MicroStretgy : Introduction

MicroStrategy was founded in 1989 and has grown to become a leading independent public business intelligence software vendor (NASDAQ: MSTR). With direct operations in 26 countries worldwide and over 3,200 employees, MicroStrategy is a leading global provider of enterprise software platforms for business intelligence (BI), mobile intelligence, and network applications. With over 25% of our workforce and nearly $100M annually dedicated to R&D, we have over 80 patents issued. MicroStrategy is proud to serve millions of business users at nearly 4,000 companies across 20 industries around the world.

Creating Subfolder in OBIEE 11G

Till OBIEE 11.1.1.6.0 we were limited to nesting the folders only at 2 levels. 
This limitation has been fixed in OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 onwards with a nice feature.

To nest the presentation folders, login to OBIEE RPD and look at presentation layer. Select a presentation table which you want to see as parent folder. Double click on that Presentation Table and now you will see a properties window with multiple tabs.

Among those tabs we can use the Child Presentation Tables tab in the Presentation Table dialog to designate child presentation tables. You designate child presentation tables to give the appearance of nested folders in Answers and BI Composer. You can add multiple layers of nesting using this method.

To structure the Presentation Tables/folders navigate and click on the RPD objects in sequence as shown in below screenshot.

If you did this in online mode, Reload Files and Metadata from presentation server Administration page. Otherwise after successful OBI services restarts you will see the presentation catalog in Subject area like this.

Note that the folders only appear to be nested – they are not actually nested in terms of drill-down, and the qualified names of the objects remain the same. In addition, the Presentation layer in the Administration Tool does not display the nesting; the nesting only appears in Answers and BI Composer. This feature only works for presentation tables, and not for other Presentation layer objects.
When you run a consistency check, the Consistency Check Manager detects any circularity in parent-child presentation table assignment. It also detects and reports project definitions that include child presentation tables without parent presentation tables.
In previous releases, repository developers could achieve one level of nesting by adding a hyphen at the beginning of a presentation table name, or by adding an arrow (->) at the beginning of the presentation table description. This method is now deprecated for this release and will be removed in a future release.
If you previously used hyphens at the beginning of presentation table names or arrows at the beginning of presentation table descriptions to achieve nesting, it is recommended that you run the Upgrade Presentation Foldering utility to convert your metadata to the new structure.

Write back option

Step 1

Amend the instanceconfig.xml and add the LIghtWriteback entry as shown below with in the server instance tags

The instanceconfig.xml file is located in $MW_HOME/instances/instance1/config/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent
/coreapplication_obips1 directory

Add the LightWriteback tag just above the /ServerInstance tag as in above example.

<LightWriteback>true</LightWriteback>

Restart the OPMN services for the instanceconfig amendment above to take effect

Login to Analytics

http://<hostname>:9704/analytics

Set privileges within Administration screen

Add roles or users to the Write back privileges above

Step 2

Create a table used to store the write back table and import it into the physical layer in RPD

Ensure the connection pool user has required privileges to insert / update data on this table

Step 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Business Model, switch on the Writable property for all required columns

This completes the one time setup required to carry out write back functionality. Following steps are required for setting up an actual write back

Step 4

Create a new analysis with the required columns

Select the Column Properties using the drop down arrow on each column

Choose the column property and Tick the Enable Write Back check box on the Write Back tab for the required column. In my case, I have enabled only for USD Amount.

Note: If the ‘Writable’ flag is not enabled in RPD then this check box also cannot be enabled

Step 5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note that only the USD_AMT column is displayed as editable

Choose the Edit Table View option and click on Table View Properties

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tick the Enable Write Back on enter a Template Name. I entered ‘RPA’ and this can be any user given name. Note this name is case sensitive. Below you will see how to create this template called RPA used here

Step 6

Click on the advanced tab of the analysis

Here under the Analysis XML box we want to note down all the columnID's that we will be using to populate the Writeback table with

Make a note of the columnIDs for the required columns. These will be used in the next step

Step 7

 

 

Create XML file as below and place it in

$MW_HOME/instances/instance1/bifoundation/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/coreapplication_obips1

/analyticsRes/customMessages directory if the analytics res directory has been deployed.

Please see the Deploying analyticsRes for custom Messages post that we have created that wont ever get overwritten by Oracle Patches etc

If you dont want to use the analyticsRes custom messages folder then you can use the seeded folder

If the directory ‘customMessages’ does not exist then create one in the path mentioned

 

--------Start of XML--------

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<WebMessageTables xmlns:sawm="com.siebel.analytics.web/message/v1">

   <WebMessageTable lang="en-us" system="WriteBack" table="Messages">

      <WebMessage name="RPA">

         <XML>

            <writeBack connectionPool="Writeback">

                 <insert></insert>

                <update>update encumbered_rpa set usd_amt = @{cbe48633dbeb2bda8},update_date = sysdate,updated_by = '@{cb26f41933b0c7d7c}' where product_id = @{c9c0a2069f38dda8c}</update>

            </writeBack>

         </XML>

      </WebMessage>

   </WebMessageTable>

</WebMessageTables>

-------End------

 

Within the update tags have the update statement that gets executed in the database using the columnIDs picked from the Advanced tab

Save the XML as RPA.xml

Bounce the OPMN service for this XML to be loaded and available for use

 

 

Step 8

 

 

Run the report that was created in Step 4

 

If all the steps are carried as they should be then you will see two buttons as in the above screen shot. The Update functionality is ready.

Amend the value of any editable field and hit the Update button then the change is carried out in the database and the screen gets refreshed with the new value. The statement that is given in the XML template between the update tags gets executed.

Revert button is used to undo any changes that are not yet sent to the database.

If you have noticed, the insert statement is left blank. But the same XML can be amended to provide the functionality of insert. If the amended record exists in DB, then the update statement is issued and if the amended record does not exist in DB then the insert statement is issued.

You don’t necessarily have a insert statement with the insert tags. You can use a function call here or you can issue an update statement to a different table. Using this base functionality you can deliver tailor made solutions fit for purpose.

Archive Unarchive in OBIEE 11g

In Answers/Dashboards, most othe OBIEE 10g requests developers would have faced a common issue of copying all their objects from one folder to another folder, one environment to another environment (in the developing stage) etc.
If you got the access to the system in which the Catalog is stored then, these action are very easy. But how to do it in Dashboard catalog.
OBIEE 11g came up with a solution for this problem. Archive and Unarchive. In Archive you can archive (export)a folder with diff objects to the local file system. The the archived file can be unarchived (imported) into another folder.


Archiving
First, select the folder which needs to be archived. For ex, we want to archive Sample Lite folder.

Now, click on the Archive link, which will open a dialog box with some options for the archiving. These options will be discussed in the coming posts.

After clicking OK button, a dialog box will appear asking where the catalog to be saved. Select the desired location and save the file.

Unarchiving

Select the folder into which the archived (exported) filed needs to be unarchived (imported). In our example, we are going to unarchive the Sample Lite folder into a Test folder. Then click on the Unarchive link.

The Unarchive dialog box will appear which allows us to select the file which needs to be unarchived into the currently selected folder ( in our example, its Test).

Select the appropriate archive file name and click on OK (The other available options will be discussed in the coming posts).
OBIEE will unarchive the file into the selected folder.

Full Catalog Migration in 11 G

 Full Catalog Migration

1.       Copy Catalog

Go to your OBIEE 11g installation folder … OBIEE Home >> instances >> instanceX >> bifoundation >> OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent >> coreapplication_obips1 >> catalog >> then choose catalog and copy catalog

When catalog is moved from one Linux environment (or windows environment) to another, create a zip (tar) copy of the catalog and then move this zip(tar) file to another Linux environment (windows environment). Without doing so there may be a possibility of missing the reports which does have long names.

WinScp also can be used in case if the files are getting moved from windows to Linux environment (whether the catalog is zipped or not). Recommended approach is to zip/tar catalog folder then ftp/winscp in binary mode to target destination and then unzip/tar.

Syntax for zip/unzip and tar is as follows

zip -r archivefile1 -This command copies the current directory, including all subdirectories into the archieve file

unzip archivefile1.zip - This command extracts the files from the zip file

tar -cvwf home.tar home/ - This command create a tar file named home.tar in the directory you currently are in of the home directory

tar -xvwzf myfile.tar.gz - This  command uncompress (untar) the myfile.tar.gz file in the current directory

2.       Open Fusion EM (Enterprise Manager) http://machine_name:7001/em and provide user credential.

c.       Go to Business Intelligence > coreapplication >Deployment Tab>Repository

d.      Click on “Lock and Edit Configuration” (Click close on the popup window appears)

3.       Once it is locked, choose BI Presentation Catalog section, the section shows the current location of the catalog used by Presentation Services. This section is used to change the location of the catalog or to share the catalog by pointing to a shared location.

The acceptable syntax is as follows: '/net/machine/disk3/sharedcatalogdata' or:'$ORACLE_INSTANCE/bifoundation/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/$COMPONENT_NAME/catalog'.

Change the path to point to new web cat location e.g. $ORACLE_INSTANCE/SampleAppWebcat in the BI Presentation Catalog section then click on “Apply” , once applied then click on ‘’Active Changes’’.

4.       Then click on ‘’Close’’ once activation is confirmed

5.       Then click on “Restart to Apply Recent Changes”.

6.       Then click on “Restart button” to restart the services and new RPD will be deployed.

OBIEE 11g - Flash Player 10.1 required

OBIEE 11g - Flash Player 10.1 required

To display graphs as Flash objects in your browser, you need to have Adobe Flash version 10.1 running.
If you do not have this version, what you will see when you open up a Dashboard page or Analysis containing graphs will be something like this:

Dashboard page with graphs not displaying

So, you need to upgrade to Flash Player version 10.1 or install it if you don't have any version of the Flash Player installed.

Browse to http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ and you will be able to see which version of the Flash Player you have installed.

Adobe Flash Player Information Page

To download and install the latest version, 10.1, browse to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

From there, download and install the Flash Player.

After the installation completes, reload your Dashboard page, and the graphs should display correctly now.

Dashboard page with graphs displaying in the Flash format

This is the release note section:

The Adobe Flash Player is a cross-platform browser-based application runtime and is required for rendering graphs and scorecard objects in your browser.
Users must have Adobe Flash Player version 10.1 or above installed on their browsers in order to correctly view all graphs and scorecards generated by Oracle BI EE. Users can obtain information

Deploying RPD and Catalog in BI 11g

In OBIEE 10g the current running rpd and catalog files are configured in two files called NQSConfig.ini and instanceconfig.xml respectively. So If we want to change the current running rpd and catalog in OBIEE 10g we are opening the file and we are changing the rpd name and catalog name into these files. But in OBIEE 11g these things are controlled by Enterprise Manager (EM).

Locations of Repository and Catalog in BI 11g:

We can get the rpd and catalog which we have developed from below folders.

RPD Location Path:

Drive:<BIHome>\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIServerComponent\coreapplication_obis1\repository

Catalog Location Path:

Drive:<BIHome>\instances\instance1\bifoundation\

OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent \coreapplication_obips1\catalog

Step1:

Login into EM entering link like below in your browser address bar:

http://machinename:7001/em

e.g: http://localhost:7001/em

Step2:

Once we logged into EM, Go to Business Intelligence from left side pane and select 'core application'. Select repository from right side pane.

Go to 'Deployment' tab -> select 'Repository' tab -> click on 'Lock and Edit' option.

We are getting the below screen and the number shows

1. It tells the current running repository

2. This says the current running catalog

3. 'Lock and Edit Configuration' enables the Screen to change the repository  

    and catalog.

Step3:

Once we clicked 'Lock and Edit Configuration' we will get the confirmation message like below screen. Click 'Close' with the screen.

Step4:

So In the next screen we are having the options to select repository and catalog which we want to deploy. After you selected the rpd and catalog click apply and click Activate Changes. The screenshot is like below:

The number indicates in the images are:

1. The place to choose the repository 

2. The place to change the catalog 

3. 'Apply' button after modification

4. 'Activate Changes' to change the rpd and catalog 

5. 'Release Configuration' Which revert the page to old state

Step5:

Choose the repository from the location and enter the repository password and change the catalog name which we need to change.

Note: Do not forget to click 'Apply' button to save the changes and after that          Click 'Activate Changes'

Step6:

Once we clicked 'Activate Changes' with the above screen , Activation process will be started and it will show the below screen.

 



After process is over, It will show the confirmation window like below screen. Just click 'Close'

Step7:

Once the changes have been activated, it will ask for the 'Restart to apply recent changes'. Click 'Restart to apply changes'

Step8:

Once we Clicked 'Restart to apply recent changes' It will come to the below screen. Click 'Restart' to restart all the BI Services. Once the services is successfully restarted The repository and catalog is updated. 

Now open Administration Tool and Presentation Services to check the changes.