Oracle Intelligence Virtual Summit 2012 – Aug 15-16

Dear All,

On behalf of BIWA board and volunteers, I would like to extend a personal invitation for – Oracle BIWA Virtual Summit 2012 — between Aug 15th and Aug 16th. This is the first ever Virtual Summit dedicated on Oracle’s BI technology. The summit runs over two days with dedicated topics on Warehousing and Advanced Analytics Focus on day 1 and Business Intelligence Focus on day 2. Usually these kind of Summit cost hunderds or couple of thousands of $. But BIWA presents this to you all for FREE $0. We have arranged 5 session on each day , with option of attending your choice of session based on your preference.

Key Note Speakers

• Day 1 - Business Intelligence to Predictive Analytics by James Taylor
• Day 2 - See More, Act Faster by Balaji Yelamanchili from Oracle

For more details and Registrations please visit link below ::

http://www.ioug.org/Events/OracleBIWAVirtualSummit2012Aug1516/tabid/342/Default.aspx

Looking forward to see most of you all. In case of any logistical issues, please feel free to contact me at sunil_ranka@yahoo.com.

Hope this helps.

Sunil S Ranka

“Superior BI is the antidote to Business Failure”

Filters On Non Key Columns are NOT added to MDX Query for SAP BW

Hi All,

During BW-SAP integration , In the reports when we apply filters on the non ‘key’ columns in the reports they were not passed as filters onto the database through the MDX query but instead they are processed by the OBIEE server. This was causing a severe performance issue for all the reports.

Eg: in the report, filter is set to MATDIM=”BISERVER”, when you look at the logical sql you will “Dim – Material”.”Material Name” = “BI SERVER”, but the MDX doesn’t contain the filter condition. Since MDX doesn’t contain the filter, with logical SQL having filter, all the processing was done in the BI Server, causing severe performance issues.

Reason for Behavior:

The SAP BW allows filtering by unique name (used by OBIEE for filtering against level columns) and by key columns only. Filtering by other columns (corresponding to display attributes of characteristics in SAP) is handled internally. This is expected behavior.

There are couple of ways we could solve the issue ::

Option 1 :

A workaround here is to create reports with nested queries, such as:

SELECT DIM1_COL1, DIM2_COL2, DIM3_COL3, <measures>
where CUBE_NAME in (select <DIM COLUMN> where <DIM COL>='xyz')

Option 2 :

Create BEX query with defining required attribute on which you need to pass the value back to MDX as “Navigational  Attribute” , by doing this, every attribute will be represented as dimension in the cube. Upon defining as “Navigational  Attribute“, you will see filter getting passed.

Hope This helps.

Sunil S Ranka

“Superior BI is the antidote to Business Failure”

Issue with OBIEE 11.1.1.5 GUID Referesh Documentation

Hi All

Several blogs have been written on detail step for Refreshing the User GUIDs, the oracle documents also details the steps. You can refer Oracle’s Document On How To Refresh GUIDs. But there is one key difference between the documented steps and the actual reality. After performing all the steps, you will see that your presentation server is taking too long to start. 

In Nutshell following are the steps :

• In NQSConfig.INI file Locate the setting FMW_UPDATE_ROLE_AND_USER_REF_GUIDS = NO and change its value to YES.
• Modify the instanceconfig.xml file to instruct Presentation Services to refresh GUIDs on restart. Edit the file to add the last line in the following instruction.                                                                                                                                              <ps:Catalog xmlns:ps=”oracle.bi.presentation.services/config/v1.1″>
  <ps:UpgradeAndExit>false</ps:UpgradeAndExit>
  <ps:UpdateAccountGUIDs>UpdateAndExit</ps:UpdateAccountGUIDs>
• Stop and restart the managed processes using the opmnctl parameters stopall and startall.
• Edit NQSConfig.INI file to reset the FMW_UPDATE_ROLE_AND_USER_REF_GUIDS = YES to NO and restart the Oracle BI Servers.
• Comment UpdateAccountGUIDs , where  in document its mentions to Remove, set to none, or comment out

 

To avoid that issue, instead of making “UpdateAccountGUIDs” to “none” , you will need to comment the whole tag and than restart the services.

Hope This Helps

Sunil S Ranka
“Superior BI is the antidote to Business Failure”

Real Obiee 11G Hero

At one of the current client, we had rough ride with pre as well as Post installation of OBIEE 11.1.1.3 and 11.1.1.5. Due to the complexity of newer architecture, we ran into several infrastructure and application problems. Oracle has done a great job in building the product, but embarking on journey of early adopter was not easy, after multiple support call, it was decided that Oracle would send their GEMS on site to do miracle. We had lower expectation looking at the magnitude of infrastructure issues, but after working with Matt Abrams (Seems like an ex Army, a tough guy with head strong and focused personnel), Olivier Bennardo (Guys in Leather Jacket) and Danny Edwin (Stripe Shirts) and Ahmed Shahzad Awan (Not in picture) and Steve Fitzgerald (Not in picture, Still I am wondering how much a person can do multi Tasking) things worked like charm. It almost felt that they has some Magic Wand and things just worked, I am just kidding. With immense knowledge of the subject and internal resources they could solve most of the issues in merely, less than two and half days. Yes!!!!! just two and half days, that’s why I call them – Real OBIEE 11g Real Hero – . I am hoping and wishing that you are your team get rewarded for all your hard work.

Olivier and Danny Thanks for all the help and Sub Way sandwich

Unable To Create Session Variable Using Obiee 11.1.1.5 Admin Tool

Hi All

An interesting thing happen, when I was trying to choose a connection pool for creating a Session variable Init Block , connection pool Select button was disabled. This functionality worked in 11.1.1.3. Just to avoid any doubt I restarted admin tool, followed by machine restart, but end result didn’t change. After looking around, I remembered that in one of the metalink they talked about “Allow First Connection for init block”. I tried that option and it work . Below are the details ::

Issue :

Select button is disabled when trying to choose a connection pool for creating a Session variable Init Block

Solution:

Check “Allow First Connection for init block” to true

For setting “Allow First Connection for init block”  follow below steps :

1. In the Administration Tool, select Tools, then select Options to display the Options dialog.
2. On the General tab, select ”Allow First Connection for init block. (this option is not a best practice and might cause performance issues.)

Hope This Helps

Sunil S Ranka
“Superior BI is the antidote to Business Failure”

 

11.1.1.5.0 Release

The most awaited release of OBIEE is publicly available 11.1.1.5.0 :

OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0 and OBI Apps 7.9.6.3 download link:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/downloads/biee-111150-393613.html

OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0 documentation link:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/bi.htm

OBI Apps 7.9.6.3 documentation link:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E20490_01/index.htm

Hope This Helps

Sunil S Ranka
“Superior BI is the antidote to Business Failure”