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OBIEEInterviewQuestionsandAnswers

OBIEE Interview Questions

Home OBIEE Interview Questions

Welcome to OBIEE Interview Questions, here we are going to go over some questions you very
well might encounter when interviewing for a role which involves the use of Oracle Business
Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
Most of these interview questions will fall into one of two categories:
1. Ones which check your understanding of the OBIEE program.
2. Others, which will ask you to explicitly explain how you you do something in OBIEE.
The problem with interviews in a tech-related industry is that an employer needs to be 100% condent that you are the right person for the job, and
you arent just winging prior experience on your CV! Other industries may allow you some leeway in interviews, but when it comes to computers
programs there will only ever be 1 correct answer, and employers want to make sure you know it!
What often makes answering these questions tricky is that we deal with this program every day, meaning a lot of what we do is based on routine and
instinct for the program, and it can be hard to put exactly what we know and do into a concise answer.
Now, lets get into our list of OBIEE interview questions and answers! This list is by no means exhaustive of the questions that you could be asked, but
it will certainly give you an idea of what you may be asked come interview time!

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OBIEE Interview Questions & Answers

How would you use the Query Repository Tool?
The query repository tool gives you the option to search for and analyse data from your database according to any given attribute which describes the
given set of data i.e. Catalog, Key, LDAP Server). The objects which appear in your search results can then be edited or deleted once found.
Answer source.
What is OLTP and OLAP?
OLTP stands for Online Transaction Processing. It is designed for use with business transaction processes and the quick storage, deletion and retrieval
of this data. Any data here will be in its normalised form without duplicates.
OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing. This will usually handle a relatively low volume of transactions in comparison to OLTP, however they will
be more complex. Informal stored within an OLAP database will be multi-dimensional and de-normalised.
Answer source.
Please describe the dierences between OBIEE 10g and 11g.
11g is a new and improved version of 10g. Some of the key changes which were implemented include:
Improved automatic memory management.
Addition of Invisible Indexes
Addition of Virtual Columns
Enhanced password security
Ability to redene tables that have materialised view logs.

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A full change-log can be found here.

Please describe some features of OBIEE 12c over its predecessors.
New Visual Analyser for drag-and-drog analysis of data.
New right-click context menu on all graphs.
New Heat Matrix data view for two dimensional data
Quicker installation in admin.
GUIDs replaced with Usernames
Easier SSL conguration
A more in depth review of changes for OBIEE 12c can be found here.
What is single LTS and multiple LTS?
If a logical table in BMM layer has only one table as its source table, it is Single LTS.
If a logical table in BMM layer has more than one table as the sources, then it is called a Multiple LTS.
It is because of this that we deal with Snowake Schema through Multiple LTS.
How would you map each of the reports across to the dierent tables that you are accessing?
The Admin tool has the Manage Sessions tab which gives you the access to the logs which are being generated for each session. After your
sessions, you can easily view these logs in order to map each of the requests to the applicable tables and databases.
Explain to me the dierent types of caching in OBIEE.
Cache Disabled: The NQCong.INI le will have the Enable parameter set to No. This will disable the cache for the server, which will need to be
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restarted after this change. This can lead to slower performance, but can be useful in low access situations.
Caching for each physical table: In the admin tool you will have the option to set the preference for each individual table to be Made Cache-able. This
is useful for any table which is more frequently in use than its counterparts.
Event Polling Data: Used as a way to notify the ORacle BI server than one or more physical tables have been updated. The cache system will read from
the event table and extract information from the physical table to update.
More information.
Getting bored? Heres a quickre round number 1!
Where would the BI Server log its start, stop and restart times within the le system?
NQServer.log
Where can you nd and view the physical sql generate by an Answers report?
NQQuerylog
Administration Manage Sessions View Log
If I have two tables and they are not joined, what will happen in the BMM layer?
They will each act as a Fact Table.
What is the best default logging level for regular production users?
Log Level 0

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Which variables dont need an initialization block?

The Static Repository Variables
Okay, back to work slacker, were back to the longer questions now!
What is Authentication in OBIEE and which types are available?
Authentication is how the system veries each user of the program via their unique User ID and password. It conrms that each user has the
necessary permissions needed to log in and begin accessing and editing data, authentication occurs with each access request the server receives.
There are currently 4 types of authentication in OBIEE:
Operating System Authentication
Database Authentication
External Table Authentication
LDAP Authentication
What would you do, create a new logical column in the repository level or the Dashboard level?
Creation of the column in the Dashboard level will have an eect on just that one view level, not on any other Dashboard. If you were to create the
logical column in the repository level it will update in all other requests and reports, there it is better to create a new column at this level.
How would you go about migrating the presentation layers between two servers?
The presentation layer itself is dependant on the database which is on each server, and therefore cannot be moved across by itself. Therefore we
could use a database connection established across each server to carry over the presentation semantics from one server to another.
More information.
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What is the dierence between a data mart and a data warehouse?

A data mart is a store of only one section of data i.e. Finance or Sales. It more typically will hold more summarized data.
A data warehouse is a collection of multiple subject areas in more depth. A data warehouse will work to integrate all data sources and does not
necessarily use a dimensional model.
More information.
How would you go about importing data from an excel le?
The rst step to importing metadata from excel is to create a driver. This is done via Control Panel Administrative Tools DataSources (ODBC). The BI
Administration tool is then used to import metadata using the data source which you will have just created.
More information.
What is a factless fact table, and what are they used for?
A factless fact table is a table which has been used to collect information, usually for business processes. However this information doesnt contain
any hard facts and thus cannot be used for calculations. The most common example of a factless fact table is employee attendance, i.e. Yes or No
whether they attended on a given day.
Why do we use aggregate tables?
Aggregate tables are used to allow you ask the right business questions, and allowing the OBIEE server to do the rest of the work. Aggregate tables
do this by storing pre-computed results and measuring them over a set of predened attributes ready for analysis. This speeds of your database,
although can become more dicult as the size of a database increases.
Okay,youvedone great! Time for some quick re questions to nish o!
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What is a conformed dimension?

A conformed dimension is a dimension which exists in more than one star schema. This means that the two (or more) star schemas are connected
with a shared, conformed dimension.
What is a degenerate dimension?
A degenerate dimension is a dimension presented in a fact table, but not present in any other dimension tables.
What type of protocol do you use in SAS?
TCP/IP
When troubleshooting OBIEE, how do we view log les?
In 10g, log les had to be opened on the server.
In 11g we can now access log les via Enterprise Manager.
What are the Key Conguration Files?
NQSCong.ini
NQSCluster.ini
odbc.ini
instancecong.xml
Hopefully these OBIEE Interview Questions have helped you, make sure to check back in the future as we will be expanding this list as time goes on.
For more help on progressing in your career, check out our other pages on your OBIEE career.

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