The simple answer is that, out of the box, this is not (yet) supported in the 11G release, unless the user has administrative privileges on the weblogic server.
This leaves :

1. Asking an administrator to do it.
2. Granting more privileges on the BI stack, allowing them to log into the weblogic console and modifying the password there.

Neither of these methods is very flexible since it requires 3rd party intervention on some level to make it happen. Worse, administrative access would have to be granted to those users, defeating in large part the purpose of the security infrastructure.

One option would be to create a set of WLST scripts that, to some degree, hide the administrator credentials, but that option requires users to run scripts outside of the web front-end. It works but it’s hardly intuitive or user-friendly.

This post will explore a method that would enable users to do this themselves, directly from within Analytics, without the need to divulge any higher privileged credentials.

Since the introduction of OBIEE 11G running on weblogic an extensive API is available containing the functionality that is already present in the enterprise manager and weblogic console. Part of this is the Mbean tree that OBIEE uses to manage its configuration. This Mbean tree can be browsed using the Enterprise Manager. Each of the Mbeans in this tree relates a part of the stack and exposes methods to either get or set bits of the configuration. Of interest in this case are the Mbeans relating to the Authenticators. More specifically, in the case of a default installation, the DefaultAuthenticator linked to the myRealm security provider.

Logging into the enterprise manager gives us its exact name and exposed methods:

From here we can invoke the ChangeUserPassword method and change the password for a user.

In order to leverage these Mbean methods outside of the Enterprise Manager a simple java class can be built, using the aforementioned API.

The steps to be taken in this class are:

1. create a connection to the Mbean server
2. call the password change method in the appropriate Mbean

I used Jdeveloper 11G R1 for this.

So far so good. I can now change the weblogic password by calling the java class and verifying success by logging into Analytics with the new password.

In order to make this class available from within the OBIEE dashboards I’ll use a feature that was introduced in OBIEE 11G: the ability to consume web services. This is possible in 10G as well but some jiggery pokery is required to get this to work. OBIEE 11G on the other hand has this functionality by default.

First I have to expose the class as a Web Service. In order to do so I have to create a Web Service out of it and deploy it to an application server in the form of a war file. The good thing is that no additional installation or configuration is required since I already have a full fledged application server at my fingertips viz. weblogic.
A few clicks in JDeveloper later and it is deployed to the Admin server where it’s visible under the deployments:

A quick test in Jdeveloper verifies that it’s working as advertised.

Now all that remains is to create an action item, call the webservice and place it on a dashboard somewhere.

1. Create a new action item in Answers

2. Point it to the WSDL descibing my ChangePassword web service

3. Make it prettier by setting prompts, messages and a few of the other options

4. Put in on a dashboard.

And there we are. Any user can now change their password from the within Analytics, without being exposed to any administrative credentials.

To finish, this consideration:

The Web Service can hardcode the weblogic password to connect to the Mbean server. Obviously this is not ideal since, should it be used to change the weblogic password itself, the  webservice would stop working. This means that the weblogic user has to be treated as the exception.

One way of dealing with this is to not use username/password authentication but rather use config- and key files to authenticate the weblogic user. The Web Service in that case would have to regenerate these files each time it’s used to change the weblogic password.

But there’s an app API call for that.

Ragnar

OBIEE comes with a set of default styles for dashboards (e.g. oracle10 and siebel77), each with their own top banners.

So how does one go about modifying these styles and replacing the top banner?

Let’s say I wish to replace the standard Oracle10 banner:

with this one:

(obviously graphic design is not part of my main skill set)

It turns out that creating and modifying a style has to be done in at least 2 locations:

• The Presentation Server
• The Analytics application running in an OC4J container

So first let’s have a look at the presentation server.

The styles are all located under <ORACLE_BI_HOME>\web\app\res.
Here we find several directories but the ones of interest to us in this case are the ones starting with ‘s_’.

The ‘s_’ directories contain the specific elements for each of the styles.

In order to change the banner I first make a copy of the ‘s_oracle10′ directory and rename it to ‘s_mynewtheme’ in order to preserve the original.

Under the new style directory you will find the ‘b_mozilla_4′ directory which contains the banner image currently used. The filename is ‘bg_banner.jpg’. I could simply replace the image with the new one but I prefer to make my life a little bit more difficult so I opt to leave the original banner in place and copy my new one into the directory under another name (bg_banner_new.jpg).

To have the theme use the new file instead of the original file I have to alter ‘portalbanner.css’ which can be found in the same directory as the banner images and modify the ‘.PortalBanner’ entry.

.PortalBanner {
margin: 0px;
background-position: top left;
background-image: url(bg_banner_new.jpg); /* DO NOT REMOVE RTL-ONLY: background-rtl-image: url(bg_banner.jpg); */
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-color: #1765AC; /*095BA9;*/
width: 100%;
padding: 0px;
}

That should do it for the Presentation Server.

Now all I have to do is copy the new style directory over to the OC4J container running the Analytics application. For an installation using the default OC4J installed with OBIEE it should be copied to
<ORACLE_BI_HOME>\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\applications\analytics\analytics\res.

For installations using application server OC4J containers the new style should be copied to the appropriate spot on those servers. Make sure to copy the new style to all of the servers if you are using a load balancing setup with multiple application servers.

The new theme will only be available once the Presentation server and the OC4J containers have been restarted. After restarting I reopen the dashboard and modify its properties in order to use the newly created style.

Before:

After:

Not bad at all. However, the list of available dashboards is superimposed over the banner text and the attentive reader may have noticed that my new banner is actually a little higher than the old one but this is not visible on the dashboard. To fix both these issues I simply modify the portalbanner.css file again for the new syle.

To move the dashboard list over to the right modify the width (default 276 pixels) in the ‘.PortalLogo entry’. In my case I set it to 650, roughly the position of the vertical black line.

.PortalLogo {
vertical-align: top;
padding: 0px;
width:650 px;
}

My banner is 96 pixels in height. In order to change this modify the height (default 46 pixels) in the ‘.PanelHdg’ entry:

.PanelHdg {
width:1%;
height: 96 px;
}

Do not forget to make the changes on both the Presentation server and the OC4J instances running Analytics!

Restart the appropriate services and voilà!