Rittman Mead Consulting » Borkur Steingrimsson

Running the OBIEE Administratiol tool on Unix using Wine

Borkur Steingrimsson — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:08:58 +0000

The other day I was playing with getting OWB11gR2, which at the time of this writing, has only been released under Linux and Solaris, to run under Windows. In the pursuing comments Jon Mead threw down the gauntlet and asked if I could figure out a way to run the OBIEE Administration tool under Linux. Like many of you might know, most everything in the OBIEE stack runs on Windows as well as various Unixes, but the Administration tool however is only available on Windows. The reason for that being that the tool is written using Microsoft Foundation Classes.

So I set out to give it a go. I picked a random Ubuntu VM image I had laying around and installed Wine (sudo apt-get install wine). After some failed attempts on trying to figure out which DLLs the admintool.exe uses I figured out that the Dependency Walker tool was just what I needed (I still would have preferred to have a proper Windows equivalence of the Unix tool ldd ). Looking at the dependent DLLs I quickly saw that most all of these libraries are contained in the %BIHOME%\server\bin directory. The tricky bit would be to get the MFC libraries in place. A quick Google search suggested to use the Winetricks gadget to install the .NET 2.0 libraries in to Wine

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks && sh winetricks msxml3 dotnet20

This should install a working version of .NET on Wine. The next issue is to set the proper PATH variable in your wine session. I started up a wine Command line util by issuing:

wineconsole cmd

Now, we also need to have the software in place. So grab a complete copy of both the OracleBI and OracleBIData directories from a working Windows installation. Make sure to note the full path of your installation as you want to match the correct path (including drive letters) in Wine. Use the winecfg utility to map a Wine drive letter to the folder where you copied the OBIEE installation to. In my case I had OBIEE installed on E:\BI\. I copied my installation to /mnt/hgfs/BI and configured Wine to map E: to /mnt/hgfs/

Next I created a little .bat file to set the environment to what the admintool.exe expects to find, e:\wine.bat :

set SADATADIR=E:\BI\OracleBIData
set SAROOTDIR=E:\BI\OracleB
set SATEMPDIR=E:\BI\OracleBIData\tmp

set PATH=%PATH%;E:\BI\OracleBI\server\Bin;E:\BI\OracleBI\web\bin;E:\BI\OracleBI\web\catalogmanager;E:\BI\OracleBI\SQLAnywhere;

This makes it possible to now fire up the admintool.exe and open up an .RPD file in Offline mode:

This seems to behave OK and I am happy with what we got. But I still want to be able to connect to an Online server. My Ubuntu has already a working OBIEE installation so I am keen to get the Oracle BI Server ODBC driver set up on my Wine. This is where the winetrick comes in handy again.

sh winetricks jet40 mdac28

This gives me a working Microsoft ODBC for Oracle. A quick Windows Registry hack to register the e:\BI\OracleBI\server\Bin\NQSODBC.dll with the Wine Registry and we are on our way. First I exported the following key from my working Windows XP VM image: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI\Oracle BI Server]. (Make sure to export it using a Win95 format). Import this key in to your wine installation, using wine regedit. Then create a new string value, called Oracle BI Server, in the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI\ODBC Drivers] key, and give it the value Installed. This will tell Wine where to look for your .DLL.

Next step is to simply create a normal ODBC connection to my local BI Server with the odbcad32.exe command in the wineconsole:

Now I fire up the admintool.exe and see if I can connect to my local BI server:

And the joy!

Now, it will be interesting to see if I can actually work with this, but at first glance it looks just fine. Hasn’t crashed on me yet, so I am hopeful it will stick. Next step is to try out the other tools as well, such as the Catalog Manager. These are Java based, so I might as well try and run them natively from Ubuntu …?

OWB11gR2 on Windows?

Borkur Steingrimsson — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:43:15 +0000

So, OWB 11g R2 is out now, and has been for a few weeks – ever since the database version was released. But as a Windows version of the database hasn’t been released yet we are also stuck with Linux version version of OWB. Or are we? If you think about it, OWB is an application written in Java. So why should there be any real difference between the Windows release and Linux? At least that was my thought.

So, I set out to give it a go: Can I run the Linux installed version of OWB11gR2 on Windows? And the answer is simple: It’s easy as pie

First you need to download the stand-alone version linux version of the binaries. Follow the instruction and install the software on a linux box. I used an Oracle REL VM for this purpose. Once the installer has completed we need to copy the whole OWB home over to our Windows box (I used Windows XP VM). Once we get the 1GB directory copied over there are a few minor steps we must take:

Make sure we have a java runtime to use. The Linux install will not include a Windows version of JRE/JDK. I had an Oracle DB installed on my VM so I used the JDK that came with that installation.
Create a valid setowbenv.bat file that takes care of setting up the OWB runtime environment. The $OWB_HOME/bin/win32/ directory contains a template file, setownenv.tmp for this, so go ahead and make a working version.
Run the owbclient.bat file from the £OWB_HOME/bin/win32/ directory and you are good to go

Since you need to connect to an OWB11gR2 repository, I simply followed the documents to run against an 11gR1 database on my VM. To put it simple you need to upgrade the pre-sseded OWBSYS schema that comes with all 11g Oracle instances to the R2 version. After that you are good to go …

UPDATE: To sum up the extra steps I have put in the comments here:

To get the Control Center Agent running (the bit that takes care of the new Code Template technology): Edit the %OWBHOME%\owb\jrt\config\secure-web-site.xml file and fix the absolute path of the ssl-config keystore entry
To get the Control Center Service running (the bit that takes (and always has taken) care of the regular mappings): Make sure that the %JAVAHOME% variable is set to a proper Java home, in the %OWBHOME%\owb\bin\win32\run_service_local.bat file. Then start the service using the local_service_login.bat script.

More on High Availability: BI Publisher and BI Server authentication

Borkur Steingrimsson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:35:26 +0000

I recently wrote up the various steps involved in setting up OBIEE in a cluster, here and here

I was recently asked by a client to outline the steps for setting up BI Publisher with a cluster. If you installed BI Publisher during the OBI installation you most likely have the default BIP security model of BI Server; BIP delegates user authentication to the BI Server. If a user is known by the BI Server then the same user is allowed to log in to BI Publisher. If you have now configured your OBI environment to make use of the robust high availability (and load balancing) Cluster Controller, the next step is to make sure that the BIP security model is changed to reflect this different scenario.

I am assuming that our primary cluster controller is called aravis2 and the secondary is aravis3 and both cluster controllers are running on the default port of 9706. If you are not sure on which port the cluster controllers are running, look at the OracleBI/server/Config/NQClusterConfig.INI file. Now, log in to the BI Publisher with administrative rights and navigate to the Security Configuration on the Admin tab. Locate the Connection String in the Security Model section and replace the default value (which tells BIP to connect directly to the BI Server) from

jdbc:oraclebi://aravis2:9703/

to this

jdbc:oraclebi://aravis2:9706/PrimaryCCS=aravis2;PrimaryCCSPort=9706;SecondaryCCS=aravis3;SecondaryCCSPort=9706;

Take care to include the last semi-colon. Took me a little time to track that little fellow down ;)

Restart the BIP application and you should now be logging in via the Cluster Controller. Looking at the log we can see that all is well:

2009-04-03 15:31:13.477 NOTIFICATION connect to CCSSECONDARYCCS=aravis3;PORT=;SSLKEYSTOREPASSWORD=***;PRIMARYCCS=aravis2;USER=Administrator;IMPERSONATE=demo;PRIMARYCCSPORT=;TRUSTANYSERVER=;LOGFILEPATH=/tmp;SECONDARYCCSPORT=;TRUSTSTOREPASSWORD=***;LOGLEVEL=;SSL=;HOST=aravis2;CATALOG=;PASSWORD=***;

OUGN Spring Seminar 2009

Borkur Steingrimsson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:17:55 +0000

I had the fortune to attend and present at the Oracle User Group Norway Spring Seminar 2009. The event took place on the grand Color Magic cruiseferry. Though most of the presentations were delivered in Norwegian there was also an English speaking track with presenters such as Oracle Ace Directors Dan Morgan and Sten Vesterli . Though I manage to follow a little bit of Norwegian it took me quite some concentration to follow the other sessions I attended :)

Here is a picture of the Color Magic

Dan Morris gave a presentation titled Oracle Gems. He had an excellent point on how many fantastic features or packages there are in each release of the database, but since they are free we often don’t hear any Oracle sales rep pointing them out. So if you don’t read thoroughly through the New Features whitepapers for each release, or plough through the list of new DBMS_% packages then you are very likely to miss out on some real gems. Below is a list of packages/procedures that Dan pointed out specifically. I encourage you to look these up and see just how cool these free (as in beer) gems have to offer:

DBMS_ADVANCED_REWRITE and SQL equivalence statements
DBMS_COMPARISON
DBMS_PCLXUTIL
DBMS_REDEFINITION
DBMS_SPACE
DBMS_FLASHBACK.TRANSACTION_BACKOUT
PL/SQL Warnings: ALTER SESSION PLSQL_WARNINGS
Sorted Hash Clusters

The conference is effectively over now and the Color Magic is making it’s way through the night back to Oslo. Many thanks to Truls Bergersen and the OUGN committee for this fantastic event and the opportunity to present here this year!

GIven that I started (and will end) the working week with a client in London and my home base is in Brussels, I will have visited 4 cities in 5 days: Brussels, London, Oslo and Kiel, Germany. Saturday morning I am scheduled to fly to the 5th city in yet another country. Perhaps more on that later…

OBIEE High Availability – Presentation Services and Scheduler

Borkur Steingrimsson — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:27:07 +0000

Continuing from my previous post, I’d like to talk about how to configure and set up High Availability (HA) for the Presentation Services (PS) and the Scheduler.

Presentation Services

With the BI services already set up in a clustered mode, managed by the Cluster Controller, the next step is to configure a new Cluster-aware ODBC connection. This connection is set to communicate with the Cluster Controller instead of connecting directly to a BI server instance. Each Presentation Server instance in the cluster is then configured to use this new ODBC connection. On a Unix box, the connections are defined in the [OracleBI]/setup/odbc.ini file, but if you are running on a Windows box, use the [Control Panel/Administrative Tasks/Data Sources (ODBC)] Wizard to set up a similar connection (make sure not to use a space/blank in the connection name, as this will not work). This new ODBC connection must be defined on each PS node we are setting up. Although there is nothing stopping you from naming each ODBC DSN differently, I really suggest you keep some constancy and stick to the same name.

The [OracleBIDate]/web/config/instanceconfig.xml file on each node contains the configuration properties of the PS. The first interesting bit is which ODBC connection the PS uses to connect to a BI server. Find and change the entry in this file, to refer to the our Cluster DSN instead of the AnalyticsWeb connection. This step needs to be done on each box we are setting up.

AnalyticsWeb_Cluster

Another thing to note is the entry. As all the PS need to share the same web catalog, we have to set up a shared directory (much like we did for the BI server repository and global cache) to store the catalog files. I have set up a share on /media/share/Catalog that I use for this purpose. Make sure you copy all your catalog directory structure to this shared directory.

 /media/share/Catalog/samplesales

This takes care of what we need to run each PS in our cluster. Restart each service for the changes to take effect.

OC4J

For the purpose of this write-up I am using a single OC4J instance. I am assuming that you already have an OC4J instance set up, running the analytics web application. In a simple deployment, the configured application is made aware of a single PS instance, and all incoming web requests are forwarded directly to that node. We can reconfigure this so that each PS in our cluster gets a round-robin assignment of the incoming requests. The file in question is called web.xml and can be found in the [OASHOME]/j2ee/home/applications/analytics/analytics/WEB-INF/ directory (if you deployed your WAR file locally in a simple stand-alone OBIEE manner, then OASHOME is replaced by [OracleBI]/oc4j_bi/). Instead of a two pair/value parameters (host and port), we put a single parameter, that lists all the host:port values for the PS nodes.
Replace


 oracle.bi.presentation.sawserver.Host
 localhost


 oracle.bi.presentation.sawserver.Port
 9710

With


 oracle.bi.presentation.sawservers
 aravis4.rmcvm.com:9710; aravis1.rmcvm.com:9710

Make sure you restart the application after you edit this file.

Scheduler

Assuming that you have already gone through the default scheduler configuration on each node, adding these to the cluster is quite straight forward. In the [OracleBI]/server/Config/NQClusterConfig.INI file, add the following line

SCHEDULERS = "aravis4.rmcvm.com:9705:9708", "aravis1.rmcvm.com:9705:9708";

(obviously replacing my server names with your own). This will basically tell the Cluster Controller that the first server in the list, namely aravis4, will be the main/active scheduler, and aravis1 will be the passive one. Next step is to configure each scheduler to join the cluster. On each node, use the schconfig tool to change the Advanced settings of the Scheduler (Choice 1, 3 and then 3) to set ‘Participant in a Cluster’ to True. Save your settings and exit the tool. Now restart the cluster controllers on each node and then start up the schedulers.

JavaHost

By default, each PS will communicate with the JavaHost running on the local machine, on the default port of 9810. We can, if the mood strikes us, decide to share the JavaHost services on each node with the other nodes, in (you guessed it) a round-robin manner. Would there really be any gain in doing so, though? Certainly we could put the JavaHost services on yet another set of nodes, which would then require that we configure each PS to use those. Again, edit the [OracleBIData]/web/config/instanceconfig.xml file and add the following code within the tags

Make sure to restart the JavaHost and PS services on each node. This method can also be used to let the PS service now that the JavaHost is running on a non-default port (i.e. you had a port conflict and changed the port in the [OracleBI]/web/javahost/config/config.xml file.
And remember; When in doubt, reboot. It can save you a lot of time and frustration to restart all the services each time, even though you might think that restarting one service is all that should be required ;)

OBIEE High Availability – The BI Server

Borkur Steingrimsson — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:27:45 +0000

At the beginning of the month, the majority of the Rittman Mead Consulting team was at the UKOUG conference in Birmingham. Jon Mead and myself presented a paper called “OBIEE High Availability”. What we discussed was the different components of the Oracle BI EE stack, how they can be clustered and some of the main features of such a setup.

The OBIEE architecture, in it’s simplest form, is comprised of the Oracle BI Server, Oracle BI Presentation Server, Oracle BI Java Host and the J2EE container that runs the web application (let’s just call that bit OC4J , though it doesn’t have to be hosted in an Oracle Container 4 Java). Behind the Oracle BI Server we might expect to find several different data sources, but clustering those is well outside the scope of this write-up.

In your regular installation we always have a single point of failure. If any one server goes down or looses network connectivity then we have lost all service. Making each node redundant we reduce the risk of a single point bringing down the whole stack

Setting the BI Server to a clustered mode

The clustering of a BI server and the cluster controller are configured in the NQSConfig.INI and NQClusterConfig.INI files, found in the ORACLEBI/server/Config/ directory. Once you have installed the BI server on all the dedicated servers, you need to configure each and every node to join the cluster we are creating. One server must be chosen to be the primary cluster control. This server will be responsible for receiving connection requests to the cluster, and forward that request down to one of the servers participating in the cluster. We can also configure a secondary cluster controller, to act as a backup if the master goes down. If you don’t bother setting up a secondary cluster controller, you have introduced a single point of failure.

Here are some of the main configuration parameters that need to be set in the NQSConfig.INI file

CLUSTER_PARTICIPANT = YES;
REPOSITORY_PUBLISHING_DIRECTORY = “/media/share/Repository”;
REQUIRE_PUBLISHING_DIRECTORY = YES;

The first one tells the BI server to look in to the NQClusterConfig.INI file for further information on how to connect to a cluster. The second parameter points to a shared directory on the network, where all BI Servers in the cluster must be able to find the common repository and write back any modifications. The third parameter tells the BI server that it should not be able to start if the Publishing Directory can not be found.

The configuration of the Cluster Controller and the BI Server clustering is set in the NQClusterConfig.INI file. The Cluster Control must be enabled and then we must list the primary (and, optionally) the secondary cluster controllers. Each node must also know about all the BI servers in the cluster, and which server is dedicated to contain the master copy of the repository.

ENABLE_CONTROLLER = YES;
PRIMARY_CONTROLLER = “aravis2.rmcvm.com”;
SECONDARY_CONTROLLER = “aravis3.rmcvm.com”;
SERVERS = “aravis2.rmcvm.com”,”aravis3.rmcvm.com”;
MASTER_SERVER = “aravis2.rmcvm.com”;

The next step is top copy the .RPD file in to the /media/share/Repository mount point. (If you are setting this up on Windows machines, then you must share a drive on the network and refer to the share something like this: REPOSITORY_PUBLISHING_DIRECTORY=”aravis0\\share\Repository”)

In our setting here, we have one BI server and the Primary Cluster Controller running on aravis2 and a second BI server and the Secondary Cluster controller running on aravis3. If we now start the Cluster Controller on aravis1, we see the following

[oracle@aravis2 setup]$ ./run-ccs.sh start
Oracle BI Cluster Controller startup initiated.
Execute the following command to check the Oracle BI Cluster Controller logfile and see if it started.
tail -f /u01/app/oracle/product/obiee/OracleBI/server/Log/NQCluster.log
[oracle@aravis2 setup]$ tail -f ../server/Log/NQCluster.log
[71030] A connection with Cluster Controller aravis3.rmcvm.com:9706 was established.
2008-12-21 15:43:59
[71020] A connection with Oracle BI Server aravis3.rmcvm.com:9703 was established.
2008-12-21 15:43:59
[71010] Oracle BI Server aravis3.rmcvm.com:9703 has transitioned to ONLINE state.
2008-12-21 15:43:59
[71027] Cluster Controller aravis3.rmcvm.com:9706 has transitioned to ONLINE state.

Now make sure that the cluster controllers and BI servers are up and running on both instances.

Connecting to the BI Cluster

The Oracle BI ODBC driver is configured, by default, to connect to a regular non-clustered instance. Now that the Primary Cluster Controller is responsible for all connections, we need to configure a new DSN for the Administrator tool.

If we now start the Administrator tool and connect to the newly created ClusterController connection, we should see something like the following, if we start up the Cluster Manager Tool. Here we can see the state of each BI server and cluster controller.

Once we have established that the BI servers are both members of the cluster and the primary and secondary cluster controllers are running we can move on and change the ODBC connection for the Presentation Server. For the time being we are satisfied that the Presentation Server is a potential single point of failure. My Presentation Server is called aravis1.rmcvm.com. I now must edit the odbc.ini file, that we find in the ORACLEBI/setup/ directory. This configuration file defines all ODBC connections to the BI server, and now we are interested in creating a similar connection as we did above, for the Administration tool

[AnalyticsWeb_Cluster]
Driver=/u01/app/oracle/product/obiee/OracleBI/server/Bin/libnqsodbc.so
Description=Oracle BI Server
ServerMachine=local
Repository=
FinalTimeOutForContactingCCS=60
InitialTimeOutForContactingPrimaryCCS=5
IsClusteredDSN=Yes
Catalog=
UID=Administrator
PWD=
Port=9703
PrimaryCCS=aravis2.rmcvm.com
PrimaryCCSPort=9706
SecondaryCCS=aravis3.rmcvm.com
SecondaryCCSPort=9706
Regional=No

The Presentation Server then needs to be configured to use this ODBC connection, called AnalyticsWeb_Cluster, instead of the default AnalyticsWeb. Edit the ORACLEBIDATA/web/config/instanceconfig.xml file and change the ODBC connection name in the DSN tags

AnalyticsWeb_Cluster

/media/share/WebCat/catalog/samplesales

Restart the Presentation server and you should be ready to go. Log in to the Analytics web application and monitor, using the Administration tool, and see how you are now, in a round robin manner, get sessions created on each BI server.

Next we look at how to set up multiple presentation services to make that layer more fault tolerant , as well as putting the Java Host and Scheduler in to the cluster.

OBIEE and Outer Joins

Borkur Steingrimsson — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:29:45 +0000

One of the developers at a client’s site came to ask me a simple question today: How do you set up an Outer Join in OBIEE? I was fairly certain that I had done so in the past, and when I looked at his physical model I saw, as the developer already pointed out, that the possibility to set the physical join to ‘Outer’ is greyed out; suggesting that it should be possible, but for some reasons it’s not possible right now …

But when you think about it, it really doesn’t make much sense to set the outer join on the physical model: the same tables can be added multiple times in to a business layer, and how the tables are treated there can differ between subjects. My keen developer had already set the join options to Outer in the business layer, but was unable to get the expected result. The reason for that turned out to be completely different: Caching! The BI server was not trying to execute the query as the results were already in the cache, and even though the join had been changed the cache wasn’t about to expire.

Another thing I learned while quickly looking at this problem was this: The BI server generates a mix of ‘regular’ and ANSII join syntax. I didn’t even know that was possible! Here is an example code:


SELECT DISTINCT t63443.code AS c1,
                t67974.area AS c2,
                t67974.status AS c3,
                t67715.code AS c4,
                t67720.code AS c5,
                t67720.status AS c6,
                t67954.cost AS c7
           FROM table1 t67715,
                table2 t63443,
                table3 t67720,
                table4 t67974,
                table5 t67954
           LEFT OUTER JOIN table6 t67650 ON t67650.ID = t67954.ID
          WHERE (t63443.ID = t67650.ID AND
                 t67650.ID = t67720.ID AND
                 t67650.ID = t67715.ID AND
                 t67650.ID = t67974.ID)

So, a mix between the two types of syntax is supported in the Oracle database. My DB version here is Oracle 10.2.0.3

Rittman Mead Consulting At the UKOUG Conference 2008

Borkur Steingrimsson — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:24:31 +0000

I hope the readers of this blog have already noticed that the UKOUG conference is running this week up in Birmingham. The Rittman Mead Consulting team has a stand in the exhibition hall as well as running several sessions on the conference. Please try to drop by Stand 90 and say hello, if you are attending, and talk to any of the team members about your BI projects, issues or questions you might have.

We are giving away branded beer to thirsty attendees so make sure you get your cold Rittman Mead lager!

Automatic migration of a Discoverer EUL to an OBIEE Repository

Borkur Steingrimsson — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:27:05 +0000

The latest release of OBIEE, version 10.1.3.4 comes with a brand new demo repository and dashboards, that Mark already talked about, in this post. This is not the only new thing to come with this latest release. For the first time now, Oracle makes available a tool that allows the BI administrator to automatically generate an OBIEE repository from an exported Discoverer End-User Layer (EUL) file (.EEX) ! For some time now, OBIEE customers have been able to get access to this tool via Metalink, but this release is the first one to include this handy tool in to the wild.

The tool is a part of the Administration toolset, so it’s only available on the Microsoft Windows platform. The program file is called MigrateEUL.exe and can be found in the OracleBI/server/Bin/ directory. The migration tool must be run on a machine with an existing OBIEE Administrator installation. This is a command line utility, so get ready to do some work in the Windows shell …

In this first release the migration utility only supports the generation of a repository file (.RPD) based on the business areas (BAs) that are contained in the exported .EEX file. This means that no Discoverer Workbooks can be migrated yet. This is planned for a later release. But what what we do get is a complete physical, business and presentation layer. This also includes join definitions, hierarchies for dimensions and calculations. When workbook migration will be made available we should expect to get a presentation services web catalog as well. Also due to this limitation, some things in the Discoverer EUL can not be migrated, such as optional conditions that would normally be represented as saved filters in OBIEE web catalog.

First, to be able to do this migration you must make sure you are already running on the latest release of Oracle Discoverer, 10.1.2.X (if your production environment is not running in this version, I’d suggest you get the latest release of the Discoverer Desktop tools, create a dummy EUL in your test environment and use that to quickly migrate your EUL, so that you can still go on with testing this migration utility). Using the Discoverer Administrator tool, we must first export the desired BAs to a file, as I have already mentioned. Once that is done, you simply run the command line utility, passing the name of the .EEX file as an argument:

- MigrateEUL.exe vidstr.eex

The generated results will be placed in the same folder as the input .EEX file

vidstr.rpd – This is the resulting OBIEE repository
vidstr.migration.log – Progress of the migration
vidstr.exception.log – Any exceptions such as folders and joins that could not be migrated

The Logs

The migration.log will look something like this:

  Oracle BI SE - EE Migration Assistant Version 10.1.3.4.0
  Repository creation started...
  ****************************************************************
  Business Area : Video Store Tutorial
  ****************************************************************
  Custom Folder : Alternate Sort Store Size
  Custom Folder : Alternate Sort Days
  -- Processing EUL Joins....
  -- Processing Folder(s) based on EUL Joins....
  ## List of Folder(s) with SKIPPED JOINS / PATHS
  FOLDER_ID SELECTED = ### FOLDER_NAME JOIN_NAME
  --------------------------------------------
  ### FOLDER CONTAINER MAPPING ###
  Mapping For Folder : Alternate Sort Days : Alternate Sort Days
  Mapping For Folder : Alternate Sort Store Size : Alternate Sort Store Size
  Mapping For Folder : Calendar Date : Calendar Date
  Mapping For Folder : Fiscal Date : Fiscal Date
  Mapping For Folder : Products : Products
  Mapping For Folder : Sales Facts : Sales Facts
  Mapping For Folder : Store : Store
  Mapping For Folder : Target Sales : Target Sales
  -- Processing Complex Folder(s)....
  ** Complex Folder : Monthly Sales Analysis
  Complex Folder is not based on any folder in the current Business Area : Video Store Tutorial
  Complex Folder cannot be migrated!!!

  -- Processing Dimension(s)....
  ** Dimension Video Analysis Calendar Time Hierarchy based on a Complex Folder is not supported!!!
  ** Dimension Video Analysis Store Hierarchy based on a Complex Folder is not supported!!!

  ************* CREATING PHYSICAL LAYER *************
  -- Creating Database...[DONE]
  -- Creating Connection Pool...[DONE]
  -- Creating Physical Table(s)...
  -- Physical Table(s) creation...[DONE]
  -- Creating Physical Join(s)...
  -- Physical Join(s) creation...[DONE]
  ************* PHYSICAL LAYER CREATION DONE *************

  ************* CREATING LOGICAL LAYER *************
  -- Creating Subject Area...[DONE]
  -- Creating Logical Table(s)...
  -- Creating Logical Join(s)...
  -- Logical Join(s) creation...[DONE]
  -- Creating Calculation(s)...
  - Creating Complex Folder Calculation(s)...
  -- Calculation(s) creation...[DONE]
  -- Logical Table(s) creation...[DONE]
  -- Creating Dimension(s)...
  Dimension : Calendar Date Hierarchy
  Dimension : Fiscal Calendar Hierarchy
  Dimension : Product Hierarchy
  Dimension : Store Hierarchy
  -- Dimension(s) creation...[DONE]
  ************* LOGICAL LAYER CREATION DONE *************
  ************* CREATING PRESENTATION LAYER *************
  -- Creating Presentation Folder(s)...
  Folder : Video Analysis Information
  *** Admin Optional Condition Year is 1998 or 1999 will not be migrated to a repository!!!
  *** Admin Optional Condition Department is Video Rental or Video Sale will not be migrated to a repository!!!
  Folder : Stores and Sales Details
  Folder : Products
  Folder : Store
  Folder : Calendar Date
  Folder : Fiscal Date
  Folder : Sales Facts
  Folder : Target Sales
  -- Presentation Folder(s) creation...[DONE]

  ************* PRESENTATION LAYER CREATION DONE *************

  ------------------- All Business Area(s) processed -----------------
  -- Creating Security Filter(s)...
  -- Security Filter(s) creation...[DONE]
  -- Creating User(s)...

  EUL
  PUBLIC
  VIDEO5

  -- User(s) creation...[DONE]

  The migrated repository is saved at C:\TEMP\vidstrEUL.rpd
  ------------------------------------------
  EUL MIGRATION SUCCESSFUL
  ------------------------------------------

Anything that doesn’t get migrated or fails during the execution of the tool will get looged in to the the migration log as well as the execption log. The exception.log will only list, as the name suggests, the exceptions that occurred during the pass through.

  Oracle BI SE - EE Migration Assistant Version 10.1.3.4.0
  ****************************************************************
  Business Area : Video Store Tutorial
  ****************************************************************
  ## List of Folder(s) with SKIPPED JOINS / PATHS
  FOLDER_ID SELECTED = ### FOLDER_NAME JOIN_NAME
  ——————————————————————

  ** Complex Folder : Monthly Sales Analysis
  Complex Folder is not based on any folder in the current Business Area : Video Store Tutorial
  Complex Folder cannot be migrated!!!
  ** Dimension Video Analysis Calendar Time Hierarchy based on a Complex Folder is not supported!!!
  ** Dimension Video Analysis Store Hierarchy based on a Complex Folder is not supported!!!
  *** Admin Optional Condition Year is 1998 or 1999 will not be migrated to a repository!!!
  *** Admin Optional Condition Department is Video Rental or Video Sale will not be migrated to a repository!!!

The interesting things we see here are:

Complex folders that are based on other complex folders are not supported (yet?)
Hierarchies based on Complex Folders are not supported
Optional Conditions are not supported (as mentioned above) as they’d need to be placed in the web catalog

Configuration Parameters

The migration tool reads configuration parameters from a file called MigrationConfig.properties that is stored in the same directory as the executable. SInce the only command line argument the tool expects is the name of the Discoverer .EEX, all other configurations need to be stated in this properties file.

Parameter	Description
CreateAggregatedCols	True = Aggregated Columns with functions like SUM, MIN, MAX, AVG and COUNT will be created for Measure columns False = Aggregated Columns will be created for Measure columns based on the DEFAULT AGGREGATION set in the EUL
CreateSeperateRPDs	True = Each Business Area in the EUL export ﬁle will be migrated to a seperate repository False = All the Business Areas in the EUL export ﬁle will be migrated to a single repository
ExcludeJoins	Valid values are comma seperated JOIN_IDs available for every join created in Discoverer. These Joins will not be migrated
ConsiderMultiplePaths	True = The Joins skipped for eliminating the Circular and Multiple Join paths will be considered for migration False = The Joins skipped for eliminating the Circular and Multiple Join paths will not be migrated
IncludePathsForFolders	Valid values are comma seperated TABLE_ID values generated in the log ﬁle listing the folders having joins that are skipped for eliminating the Circular and Multiple Join paths. IF ConsiderMultiplePaths property is TRUE and there are no values speciﬁed fIncludePathsForFolders then all the Skipped Joins will be migrated
DataSourceName	This property value is the name of the System Datasource Name used for connecting to the Database
Username	This property value is the Username for connecting to the Database

Looking at the MigrationConfig.properties file we can see that the following is the default setting:

  CreateAggregatedCols=FALSE
  CreateSeperateRPDs=FALSE
  ExcludeJoins=
  ConsiderMultiplePaths=TRUE
  IncludePathsForFolders=
  DataSourceName=
  Username=

Sticking with the Discoverer Video Store Tutorial, here is what the business area looks like in the Administration tool:

After we run the migration tool, we get a new .RPD called vidstr.rpd. Opening this repository in the OBIEE Administration tool, we must first set the properties of the connection pool, so that the BI Server can connect to the database, namely the TNS connection name, username and password.

Validate and save the repository. Notice the warning that the Administrator user has been created using a blank password.

Now would be a good time to shut down the BI Server as well as the BI Presentation Server.

Copy the vidstr.rpd file to the OracleBI/server/Repository/ directory. Change the OracleBI/Server/Config/NQSConfig.ini configuration file to point to the new repository.

  #Star = samplesales.rpd, DEFAULT;
  Star = vidstr.rpd, DEFAULT;

Before we go on, we might also want to create a new web catalog to test the migration in Answers. Edit the OracleBIData/web/conf/instanceconfig.xml file to point to a new catalog. Simply giving it a new name will create a new blank catalog once the BI Presentation Service has been started.

  E:/OracleBIData/web/catalog/vidstr

Restart the BI Server and the BI Presentation Server services and log in to the Oracle BI web application and we will see that the “Business Area: Video Store Tutorial” Subject Area is now available for querying.

To conclude this, we can see that it is quite straight forward to migrate a Discoverer EUL to OBIEE. However, there are still some fundamental differences between the architecture of the two products that make it difficult to automatically migrate everything. But what we do get is a very good head start. The Video Store Sample I used here is a very simple business area, where as your EUL might contain quite a lot more complicated logic. Things can get hairy very fast when your Discoverer join configurations are slightly more complicated than a simple star. But don’t hesitate to give it a go, even if just to demonstrate what your current Discoverer reporting environment might look like, in the spiffy new OBIEE …

Finally I managed to write a post

Borkur Steingrimsson — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 13:32:24 +0000

A time for a post

Well, it has now been close to 5 months since I joined Rittman Mead Consulting. Right after I joined up, all my previous blog posts were migrated to the RMC blog. The ensuing blog silence on my behalf did cause some people to wonder and ask if I had been banned from the blog or if Mark and Jon took editorial power over my writing. The simple fact of the matter is that I somehow dropped out of any blogging mode and have been keeping my head down in the trenches, working hard. This is not to suggest that Mark, Jon and Peter have not been working hard and therefore they had plenty of time to blog :)

The last few months I have been dividing my time between a client in Brussels and another in London. The two projects are vastly different, so it has been quite refreshing to switch context every two weeks. In between I have also been tasked with writing new training material, delivering training to other clients, attending Oracle Partner training in Reading and the tedious task of attending user conferences and events. As a matter of fact, I am currently cruising at 35.000 feet over Lake Ontario on my way back home after spending a whole week in the heat and humidity of the fascinating (yet somewhat crazy) New Orleans, where Mark and I attended and presented at the ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008 conference. Readers of the blog have, no doubt, read Mark’s chronology of the week’s happening. Let me just reiterate that the famous Hand Grenade drink, as well as the Hurricane, really are as advertised: dangerous in the hands of amateurs …

The conference itself was really quite good. This was the second time that I attended ODTUG, the first time being the Washington 2006 event, but I was amazed to see so many familiar faces – both from the UKOUG crowd as well as people I had met 2 years ago. This was the first time that I presented at ODTUG and I am looking forward to submitting a paper again, next year. These events are a fantastic chance to catch up with “on-line” friends but more importantly, as a small business owner, for networking and meeting potential customers. I also had a chance to catch up a little bit with my good buddy Dimitri Gielis. Even though we both live in (or near) Brussels, we never seem to be able to catch up, as we are both very busy with our own work and travel.

The highlight of the conference, for my part, was probably the chance to meet up with Jean-Pierre Dijcks and talk about OWB and the roadmap and upcoming OWB11gR2. Also, I had a nice long talk with Mike Donohue about BI publisher and the really cool new features we are to expect to see there, like an online template builder. Also, I enjoyed the chance to spend some off-time with Mark, as we hadn’t had any chance to catch up over the last few months.

After a hard week of attending talks, delivering talks, meeting people, chatting, having a beer (or two) and short nights, it will be good to get back home. Upcoming 2 months are booked solid for me, with more trips to London on the Eurostar and client work in Brussels. I plan on contributing some technical stuff later on, but this will have to do for now.

Cheers to everybody who attended ODTUG!