Comments on: Testing the OBIEE 10.1.3.x Multi-User Development Environment

By: Puneet

Puneet — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:12:59 +0000

Thanks Mark for the above blog. I went ahead and followed the process stated and was able to successfully merge the changes from my local RPD to the network RPD. But after, the process was over, the network RPD is now opening only in Read only mode. The OBIEE services are not running on the server. Did I miss out anything???

By: Raman

Raman — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:16:40 +0000

Thank you very much for the postesvery useful for us also , i have some doubts shall can i post..? Need to Install the OBIEEplus in my sys my client req’ments. Partner,telemarketing contact center, teleservices,telecom services are requried. i think these are all different products with OBIEE fusion.what i need to do… pls help me out …

Thanks
Raman

By: LJ

LJ — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:12:47 +0000

After merging local changes and choosing the publish to network option, the local server\repository directory which had the subset, original extracted rpd from master repository and the “original” rpd are deleted automatically. Not sure why this is happening and if it’s intended or not. I’m setup on my own pc and no network connections.

By: Mark Rittman

Mark Rittman — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:44:36 +0000

Hi Adrian

Thanks for the feedback and the further info on the merge/publishing step. As I said in the posting I only had the one PC to test this out and so it was unclear whether the locking was due to this or due to the publishing process, as you clarify the locking only really starts to happen once one person starts merging their changes. One thing I’m not too clear on still is the relationship between your local copy of the RPD, used for local multiuser development, and the master copy of the multiuser repository on the share drive. I’ll have to work through this with more than one PC and track where the changes are getting written to.

As you say, the model as it stands poses the risk of user 1’s changes overwriting user 2’s changes, but I guess that as changes are made at the column level it will only manifest itself if the two users try to modify the same columns, the most recent change will then apply. Also as you say the network and storage overhead is potentially quite large, again this points to using a proper database to hold this data rather than lots of (often large) RPD files. I think based on all this, as you say, the feature looks on the surface to be pretty useful but we need to be wary of how it actually works in practice.

regards, Mark

By: Adrian Ward

Adrian Ward — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:21:10 +0000

Hi Mark,
The network rpd is not locked for edits until you ‘Merge Local Changes’. This essentially just opens the network rpd in exclusive mode to you, and others cannot merge their changes in until you publish to the network (which releases the rpd).
Try editing a dimension in two separate checked out local copies and then merge/publih in turn to the network. You can then overwrite someones work!

Thats why I am still sceptical about the process, and where possible will always opt for a Repository ‘Master’ Developer. The gateholder who has control of the rpd at any one time. The only reason I can see it is worth the risk of multi user dev is when you have a team spread accross the world (as we do on my current client) and commnication is difficult.
One problem is that the rpd can get quite large >15MB. When you get a local copy, and publish to a shared network, visible across the globe, it can take a very long time (20-30 mins on broadband). Also, each time you publish to the network, a copy is created. This soon eats up your disk space so you have to keep up the housekeeping.

Avoid if you can.

Adrian