July 2009 – Dimensionality

Uncategorized

RittmanMead Oracle BI Training Days 2009

I’m pleased to announce that the RittmanMead training days for Oracle BI are now officially open for registration.

Speakers at this event will be Mark Rittman, Venkat Janakiraman and myself.

Agenda:

Day 1
o Oracle BI and EPM architecture overview – Mark Rittman
o Oracle BI EE Data Modeling against DW and 3NF sources – Mark Rittman
o Oracle BI Delivers + Integration with Java and BI Publisher – Venkat Janakiraman
o What’s new in Oracle BI, DW and EPM from Oracle Open World – Mark Rittman

Day 2
o Oracle BI EE Data Modeling against Essbase – Venkat Janakiraman
o Leveraging MDX functions and calculations in OBIEE – Christian Berg
o Integrating Security across OBIEE and EPM – Venkat Janakiraman
o I can do this in Hyperion – how do I do it in OBIEE? – Christian Berg and Venkat Janakiraman

Day 3
o OBIEE Systems Management with OEM BI Mgmt Pack – Mark Rittman
o OBIEE Configuration Management Best Practices – Christian Berg
o ODI functionality in Oracle BI Applications – Mark Rittman
o ODI Integration with Essbase, Planning and Oracle EPM Suite – Venkat Janakiraman

Once more, here’s the link to the full event details:
http://www.rittmanmead.com/trainingdays2009/

You can find the registration page at http://www.regonline.co.uk/rmtrainingdays2009

Cheers,
Christi@n

Uncategorized

OBIEE 10.1.3.4.1 – Catalog path containing “.”

I was just testing multiple web catalogs when I realized that it’s a bad idea to put version numbers into the web catalog name.

As an example, I have my web catalog “samplesales_paint_v1.3” sitting ready in OracleBIDatawebcatalog and my instanceconfig.xml looking like this:

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
< WebConfig>
< ServerInstance>
< DSN>AnalyticsWeb
< CatalogPath>F:OracleBIDatawebcatalogsamplesales_paint_v1.3

Starting up the server will not load the refrenced catalog, but rather create a new one from scratch: “samplesales_paint_v1”

And the Oracle BI Presentation Services Administration duly notes:

Physical Presentation Catalog Path \?F:OracleBIDatawebcatalogsamplesales_paint_v1root

The sawlog0.log reads as follows:

Type: Error
Severity: 40
Time: Wed Jul 21 23:46:36 2009
File: project/webcatalog/localwebcatalog.cpp Line: 1507
Properties: ThreadID-4328
Location:
saw.catalog.local.loadCatalog
saw.webextensionbase.init
saw.sawserver
saw.sawserver.initializesawserver
saw.threads

Could not load catalog F:OracleBIDatawebcatalogsamplesales_paint_v1.3. Either it does not exist or insufficient permissions.
—————————————
Type: Warning
Severity: 40
Time: Wed Jul 21 23:46:36 2009
File: project/websubsystems/httpserverinit.cpp Line: 49
Properties: ThreadID-4328
Location:
saw.catalog.local.loadCatalog
saw.webextensionbase.init
saw.sawserver
saw.sawserver.initializesawserver
saw.threads

Creating Catalog F:OracleBIDatawebcatalogsamplesales_paint_v1.3.
—————————————

The log is incorrect on both accounts. “F:OracleBIDatawebcatalogsamplesales_paint_v1.3” does exist and the folder creation in the warning message may use the correct naming but actually creates folder “F:OracleBIDatawebcatalogsamplesales_paint_v1”.

XML normally accepts “.” inside the element content so I guess this is a legacy fragment from Siebel Analytics versions where the web catalog was a .webcat file. Why? Well, using this element:

< CatalogPath>F:OracleBIDatawebcatalogpaint.webcat

starts my “paint” folder 😉

Any comments on this are welcome.

Cheers,
Christi@n

answers, essbase, mdx, obiee

“in between” filters for MDX sources

Fiddling around with some more functional options we’ve all come to know, like and use frequently, I found that “in between” filters in answers requests going against MDX sources (Essbase, MS Analysis server etc) don’t work as expected.

To showcase this, I have created a simple request. Planning and Current numbers by Fiscal Month within Europe. And I’m interested in all months between Q1 2009 and Q4 2009:

Checking the results tab we see that it’s not necessarily what we’d expect:

Doing a full data scroll reveals that basically all Fiscal Month members are being pulled up.

Here’s the MDX from the log:

With
set [Geo3] as ‘Filter([Geo].Generations(3).members, (([Geo].CurrentMember.MEMBER_ALIAS = “Europe” OR [Geo].CurrentMember.MEMBER_Name = “Europe”)))’
set [Time Period3] as ‘Filter([Time Period].Generations(3).members, ( NOT (([Time Period].CurrentMember.MEMBER_ALIAS < "Q1-09" OR [Time Period].CurrentMember.MEMBER_Name < "Q1-09"))) AND ( NOT (("Q4-09" < [Time Period].CurrentMember.MEMBER_ALIAS OR "Q4-09" < [Time Period].CurrentMember.MEMBER_Name))))'
set [Time Period4] as ‘Generate({[Time Period3]}, Descendants([Time Period].currentmember, [Time Period].Generations(4),SELF), ALL)’
member [Scenario].[MS1] as ‘AGGREGATE(crossjoin {[Geo3]},Scenario.[Current])’, SOLVE_ORDER = 100
member [Scenario].[MS2] as ‘AGGREGATE(crossjoin {[Geo3]},Scenario.[Planned])’, SOLVE_ORDER = 100
select
{ [Scenario].[MS1],
[Scenario].[MS2],
[Scenario].[MS3]
} on columns,
NON EMPTY {{[Time Period4]}} properties ANCESTOR_NAMES, GEN_NUMBER on rows
from [Sample.Sample]

And here’s the important bit:

I’ve opened an SR for this since there’s no mentioning on metalink, the release notes or the new features guides.

Cheers,
Christi@n

blog, community, obiee

Updated my blog list

Added two new Oracle BI blogs to my blog list:

http://tipsonobiee.blogspot.com
http://www.artofbi.com

answers, obiee, web catalog, xml

Changing print controls through catalog manager

Recently I was off to change the print options on all of my dashboard pages. Naturally, as with all setting, this is encoded in the XML and can be mass-manipulated by the catalog manager.

Here’s the section in the XML, changed for landscape format, A4 paper size (yes, no weird US sizes ;-)) and explicit exclusion of headers and footers:

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
< sawd:dashboardpage sawd="com.siebel.analytics.web/dashboard/v1" saw="com.siebel.analytics.web/report/v1" xmlversion="200705140" isempty="false" duid="hsdfj3478387bs82" personalselections="true">
.
.
.
< span style="font-weight:bold;">
< saw:pageheader show="false">
< saw:pagefooter show="false">
< /saw:pagefooter>
< /saw:pageheader>

Cheers,
Christi@n

Uncategorized

“in between” filters for MDX sources

To showcase this, I have created a simple request. Planning and Current numbers by Fiscal Month within Europe. And I’m interested in all months between Q1 2009 and Q4 2009:

Checking the results tab we see that it’s not necessarily what we’d expect:

Doing a full data scroll reveals that basically all Fiscal Month members are being pulled up.

Here’s the MDX from the log:

And here’s the important bit:

set [Time Period3] as ‘Filter([Time Period].Generations(3).members, ( NOT (([Time Period].CurrentMember.MEMBER_ALIAS < "Q1-09" OR [Time Period].CurrentMember.MEMBER_Name < "Q1-09"))) AND ( NOT (("Q4-09" < [Time Period].CurrentMember.MEMBER_ALIAS OR "Q4-09" < [Time Period].CurrentMember.MEMBER_Name))))' I’ve opened an SR for this since there’s no mentioning on metalink, the release notes or the new features guides. Cheers,
Christi@n

Uncategorized

Updated my blog list

Added two new Oracle BI blogs to my blog list:

http://tipsonobiee.blogspot.com
http://www.artofbi.com

Uncategorized

Changing print controls through catalog manager

Recently I was off to change the print options on all of my dashboard pages. Naturally, as with all setting, this is encoded in the XML and can be mass-manipulated by the catalog manager.

Here’s the section in the XML, changed for landscape format, A4 paper size (yes, no weird US sizes ;-)) and explicit exclusion of headers and footers:

Cheers,
Christi@n

Uncategorized