skin and then edit the desired property, it is a long process.
This blog talks about a shortcut to achieve the objective.

Sunday 7 June 2015

OBIEE Hack: Putting prompts in file names

Users often have the requirement to have the selected prompt values suffixed to the name of the exported file.
This blog talks about a hack to achieve this in OBIEE. 

Sunday 24 May 2015

Understanding OBIEE RPD - Chapter 1

The most skilled task in the world of Oracle Business Intelligence is to design and code the RPD. While we are all aware of the general concepts of Business models, logical tables, joins and hierarchies, the RPD is essentially a query generating tool. The query generated by the tool depends on a sound understanding of the business model and data warehousing concepts. The most trickiest part of RPD development is to ensure that OBIEE generates a tuned physical query. I wish to write a series of articles that show the impact of coding something in the RPD on the Physical query and would hence enable the developers to find out the best things to do from a performance stand point. Please note that this article does not recommend one query over the other as the efficiency of the query will depend on the data structures themselves. The intention of this blog is to study the impact of changing the RPD on the Physical SQL.

This is the first article in this series and we will be talking about the scenario where we pull columns from 2 different physical sources and 1 common dimension in the same analysis.

Sunday 3 May 2015

Making OBIEE 11g Evaluate function dynamic

We know that we can use the evaluate function to call any function stored on the database and pass arguments to it. What if we have a requirement to use different database functions for the same column based on different selections made by the user.
This article talks about a method to handle this requirement.

Sunday 29 March 2015

OBIEE 11g query tracking mechanism


We had a requirement of tracking a query fired from OBIEE. This was to help us find out the Analysis that consume the most database resources.
It is possible that some user might be selecting a huge date range resulting in the problem at the database. So the trouble in this case might be the filters put by the user and not the Analysis itself.

Saturday 28 March 2015

Installing OBIEE 11g Client tool on Windows 8

OBIEE 11g client tool is not certified with Windows 8. 
The certification matrix for OBIEE version 11.1.1.7.0+ is in the following location and it does not include Windows 8. 

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi/bi-11gr1certmatrix-ps6-1928219.xls

It means that installing OBIEE 11g client on Windows 8 is not supported by Oracle. I got a mail from Oracle to explicitly call it out.

This blog talks about a way to to install admin tool on Windows 8 machine.

Sunday 22 March 2015

OBIEE 11g dashboard pages outside of a dashboard


We had a strange requirement. The user did not want the dashboard to be published and he hated the fact that he had to expand the dashboard to see the pages in it.

Since the requirement is strange so will be the solution.

Sunday 15 March 2015

3 way switch in OBIEE 11g


While we all know about using conditions on sections in a dashboard, and while we all have used presentation variables to show or hide a report using these conditions, this blog talks about a process to use conditions on sections to implement a 3 way decision rather than just a boolean (true/false) decision.

Sunday 22 February 2015

Seperating numbers from characters in OBIEE 11g


We had a requirement in which the a column had either pure numbers such as 123 or pure alphabets such as QWED. The requirement was to display 'Y' in a column if the value was a number and display 'N' if it was a character string.