Much waited OBIEE 12c is released – All new features, Improvements

Much waited OBIEE 12c is released. This version is another major release from Oracle after OBIEE 10g and11g. This version has many improvements, Enhancements, and advanced new features in installation, migration, analyses and dashboards, Oracle BI Mobile, Oracle BI Publisher, metadata repository development, system administration, integration and API, and localization.

Download link: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/downloads/business-intelligence-2717951.html

Documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1221/biee/index.html

Highlights:

New Features in Presentation Services:

• Visual Analyzer: A brand new powerful visualization application in OBIEE Suite. VA provides greater flexibility to Rapidly create rich analyses through drag-and-drop configuration of new visual grammar. Using VA we can build the reports from the sources OBIEE repository and also from external content.
• Views Enhancements: New context menu (Right Click) on all graphs & other views to sort, drill.
• New Heat Matrix view type to represent the two-dimensional data. This is well suited for analyzing large amounts of data and identifying outliers.
• New Data Format properties “Scale for % (x 100)”: Specify whether to multiply data by a 100 to display it as a percentage when setting the properties of a column

New Features in BI Server:

• Logical Level Sequence Numbers for Time Dimensions for faster time series calculations. And to improve the query time.
• DISPLAY, SORTKEY Syntax Supported in the SQL ORDER BY Expression
• Oracle Database FAN & Connection Failover Supported by Oracle BI Server
• Generate Fragmented Aggregates in Aggregate Persistence
• Following New Command Line utilities are added
  • Download Repository
  • Upload Repository
  • List Connection Pool
  • Update Connection Pool
  • Rename Application Role
  • Delete Application Role
  • Rename Users
  • Delete Users
  • List Repository Variables
  • Update Repository Variables

New Features in Administration:

• Installation: Much faster and straight forward. And mostly, the configurations & folders directories are simple and clean.
• NO more OPMN, all services including OBI System & Java services are managed by WebLogic.
• Migrating from OBIEE 11g to 12c: We can migrate the Oracle BI 11g metadata to 12c is a two step process, and is carried out by using the BI Migration Script (migration-tool.sh). The catalog and WebLogic Security configurations needs to be reconfigured/migrated like in OBIEE 11g.
• BAR (BI Archive file): A new archive format which contains OBIEE Catalog, RPD and Security packaged in one file. The file will be created in current environment and imported in Target environment. The BAR file creation process has following options while creating it.
  • export all: To export everything including users and data sources are the same between two systems.
  • export without user folder content: Migrating the Catalog without the User’s Folders.
  • export without connection pool credentials: Migrating the upgraded RPD from one environment to another without connection Pool information. When Imported the BAR in Target environment, The RPD will be updated the new changed by not changing the Target System Connection Pool Information.
  • Syntax:
    • Creating the BAR File from Current Environment: 
      exportServiceInstance(domainHome, serviceInstanceKey, workDir, exportDir, applicationName=None, applicationDesc=None, applicationVersion=None, includeCatalogRuntimeInfo=false, includeCredentials=None)
    • Importing the BAR file in Target environment:
      importServiceInstance(domainHome, serviceInstanceKey, barfile)

New Features in Security:

• BISystemUser and BISystem Removed, No need to have BISystemUser in LDAP. The system user concept is now deemed “virtual” and is represented by the credential oracle.bi.system/system.user, for which the values are securely randomly generated by the Configuration Assistant.
• User GUIDs Removed: user GUIDs have been removed to make administration easier. GUIDs are replaced with user names. There is no longer any need to refresh GUIDs as part of lifecycle operations
• Database Security Store: Policy & Credential store is configured in database instead of the file System-jazn & etc.
• Easier SSL Configuration: Configuring SSL is much easier than earlier versions.

Overall this is a great release after OBIEE 11g from Oracle. Best version to start exploring and do great analysis.

Stay tuned for more interesting articles on OBIEE 12c here.

Thanks,
Shiva Molabanti

 

OBIEE 11.1.1.9.0 is released – Improved UI and features

Oracle has released new OBIEE 11.1.1.9.0 and available for download. Some highlights of the new features in this version are:

• Improved installer
• NOT supported on 32-bits Operating Systems.
• Better Administration Features: New monitoring operations via Mbeans,additional information in Usage Tracking tables, new INSTANCECONFIG.xml and NQSCONFIG.INI settings
• Improved Aggregate Persistence wizard to generate the aggregates with levels auto-correct and etc.
• Selection Steps & Hierarchical columns can be override with the initialization blocks with its initialization string written in JSON syntax.
• New light weighted UI Skin: Skyros, Similar to Oracle BI Cloud Service
• HTML5 output is supported and can be configured as default output format. So flash limits will not stop your analysis on any devices.
• More settings to configure the exports: columns formatting, Width, No.of rows etc..
• Ability to save calculated column to reuse in other analysis
• Better and simple UI (skin & Style) customization with a centralized master CSS and images in one directory.
• Improved Scheduler WebService methods gives more flexibility to manage the OBIEE Agents programmatically.

And many more can be found in New Features document: https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/11119/biee/BIEUG/whatsnew.htm#BIEUG13418

References:

Download at: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/downloads/bi-downloads-2537285.html
New intuitive Documentation Link: https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/11119/bisuite/index.html
System Certification Matrix: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/downloads/fusion-certification-100350.html

Thanks,
Shiva Molabanti

 

Oracle BICS and Identity Management – A New Security Architecture

Oracle BI Cloud Service, a part of PaaS, offers a highly scalable, multi-tenant Oracle BI environment that is integrated with Oracle Cloud store. Oracle BI Cloud Service features Presentation Services to create analyses and dashboards, Oracle Database Cloud Service integration, self-service web-client Data Loader and Data Modeler, simple administration, and integrated Identity Management for Security (Authentication & Authorization) Services.

When you subscribe BICS service, you will be to register for access to the Oracle Public Cloud at cloud.oracle.com. The Oracle Public Cloud is that it is built on Oracle’s Identity Management platform. Here, the Identity Managementis part of the Common Services layer and secures Oracle Public Cloud.

Out of the gate, the identity management services of the Oracle Public Cloud consist of an LDAP based identity store and a Single Sign-On (SSO) access management service. When you subscribe any oracle Public Cloud service of any type, i.e. whether it is a BI Cloud Service or a DB service, it is automatically added to your Tenant Services Group. All applications in your services group are integrated and SSO with IDM automatically and you will be login to all your Service Group apps seamlessly, without typing the login credentials for each one.

Oracle BICS Architecture:

In oracle Public cloud, when a user registers, their account and credential information is stored in Oracle Internet Directory. When a user has access to several services across Oracle Public, the single sign-on is handled by Oracle Access Manager. When a user account is disabled, it can be disabled across all services.

Oracle Identity Management Platform consists of three functional pillars and underlying platform services, as shown in the following figure:

BICS and IDM:

In Oracle BI Cloud Services, the Authentication and Authorization have been configured and maintained in Oracle IDM. That means, you have to maintain all your Oracle BI Cloud Service User accounts and Roles in integrated IDM.

Oracle BI Cloud Service – Security: simpler View:

Only the Identity Management administrators perform user management for Oracle BI Cloud Service in the Oracle Cloud Portal by managing identity domains. The identity domain contains users and roles that provide authentication to multiple Oracle Cloud services.

To secure your Oracle BI Cloud Service, apart from Authentication integration, everything is same as in OBIEE 11g. Oracle BI CS enables service administrators to provision identity domain users to use specific functionality in their Oracle BI Cloud Service instance by assigning application roles. An application role controls access to functionality available in Oracle BI Cloud Service.

Quick look at the hierarchy of predefined application Roles in BICS:

Highlights:

The Oracle IDM has been Optimized Directory as a user store and policy store, Single Sign-On via Oracle Access Manager for web access control, perimeter protection for all pages and a single point to manage user access and password management for all Oracle Public Cloud applications including Oracle BI Cloud Services.

In Simple terms, Oracle IDM is Authentication and Authoriztaion Source for Oracle BICS. The IDM platform approach is industry standard integration and pays huge dividends in the Oracle Cloud.

Thanks,
Shiva Molabanti

 

Reporting Capabilities in Oracle BICS with respect to OBIEE 11g

In today’s technological landscape there’s an ever-accelerating demand for increased efficiency and effectiveness. As organizations evaluate new solutions, they must consider the effective end-user adoption of every technology prior to implementation, particularly as the cost of deployment and training are often driven by the rate of user adoption. So every organization requires a careful evaluation of the tool, as well as its potential for end-user adoption.

To enable all users to tap into the most pertinent data, whenever and wherever they need it, Oracle has introduced, Oracle BI Cloud Service. The new Oracle BI CS is familiar with the users of OBIEE 11g. In some areas, Oracle BICS provides nearly identical features and functionality to Oracle BI EE. These similarities enable users to become more productive more quickly using Oracle BI Cloud Service. That said, you don’t need any special skills/training, just your current OBIEE analyzing and visualizing hands on skills are enough to adopt this new BICS.

What’s new?

Oracle BICS is designed with a fresh, lighter weight UI by integrating a new style called Skyros. It is exciting to see how quickly oracle is enhancing BI capabilities and visualizations components that provide significant graphical and tabular capabilities for analyzing data. In that direction, Oracle BI CS is being modernized and introduced following new features/components (in this V1 release).

Treemap view

Treemaps organize hierarchical data by grouping the data into rectangles (known as tiles). Treemaps display tiles based on the size of one measure and the color of the second measure.

The following figure shows an example of simple treemap view.
It shows the rectangles space filled with the “Size” and “Color” proportional to the “#Leads” across different Lead Sources.

By default, the first measure of the analysis in the Criteria tab is selected as the Size By measure, and the second measure is selected as the Color By measure. If there is only one measure in the analysis, this measure is the default for both Size By and Color By options. Additionally, the Style element defaults to Percentile Binning with “quartile” as the value for the number of bins.

Treemap view has the following characteristics:

• Tiles are colored by percentile binning or continuous color fill.
• First Group By dimension is displayed as the group (header) label.
• The order of the Group By dimensions implies the nesting order within the treemap. The last dimension in the Group By is the lowest level and this dimension name is displayed as the tile label. If the label is too long to fit on the tile, then it is truncated. Full values for the labels display in the tooltip.

Global Variables

In addition to session, Presentation and Request variables, BICS introduces a new variable called Global Variables. A global variable is a column created by combining a specific data type with a value. The value can be a Date, Date and Time, Number, Text, and Time.

You create a global value during the process of creating an analysis by using the Edit Column Formula dialog. The global variable is then saved in the catalog and made available to all other analyses within a specific tenant system.

The global variable is evaluated at the time the analysis is executed, and the value of the global variable is substituted appropriately.

Syntax for calling Global Variables in BICS Analysis:

                                   @{global.variables.variablename}

where variablename is the name of the global variable, for example, gv_region. When referencing a global variable, you must use the fully qualified name as indicated in the example.

For example: @{global.variables.gv_txt_multiply_rev}

Note: Only users with the “BIAdvancedContentAuthor” role can manage (add, edit, and delete) global variables.

 

Thanks,
Shiva Molabanti