Oracle BI Extended Edition (OBIEE) Tips and Techniques: Part 1

From Dan: I have been working with Oracles BI tools for years. I am quite the
Discoverer expert (a free tool now from Oracle CorpOBISE standard edition) but
this tool is now on the back burner and I hardly even field questions on it anymore.

OBIEE is the replacement product in Oracles BI offering. This tool originated from
Oracles purchase of Siebel and Oracle has enhanced it, put it in with weblogics and
SOA, and spruced up the end user piece.

I do training on both the admin/repository side and the end user reports/dashboards side.

This article will show you some of the newer features of the tool. This article will discuss
how to get started, or, come up with a good development environment where all these
pieces are already installed, etc.

Remember OTN? Oracle Technical Network? This site is your friend. Oracle has
produced a rather large VMBox image that has all of the BI tools, including BI Publisher,
already installed and working.

The Oracle BI Sample is available for download from from OTN at:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html

The Sample v107 is Oracle BI 11.1.1.5 and the Sample v207 is the Oracle BI 11.1.1.6.
This download is a complete working OBIEE environment for VMBox:
www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html .

This download is HUGE: 26GB.

I have purchased quite the PC to run this image. It takes a lot of horsepower.

Toshiba P750, Quad Core processors running at 2.20 GHz.

64 Bit Windows 7 Professional
8gb RAM, 500GB (fast seek time) Hard Drive
Bring the image up in the VMBox environmentopen VMBoxthen open the Sample
v207environment.

There should be an Admin, End User, and another account. I usually pick the Admin
login. ALL passwords are Admin123. IF these accounts do not exist, email me for the
setup and start scripts. The Deployment Guide has instructions for starting the various
services.

I have been using the weblogic user id and Admin123 passwords to work the
examples and illustrations also found under the documentation tab/tutorial tabs where the
Sample v207 image was downloaded.

I found the Deployment Guide very helpful with startup tasks and accounts/passwords. I
have been working with the User Guide for the OBIEE product. I have found many of
the tutorials helpful as well.

Once you have the environment runningopen a web browser (I prefer Google Chrome
for Oracle things)follow these steps:
Do an IPConfig command from a DOS prompt on the OBIEE computer. This is
the IP address used next
http://<ip address from above step>/7001/analytics
o login: weblogic
o password: Admin123
Oracle BI Extended Edition (OBIEE) Tips and Techniques: Part 2

You can try these reports out yourself at: http://www.vlamis.com/testdrive-

registration/ . This cloud image is the Sample207 image discussed in Part 1.
So, you can use the cloud environment provided by Vlamis.com or you can
use the same walk thru against the download OBIEE environment discussed
in Part 1.

Additional walk thrus and useful documentation can be found at:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-
edition/overview/index.html

Logging into the Sample207 environment:

http://<ip address>:7001/analytics
o login: weblogic
password: Admin123

OBIEE (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition) is based off the Siebels
Analytics tool. This is a complete web development/data access/data formatting
environment.

You can:
Run simple queries
Run existing reports
Integrate existing reports into groups that pull in related data and detail
(dashboards)
Produce quality reports and web pages using the integrated BI Publisher tool.

The Reports:
Column reports
Matrix reports (also called pivot tables or cross-tabular reports)
Graphs
Narratives
 Links
Objects (such as images)
Can include prompts to filter to different data using the same report

This is the screen you would see upon logging in. The end user might see a dash board.
This screen shows the user what they have available at the click of a mouse. Being the
administrator, this user would see anything available.

The New menu item then click on Analysis brings up the report-building interface.

The report-building interface allows easy access to tables and columns. The
representation here, the folders would be tables; the items in the folders would be
columns. This is not entirely true though; the folders could be complex joins across your
entire enterprise of data (yesmixing Oracle, other databases, and even spreadsheet
data!). The columns can be a data column from a table, a calculation, or a mix of other
items.

The subject areas are then displayed.

All of these table objects, columns, reports, and subject areas are all
controlled by permissions both in the OBIEE interface and the Weblogics
environment.

The Save button (upper right corner) is an important button. Safe often and frequently!

Undoundoes the last action onlyusually

Lets build a simple report using the B -Training subject area.

On the menu barselect New then Analytics then B Training.

The report is easy to build. You can drag and drop the columns from the subject area into
the Selected Columns area or simply double click on them.

This report has

Product Type from the Products folder
Month from the Time folder
121 Period Ago Rev from the Time Series folder
(2) Revenue columns from Base Facts.

The easiest way to add an additional column is to drag another column out onto the
selected columns area, then click on the Options icon in with the column name and
select Edit Formula. From here, you can change the contents of the column to almost
anything. All SQL functions work here too!
Notice you have all the columns on the report available, all of the columns in the subject
area, and of course, the power of SQL at your fingertips. Also notice we can adjust the
heading from here. Simply click on the Custom Headings box near the top.

Enter this calculation into the edit window and click Ok.

((Base Facts.Revenue/Time Series.121 Period Ago Rev)-1)*100

If there is a syntax error, this window will not close and will inform you (yeswith
the usual meaningful error from Oracle Corp) of the problem it encountered.
Click on the Results tab to view your report. Save your report. To rerun your
reportsimply click on it from your startup dashboard, from the catalog, or Open it.

From here, we can fix the columns, add conditional formats, add data formatting, add a
heading, then we could add additional features to the report by adding a prompt, a graph,
additional columns of detail, additional reports, and so much more. We can easily
execute this report. We can include this report into a new or existing dashboardto be
executed with other reports and graphs.

This information should get you started on creating reports. The next section will
introduce you to BI Publisher.
Oracle BI Extended Edition (OBIEE) Tips and Techniques: Part 3

I have been working with Oracles BI tools for years. I am quite the Discoverer expert (a
free tool now from Oracle CorpOBISE standard edition) but this tool is now on the
back burner and I hardly even field questions on it anymore.

This is part 3 of a 3 part series on getting OBIEE setup (part 1) and creating some reports
(part2). This final chapter will expose you to BI Publisher.

You can try these reports out yourself at: http://www.vlamis.com/testdrive-

registration/ . This cloud image is the Sample207 image discussed in Part 1.
So, you can use the cloud environment provided by Vlamis.com or you can
use the same walk thru against the download OBIEE environment discussed
in Part 1.

Additional walk thrus and useful documentation can be found at:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-
edition/overview/index.html

Logging into the Sample207 environment:

http://<ip address>:7001/analytics
o login: weblogic
password: Admin123

The Sample v307 is Oracle BI 11.1.1.7 preinstalled and ready to go is now available.
This download is a complete working OBIEE environment for VMBox:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html.

Oracle BI Publisher is an enterprise reporting product that provides the ability to create
and manage highly formatted reports from a an equally wide variety of data sources. BI
Publisher is designed to make use of MS Word and Adobe Acrobat. Other data sources
are the Oracle database (based on queries), web services, and Discoverer.
OTN has a nice overview of BI Publisher. Check out this link:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-publisher/overview/index.html

BI Publisher is imbedded in OBIEE and is OBIEEs standard reporting feature. In this

article, we will take a report we created in Part 2 and pretty it up using BI Publisher.

I called it Product_Sales, its properties looks like this:

The data looks like this:

Now, lets publish the report using the built-in BI Publisher in OBIEE. My report
Product_Sales is stored in My Folders in the browser catalog.
Using BI Publisher
Lets create a new report. Click New Data Model
Change the Default Data Source to Oracle BI EE

Click on Data Sets and select Oracle BI Analysis from the New Data Set drop-down
menu.

Notice the different supported data sources. Basically, BI Publisher will pull the query
from these various sources, or, just format the data from the XML or such
This will bring up the Create Data Set dialog box. Give your report a name and select
the magnifying glass next to Oracle BI Analysisthis brings up a Oracle BI Catalog
popup. Find your Analysis (mine was under User Folders and remember, its
Product_Sales.
Your dataset should look something like this. Notice the left column of the data
modelyou can add events under triggers, you can add additional fields, list of values,
parameters, and bursting is how the report is to be distributed and in which formats.

Once you get a data set, from any of the sources, now it is a matter of what do you want
the output to look like.

Lets continue.

Up on the upper rightthere is now an XML button. Click this to try your query.
You should get something that looks like the above. Click on the Options button next
to the Return button and save the data as sample data. Now click on the Return button
on the upper right corner to return to the data model.

Now that we have a data model, we will now create a report to use it. Remember, this
article is a very high and simple use of BI Publisher. BI Publisher can do so many things.

Click on Catalog My Folders New Report

Then choose use existing data model then select the data model from the last exercise.
Select Report Editor, give your report a name (I used Product_Sales_Report2so it
doesnt conflict with the data modelI should have used a data model name in my data
model!).
From here, you can select a variety of formats or you can build your own. We will select
the Blank Portrait report. It is easy to drop back in here and pick a different template.
BI Publisher allows you to create these report templates so that all your reports have the
same company logo, colors, and general format. How cool is that?
From here, you are report writing!!! Drag and drop the columns into the report. Ive
already created an article that is way too longbut you can do a lot from this editor
screen.

Drag and drop your columns from the Data Source onto the canvas.

Click on the Interactive Preview and select an output for your report. I selected PDF.

Click again on the Interactive Preview button and you should see this:
Now, we have a report that we can select from this interface. We can add the report to a
click point on the dashboard. This report is now available thru the OBIEE interface. It
can be included in dashboards, printed, scheduled to run, have alerts posted to it
(announce when certain data items appear in the report), etc. The BI Publisher tool can
now be used to burst or run and distribute the results. The bursting process can produce
multiple output types and send to multiple distribution lists, etc.

This is quite the flexible report-handling tool.

The latest release of BI Publisher is 11.1.1.7. Some of its new features include:
Can now make PDFs of OBIEE Dashboards
Retry limit increased when the scheduler fails to start the job
Now reports against BI Subject areas
Additional charting abilities
Additional CVS import support
ODBC and JDBC support for other data stores
Excel templates made easier
Additional check printing features
Support for ENDECA
Charts can be enhanced easier now
About Dan:

Dan Hotka is a Training Specialist and an Oracle ACE Director who has over 35 years in
the computer industry, over 29 years of experience with Oracle products. His experience
with the Oracle RDBMS dates back to the Oracle V4.0 days. Dan enjoys sharing his
knowledge of the Oracle RDBMS. Dan is well-published with 12 Oracle books and well
over 200 printed articles. He is frequently published in Oracle trade journals, regularly
blogs, and speaks at Oracle conferences and user groups around the world.

Dan Hotka - Author/Instructor/Oracle ACE Director

www.DanHotka.com
Dan@DanHotka.com
DanHotka.Blogspot.com
515 771-3935