OBIEE 11g – Up-gradation Catalog and Env/Config Issues/Challenges and Fixes (11.1.1.6 & 11.1.1.5)

Since(Oct 2011) I had started working on OBIEE 11g (11.1.1.5) for four different projects in parallel to up-grade the 10g to 11g lot of challenges have been faced specially with the Catalog and Environment issues. (You can see the already reported RPD issues under: https://debaatobiee.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/obiee-11g-up-gradation-rpd-gotchas-and-glitches/ )

I could report all of them in below threads with the possible resolution but as I am writing this blog now (actually I am bit late posting this thread L ) some of them already taken care of in 11.1.1.6 version however not all and bit surprised that though Oracle agreed to release the patch in .6 version and file the bug report they didn’t work out yet on those mentioned issues reported during .5 up-grade.

Worth to see the link here for possible changes in BI reports due to new features before taking the assumption that it is a bug.

As par my latest up-gradation from 10g to 11.1.1.6 is concerned it went well but still some of the defects which are already noticed in .5 not fixed yet, some of them appeared new and some of them totally ridiculous and critical too as per business perspective and some of them not reported yet to Oracle and hence no relevant information found in Support.

I am happy to categorizing them into two different areas below: (I have used .5 and .6 interchangeably to mean 11.1.1.5 and 11.1.1.6)

Environment and Configuration Issues

• Up-gradation of RPD and Catalog separately could cause the issue with the Dashboard Privileges and Object permissions. I had experiencing the issue when upgrade the catalog first and then RPD and reason which I could think of is that until the RPD up-gradation completed successfully by the UA it doesn’t going to reflect all the Users/Groups information in the Weblogic Security store. So if you are experiencing the issue recommendation is to at-least perform the RPD first and then catalog.
• During the migration process we have followed the approach to up-grade the same 10g RPD in the higher environment (say Test or UAT) to ensure the security store upgrades taken care of by the UA automatically. Other approach could be taken the export of the security store from the Weblogic Console for my security realm and then Import the security details to target env which basically perform a XML upgrade of security details in target environment
• Job ManagerPassword is not upgraded with RPD upgrade .It still retains the password of source RPD and target RPD password needs to be changed manually. At-least the behavior has been seen in 11.1.1.5 and have not tried yet this in the .6 version
• Upgrade can’t be done if the parameters are locked in FMW EM console: Upgrade will fail with below status. Need to release the lock and retry.
• Take extra caution when you are enabling the RPD Read only option in the EM as I found this is quite weird but finally checking and un-checking multiple time resolves my problem. So there is possible bug around this features in .5 didn’t try the .6 yet.
• Never try to deploy the RPD using the undocumented and wrong procedures except from EM .Otherwise you will find “CSK Key not found” issue during RPD deployment process.
• Missing Application roles in catalog results the new roles to be created inside Weblogic Admin Console and map to the groups i.e. required.
• Deploying EAR file gives: “Deployer:149082 You cannot deploy application ‘analytics’ without version” . OBIEE 11g: Error: ” <[WebAppModule(analytics [Version=11.1.1]:analytics)] Error Parsing Descriptor in Web Application” Whilst Deploying Analytics.ear File . This is 11g bug . See the resolution and patch note in Support
• While changing the password of Administrator account in EM and Weblogic make sure both are in synchronize.
• Loglevel Bug – NULL loglevel value set against user in external table based authorization scheme cause the user login failure however the same configuration in database level works perfectly okay with 10g setup. Resolution is to have must non-null values against all users in database records. This persists till .5 version and did not check yet the .6 version.
• While executing OPatch utility to apply the patches provided by Support to .5 env it displays with below information:

  Running prerequisite checks…

  Prerequisite check “CheckActiveFilesAndExecutables” failed.
  

  The details are:
  

  Following files are active :
  

  D:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\server\bin\nqsexecutionexpr64.dll
  

  D:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\server\bin\nqsexecutionlist64.dll
  

  D:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\server\bin\nqsserviceinterfacemgr64.dll
  

  D:\Oracle\Middleware\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\server\bin\nqssimutility64.dll
  

  ApplySession failed during prerequisite checks: Prerequisite check “CheckActiveFilesAndExecutables” failed.
  

  System intact, OPatch will not attempt to restore the system
  

  OPatch failed with error code = 74
  

  Resolution is to change the Privilege of “C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory” directory from read-only to Read-Write with Full-Control . However that was never documented in Oracle OPatch Readme.

• While changing the BISystemUser password make sure those are in sync with EM security store and Weblogic Console and till .5 version there was issue with using special character as BISystemUser password. Make sure that it should not have special characters.

Catalog Issues

• “Act As” doesn’t populate the list of users and throwing functionality disabled by Admin. For Act As to work for the LDAP based users required configuration needs to be done (except what is the to-do configuration for 10g) as the security model for 11g is different from 10g. I will detail the change in “Act As” process in separate thread.
• There are always problem with the report or prompts decimal issues .Either new decimal value appended , decimal value missing, 3 decimal places appears in place of 2 or decimal values not appearing at all in Charts mouse over option. Also the issue persist in aggregate calculations which possibly results the wrong value in Sub-Total or Grand total. The problem needs to be diagnosed and isolated before fixing.
• 11.1.1.6 causing the issue for Multi Path navigation . While there is single navigation path in 10g there is no needs to have a pop-up with the Action link text name but UA not being able to trace the link name while it is a single path. Also if there is ‘&’ character in the Action Link text it improperly translate it as ‘&’. However there is no quick fix available as of now and you need to go to individual navigation where problem exist and fix it by clicking option ‘don’t show pop-up in place of single navigation”
• Upgrade Assistant (UA) not really able to up-grade properly the navigated links/interactions against column header, value name and hence post up-gradation we had to manually remove all the unwanted navigation paths from column values. This typically occurs if any column of the table/pivot view has interaction, it is going to add the same interactions/Action Links to the measures columns across the reports.
• Typical problem has been faced in the Aggregate calculation and the conditions specified in the pivoted report. Those have been faced case by case.
• There is severe issue with Count Distinct measures specially to calculate the Grand Total and results the calculation mismatch between 10g/11g reports.
• Sorting of columns having the hard-coded customized values not works for Combined request. Special tweaking needs to be done to fix the issue by appending some space characters once, twice, thrice etc.
• Problem with SQL_TSI_WEEK function and Can’t properly cast the value caused CASTing errors. Not sure if that fixed in .6 version and not tried yet.
• iBots causing the issue after executing it and reports : “AgentID: /shared/Test – DxP/DxP_iBot” , Invalid subscribers skipped: DEBA . The reason is SASystemSubject area enabled . The problem found in .5 version and the fix is to disable the SystemSubjectArea using the special tag inside instanceconfig.xml file
• OBIEE 11g: Error While Fetching a Large Pivot Table: “Exceeded Configured Maximum Number of Allowed Input Records” while downloading the reports with more than millions of rows . However it has been observed that the problem not exist in 10g and aligning the required parameter in instanceconfig doesn’t resolve the issue. The same issue persists if download operation of the report triggered using the JavaScript’s and the iBots scheduler. Below error reported in the downloaded excel file. So far the issue persists in .5 and bug opened for that. Not sure if that is fixed in .6 yet

                 “Exceeded configured maximum number of allowed input records” onclick=”SAWMoreInfo(event)

                 Error Codes: EKMT3FK5

• Redundant Legend for Chart View in OBIEE Pivot and Table based Charts causing the weird legend display. However part of that has been fixed and still some of the customized charts the issue retained in .6 version.
• 45 degree angle Chart axis label causing blurred labeling which is un-readable and pretty difficult to understand. Support suggests ‘EmbedFonts’ tag under instancconfig which also doesn’t help and I have seen the problem still persists in .6 release.
• Some of the crowded/busy charts axis labeling doesn’t plot the label value at all in the axis .However data and bar shows perfectly fine during hovering but the axis label under some of the vertical or horizontal bar seems missing. Resolution as of now is to increase the charts width and height, reduce the axis label fonts and make the label as 0 or 90 degree. The problem typically found in .6 version
• Pivot table column header formatting not properly upgraded for some of the reports and not all. The problem typically found in .6 version
• Additional row in every table or pivot view cause the format difference with 10g reports. Not sure when the fix or ever the fix will be available
• In .5 release if we want to remove some column from the view of the table in Dashboard page it was possible but you couldn’t add those later and never find those removed column. But it seems that Oracle fixed the issue in .6 release.
• In .6 version critical data issue exist if the presentation column (P1) (where P1 and P2 refers the same logical column) used in reports with combination of other measures. In those cases it was causing weird data issues. So has been fixed by pulling correct relational presentation dimension column relevant to the logically same place of the metrics
• Critical catalog issue has been observed while Navigating from the Chart or Pivoted Chart where the value in the database having & character like (‘HOME & BEAUTY’) .In those case navigation to the detail report caused no results as the value itself from the chart passing to DB is like ‘HOME & BEAUTY’ in the where clause of the query. Didn’t got any response yet from Oracle about the fix and the patch.
• In Chart pivoted result one of the metric value which is NULL, appeared in Pivot table and not in Chart for 10g, but in 11g it is coming for both Pivot and Chart . No solution apart from segregating the view into new Chart view.
• The expression like “CAST(((max(saw_3 by saw_1) /max(saw_4 by saw_1))*100) AS VARCHAR(50)))” no more valid in 11g at-least in .5 version.
• Presentation variable report filter default values are no more Case sensitive in 11g at-least observed in .5 version
• BI Publisher issue in one of the up-graded report as “oracle.xdo.XDOException: oracle.xdo.XDOException: Unable to create saw session. Please verify the server connection” and entire report needs to redesign for that using different security approach.
• Sometime it will be seen that until the Results tab returns the values if you bring the column from presentation area to criteria it will not reflect and sounds like column not added yet .However after results returns come back to Criteria you will see the column added. There are possible synchronization issue which still persists in .5 and .6 version.
• Clicking on Hierarchy column will show the results in left pane while we are in Results tab but same doesn’t exist if we click the column left pane in Criteria tab. This could be possible enhancement req on top on .6 version
• In 10g we can press Control from keyboard against the presentation column and the filter condition pop-up can be appeared automatically but same feature doesn’t exist in 11g .This could be a future and very useful enhancement request.
• In 11g .6 version has some issue with the Saved Filter post up-gradation and clicking on that filter view doesn’t pop-up the filter criteria and even the view doesn’t display anything in Dashboard page if we clicked it. However building the Saved filter from scratch resolves the problem. So issue there in catalog copy post .6 up-gradations.
• Sorting issues are there for charts and on measure while using RANK order
• In some of our Charts we have seen there is display issue in IE8/9 and Chrome but not in Mozilla Firefox after up-gradation . However re-creating or building the same using IE8/9 browser fixes all the display issues and it is working perfectly fine.
• In one of our request we have found the partial data  issue/mismatch with Combined request with Union . After digging into the details it has been found that the issue is due to a calculated column in pivot section (whereas the same view didn’t have any calculated column in 10g !!) .The issue is bit strange . Deleting the unnecessary calculated columns/ or recreating the same view from scratch caused the issue fixed.
• Couple of the iBots not properly up-graded by UA and cause Bad XML instance error while executing the same. Even those iBots are not editable and can’t be saved during the XLM error. Support bug opened for that but not sure whether it has been fixed in .6 yet.
  This thread will be updated frequently to add more and more defects observed and the progress/resolution for it .
  So stay tuned
  Also just keep eye on OBIEE 11.1.1.6.1 and 11.1.1.6.2 patches and the related bug fixes to be up-to-date !

 

Performance Tuning and OBIEE 10/11g

Hello friends, after long time , I am again back on track … I was quite busy with couple of my mandatory schedules for last couple of weeks!

So today my topic is what are the Performance tuning key measures useful while doing report Performance testing. There are lots and I just tried to pull most of them and cover the highlights which would be very helpful while doing the Report Performance testing. Actually this could be separated across several areas like sometime it would be from DB perspective, sometime Environment parameters and sometime it would be the Repository design perspective. However the target objective is same but we need to work well to understand the performance bottleneck from which angles! This will definitely come with the experience and the different challenging environment and every places different rules needs to be applied.

Database Environment Framework:

• RAC/Cluster / Grid based in NAS and SAN storage – This is recommended in Enterprise Architecture Platform with robust and performance resilient framework.
• Exadata / Greenplum Architecture – For high performance and high throughput the database Architecture should be robust and especially when there lot of in memory operations intended for better performance especially for transactional analysis.
• Memory SGA/PGA/Buffer Cache/ Temp, Undo, Redo tablespaces should be optimized using the best practice guided suitable for the underlying hardware.
• 64 bit Processor (Multicore- Parallel server) and hyper-thread architecture required for better performance on CPU based calculations

Database Tuning Aspects:

• Bitmap Index / Unique Index (lookup Explain Plan for less Query Cost and Index required suitable for your scenario …typically for all the join keys involved in Dimensional Star modeling)
• Partitioning is very important and key areas to get most effective performance benefit as most of the analysis involve the time dimension.
• Gather Statistics or analyze 30% sample of table at-least for Cost Based Optimizer to use, otherwise Rule Based Optimizer will be used . Oracle recommendation to use DBMS_STATS.AUTO_SAMPLE_SIZE for fastest gathering of stats.
• DB Compression significantly reduces DB block read and enhance performance
• De-normalization required rather Normalized Snowflakes
• Parallel query(DB Environment parameter) to get benefit of report accessed on partitioned data leveraging the parallel CPU processing speeds
• Faster Aggregation – enable Oracle DB Star Transformation (Bitmap join Indexes)

Tuning OBIEE Environment :

• Multinode Clustering – Horizontal/Vertical scale-out in terms of multiple Admin and Managed Server in Weblogic domain.
• Leveraging BI Server Caching to get most benefits out of the Cached queries and return the same result without hitting the database multiple times.
• Switch off Usage Tracking to avoid extra DB operations running against each query.
• Tuning WLS Param / JVM memory parameters

RPD:

• Remove Snowflake across dimensions and create the Foreign Key for each Dim into Fact to create Star model
• Bitmap Index for all Foreign Key columns (for Summary reports) and Bitmap Join Index (lowest granularity based query for detailed data)
• NULL and NOT Null column in sync with RPD and Database to avoid full outer join with NVL
• Number of Elements in OBIEE hierarchy definition to determine efficiency of Aggregated table
• Fragmentation specification wherever required to logically hit different LTS based on fragmented data value sets
• Limit the number of Initialization blocks to avoid the login performance degradation. However this feature improved in 11g to allow the database query fired once when that corresponding Values referred by Init block hitted.
• Optimize setting of some NQSConfig.INI parameters (SORT_MEMORY_SIZE,SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE,VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE)
• Setting the query limit for a certain number of records and certain time window helps performance improvement for long running Ad-hoc analysis.
• Limit the Concurrent user access by setting additional parameters
• Number of DB connection to open settings in connection pool
• Turn off higher Query log level to avoid File system IO based operations and performance degradation.
• Manage optimally some key values like MAX_SESSION_LIMIT (to specify how long DB connections remain open with the accessed session), SERVER_THREAD_RANGE , DB_GATEWAY_THREAD_RANGE (DB and Server execution threaded execution)

Catalog:

########

• Charting thread and Queue related parameters amendment (MaxQueue, MaxThreads)
• Cache related tunable parameters:

<!– Remove from the cache everything older than N minutes –>

<MaxAgeMinutes>240</MaxAgeMinutes>

<MaxLastAccessedSeconds>14400</MaxLastAccessedSeconds>

<MaxEntries>10000</MaxEntries>

<!– AbsoluteMaxEntries is the enforced maximum number of entries. When this maximum is reached –>

<!– subsequent queries will fail until the maximum is no longer exceeded. –>

<AbsoluteMaxEntries>20000</AbsoluteMaxEntries>

<!– CruiseEntries is amount of entries the OracleBI Presentation server tries to maintain in its cache. –>

<CruiseEntries>3000</CruiseEntries>

<!– Forces the cache to attempt to remove an old entry when MaxEntries is exceeded. –>

<ForceLRU>true</ForceLRU>

<!– Cleanup this cache every N minutes. –>

<CleanupFrequencyMinutes>

Design:

• Aggregated Tables /Mviews – Follow this approach if there are huge volume of data in detail fact table. Multi-level aggregated table based design return best results.
• Typically the biggest gains for “Detail” reports performance is :

  •Star Transformation

  •Bitmap Join Indexes

  •Partitioning

• The biggest gains for “Summary” reports:

  •Gathering Stats 30%

  •Aggregation

  •Star Transformation

  •Partitioning

 

OBIEE 11g Up-Gradation – RPD Gotchas and Glitches

Objective of this thread is to walk through across several issues found in RPD post Up-gradation from 10g to 11g. Let’s first start with OBIEE 11g Warnings / Errors and then I quickly moved to other areas to explore other glitches …. Idea is to bring a valuable thread for target audience to include important topics rather the conventional one found over several other fellow Bloggers post !

Nice Oracle documentation is there to detail out the step by step up-gradation process…

http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/fmw/bi/bi11115/upgrade/upgrade_to_11g.htm

Pretty simple huh?? Yes …. Until you know the unknown and erratic issues on your way soon … So hold your seat belt tight to fly across the unknown territory with several assumptions/concerns/endless issues/unpredictable behaviors and finally achieving the goal …successful Up-gradation :)

Repository Up-Gradation Issues

1)      There are lots of unusual warnings have been observed after up-grading the RPD to 11g version. Some of them are really nonsense. However as Oracle said that strong consistency checker is involved in the whole process to mitigate the future risk of enhancement resulting these number of warnings. Details of the warnings could be found at 11g Up-grade planning ref doc:

Refer to section: 1.2.1.1 Enhanced Repository Consistency Checking

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E21764_01/bi.1111/e16452/bi_plan.htm

Each warning has some specific number by which we can call them. Let’s see each of them one by one:

A)     Warnings [39028] 

Resolution: Call interface checked by consistency checker to see how compatible it is with the underlying database specification and how much it is aligned with database features defined in repository. Typically we have seen after up-gradation the features retains what is in 10g. In that case, solution is to make it Default database feature against each Physical layer database. That will remove the warnings however make sure that none of your overriding database features will cause performance concern. Some of them in 10g which could be done to get performance benefit in terms of better utilization of joins. So be careful before making them default and if that is mandatory to gain the similar performance benefits then that needs to be retained even if that will throw warnings irrespective of Oracle’s recommendation.

B)      Warnings [39055]/[39054]

Resolution: Typically the join missing between the mentioned Logical Dimension and Facts. Adding the extra join will resolve your problem. Make sure it is necessary and could not cause impact in other areas or otherwise ignore if you are not going to extract the projects. It is not really mandatory to fix these warnings. We remove these warnings to get some lesser counts.

Out of this warning context, in terms of join conditions I have experienced issues with Physical layer join problems post up-gradation. Some of my join conditions were invalid and this has been observed particularly in Usage Tracking physical database. However the error it will throw is really not comprehensible and hence I removed the invalid physical joins and add them back and did similar for logical joins too. This might be one-off incident but that is true for me.

C)      Warnings [39057]

Resolution: The reason of this warning as per my analysis is , whenever you add inner joins/outer joins with logical tables in the single logical table source you definitely specify the join condition with attributes and it is not a mandate to map those logical columns with the column mapping. But this warning expects attributes participated in the join conditions should be part of the column mapping. Necessarily older designs either 7.8.5 or 10.1.3.4, it is not mandatory to be those columns in the column mapping. But here at-least the join condition column needs to be in the column mapping. I don’t know the rationale behind this extra check and I don’t know the other possible solutions to remove these warnings. But the above mentioned approach helpful for me and I am sure if you are unlucky enough but want to fix these warnings then you might have to do a lot of hard-work as one of our repository we fix around 550 of this kind of warnings … Really annoying …! Without much business or design benefit. Good luck

D)     Warnings [39059]

Resolution: Most unwanted and most confusing and problematic warnings. This warning emphasis some best practices to be adhered. Typically we have seen some snow-flaking across dimensions and leveling those dimensions in different level of hierarchy across logical table source resulting these problems. You seem to hit this problem due to incorrect and un-orthodox content aggregation leveling. However there might be several other angles and reasons too.As in the document it specified that  ”a new consistency check warning (39059) highlights when a fact logical table source joins to a lower-level dimension logical table source, resulting in a potentially invalid join. If you get a 39059 warning after upgrade, verify that the join is as intended and does not result in incorrect double counting.”

Fixing those warnings is really a tedious jobs specially when my RPD already build in 7.8.5, migrated to 10g and then 11g as lot of developers mind-blowing design already enriched the RPD a lot and while you don’t know the business reason there is no point of fixing those warnings as this caused the design changes in greater aspects and this is quite impossible if you are old enough with your RPD. Fixing this warning is good for health of the RPD for new development & indeed bad for developers but bit difficult and quite risky for older data models. For our case we left ~1500 warnings in our Repository as it is as we are not sure how much the data impact will be there in our ~650+ reports.As per Oracle “ If the join is as intended, then ignore the 39059 warning”

 Last but not the least

Apart from those warnings all errors should be fixed to have a Consistent repository and essentially you need to note that while there are 3 errors in repository your warnings count could be say 20 but after fixing those errors (which you must have to do) count can increase to 600 .Sound strange.. ! Really not , as when Consistency checker encounter error it skips showing the warnings and insist you to fix the errors before it proceed with further level of checks ! So best of luck. One more things don’t worry much about the warnings … even if there are your repository is consistent and none of the reports (apart from the complex one in catalog specially the combined requests) will show incorrect results. We have experienced this and you can easy to go ahead with warnings …. Let’s keep the life simple …. Now lets see what Oracle made for us to lead simple life …

Essentially Oracle has faced lot of questions with this mind-blowing checker (!) (yes I mean it) and they release a patch for OBIEE 11g (11.1.1.3) to hide those warnings(not errors) but not yet for 11.1.1.5. They are yet to fix this in future version 11.1.1.6, if any. See Oracle Doc ID 1365964.1 [How to Hide Selected Consistency Check Warnings in BIEE 11G]

Patch 11810367

As of when I am writing this thread for BIEE 11.1.1.5 Development teams are working on a Patch for BIEE 11.1.1.5. Please open an SR with BIEE Support to check if the Patch is available for your platform or not. This issue will be fixed in BIEE 11.1.1.6.

2)      During up-gradation the Upgrade Assistant migrate the Security groups / roles and users from Repository to Weblogic security policy store and hence it is the best practice to up-grade the repository at-least irrespective of whether you upgrade the catalog at all. But if you think of to up-grade the catalog first then you will definitely lose all the Catalog groups and permissions setup inside your Catalog objects even if you up-grade the RPD next time. So upgrade either RPD or RPD and Catalog both and never Catalog alone.  You will hit a lot of unforeseen behavior post up-gradation with catalog privileges as it has been observed that the permissions are not propagated properly in the online catalog.

3)      Job Manager “Administrator” Password is not upgraded with RPD upgrade .It still retains the password of source RPD and you need to change it manually.

4)      Usage Tracking (S_NQ_ACCT) and Scheduling objects (S_NQ_) moved from the target database area to RCU schema and the object definition itself changed like new column added and several column types changed. So ideally it is better to copy the 11g provided Usage tracking RPD layers and merge it with your upgraded RPD .However in that case all the Usage Tracking customization needs to be properly applied too.

5)      “Act As Proxy User” functionality no more going to work with Administrator while this user is part of Weblogic Default Authenticator scheme. Ideally this Administrator user-created by default in every Weblogic Default authentication scheme as it is automatically migrated from RPD to WLS security policy. Considering your RPD has authentication scheme set to LDAP in that scenario “ACT As” is no going to work with “Administrator” as dual switching of mixed Authentication scheme not possible (in this case one is WLS authentication and another is RPD LDAP authentication).So any of the LDAP user could Act as proxy users for other LDAP users and thus authentication scheme belongs to one area only. Otherwise you will see that Act As will not populated the list of proxy users and the list will be NULL or blank.

Another way will be to define the LDAP in Weblogic itself and maintain the Administrator user in the LDAP tree so that you can use Administrator to ACT AS proxy for other LDAP users.

So either all should be LDAP of Weblogic Default Authenticator or LDAP of RPD only at a time.

6)      Post upgrade Repository could not be opened online using the Administrator password .Resolution is perform the refresh GUID activities. You will get below error in log file:

[nQSError: 13041] The GUID of user ‘Administrator’ does not match user reference GUID at the repository. Please ask the administrator to delete the old user reference at the repository and login again. The process is explained under Oracle Doc ID 1265802.1. There might be several blog in the net which already listed down the steps.

7)      In our implementation we have seen that upgraded 11g repository crashes the environment while user try to log in .However this behavior not observed for all users. Digging into details our finding is that “Log Level” value populated from external table authorization should not be NULL otherwise 11g repository will crash your environment. So make sure the loglevel field must be updated at-least with some numeric value.

8)      While Saving Online RPD Changes in the Administrator Tool of OBIEE 11g Throws “[nQSError: 37005] Transaction update failed.” This is an Unpublished bug 9884975 – 11g admin tool receives nqserror: 37005 when saving online rpd changes

9)      During check-in and saving the repository we have encountered getting error : [46036] internal assertion: condition m_lock.isacquired() . For both 8) and 9) apply Patch 12909840

10)      Issue exist with Presentation column level security default access and it is not working properly with the PROJECT INACCESSIBLE COLUMN is NULL settings of NQSCONFIG.INI.Get the patch from Oracle to get rid of this issue.

11)      I have seen several connection related problem from RPD to database and most of the errors are Unable to connect the database. This happens due to Oracle Native OCI call and Middleware Native OCI conflict. As a best practice I usually follow below rule:

Copy the same tnsnames.ora across Oracle Home and Middleware home .Then create 3 variables in Windows : ORACLE_HOME , BI_ORACLE_HOME , ORACLE_BI_HOME as Middleware Home directory and then ORACLE_INSTANCE as Middleware instance directory . Bounce all services and you will be clean with any connection.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope above information is helpful for your 10g -) 11g Up-gradation process . Then don’t forget to rate this thread as above with Stars !

Stay tuned for more update on Enviroment/Configuration Issues and BI Catalog Issues ….

Latest update for those available at: https://debaatobiee.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/obiee-11g-up-gradation-issueschallenges-11-1-1-5-and-6-too/

Cheers , DxP

 

2011 in Review of my Blog – An excellent presentation summary from WordPress ..I loved it!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 160,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 7 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

 

Migration of the Security Stores – OBIEE11g

In my recent up-gradation projects after doing the Up-gradation in Dev Environment it is a obvious question that how I get my security setup migrated to say Test environment . One easy way to do this is just up-grade your Test env and during the up-grade process your user/group list will be automatically updated to the security store of 11g and will be automatically done by Upgrade assistant behind the scene. However this is a work around but this process is not the Oracle suggested method for security policy store migration.

The actual process to do this is using the Migration assistant under Security realm of  Weblogic Console. See below image . Go to Export tab and put any directory name where you want the exported copy like : D:\Share\Security …

The .dat file list would be like below:

Now once you get this list click on Import button of the target environment (say. Test) and simply click the update button . You will see all list of users and groups will be automatically migrated from Dev to Test .

Cheers…

 

OBIEE 11g – orthodox De-install Process

Most of the common question is how to Install OBIEE 11g(11.1.1.5) but a bit un-common question is how to De-install until and unless you are facing problem with current installation process . Here are the steps at high level (not screenshot by screenshot) which will perform the orthodox De-install process. As the selection is quite straightforward hence I am skipping the screenshot’s part. There are several blog where you can find the screenshot to help you out.

Briefly, I had the full installation with Weblogic , RCU , Oracle in some path in Windows Server(2008,R2, 64 bit) and after De-installation I want to continue using the same path so all the De-install process should be very clean so that it will not leave any footprints of previous installation in any of the places for a successful installation once again.

Here you go …

• Stop all running processes for Admin and Managed servers including BI components services. Stop all the processes, if any, created during service process creation for e.g. Windows Process.
• Remove the Weblogic Server using the Un-installation wizard under Control Panel.
• Perform De-install from Oracle Business Intelligence -) De-install option of Program menu
• Drop the RCU schemas using the RCU batch file -) Drop option
• Manually remove the RCU Tablespace DBF file (to have a clean new RCU schema) . In my case I didn’t remove the DBF file as the Database server is under DBA’s control .Hence, to be safer side I re-create the RCU during the fresh installation process under different tablespace. This will make sure nothing is going to messed up with your previous installation … See below image:

• De-install Middleware Oracle home (traverse to ..\[MIDDLEWARE_HOME]\Oracle_BI\oui\bin\ and execute below from command line: setup.exe -deinstall)
• De-install the Middleware common Oracle Home  (traverse to ..\[MIDDLEWARE_HOME]\oracle_common\oui\bin\ and execute below from command line: setup.exe -deinstall –jreLoc  ..\[MIDDLEWARE_HOME]\Oracle_BI1\jdk)
• Remove the Middleware Home directory with all contents forcefully,if reqd.
• Remove the environment variable pointing to earlier locations and the relevant paths if any. This is Important!
• Re-boot the entire server.
• Delete the Oracle common keys , if any, from registry. This is Important ! Most of the common problem lies here . So in my case I follow the process of finding my Middleware Home path from Registry and delete all relevant Keys and values . Be careful while playing with registry
• Remove the windows service process key from registry , if any
• As in my case I don’t need to De-install my Oracle Client/DB Home hence I skip the process as I going to re-use the same Oracle Home in the next installation time.So if you are going to do the same probably you can skip De-installing your Oracle Client/DB home.

Thats it , Welldone! until you have performed the clean installation once again …..:)

 

Happy New Year 2012 to All …

Bonjour et bonne année 2012 …

The new journey begins as we landed to New year 2012… Forgetting the old torn memories as it should be better to be in oblivion …. Keep the memories of delightful times and live in each day now as it is to be spent…. !  It is an immense pleasure to let you know my best New year wishes for you … The people … my near and dear ones , my enemy , my followers (Twitters et all) , my critics , my seniors and beloved juniors , finally them whom I don’t know when they silently came to my blog and escape … Hope for all of them it will be a very good year ahead of you both personally and professionally.

Thank you all who encouraged me to carry on my blog and hopefully GOD & you all bless me and it will be continued in greater extent in this year and I hope my threads someway,  sometime  help you !

last but not the least a Season Greetings Card for all of you… Smile

Cheers …. and bonne santé …. !

Yours ,

Debashis (DxP)

See you soon with some new geeks and hope you will enjoy … Till then …

 

OBIEE 11g Graphical Color Scheme like 10g

Salut à tous…. Joyeux Noël…. Wish you Merry X-Mas and good time with your near and dear ones … So I am back here with some new geeks … Excuse me if somebody already know it !… and please let other to learn …. !

OBIEE 11g Graph colors are quite jazzy comparing to 10g… this is one of the recent feedback we received from clients in our post up-gradation review of codes .So one of the obvious requirement came into picture is that, how do we retain the 1og Graphical color schemes in 11g. This could be easily done by playing across the XML codes for color definition .

Lets do it …

As you might already be aware of that 10g Color contents (hex-codes) definition are stored in the palette.cxml file. So what you need to do is only copying the color Hexcodes from 10g files and put those under the file located : “..\Middleware\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\web\msgdb\s_blafp\viewui\chart\dvt-graph-skin.xml” having the below sample syntax  (do the same for other style folders like s_FusionFX  if you need it)

So below content copied to the above xml and put this between the first and last tag of  SeriesSlice :

<SeriesItems>
<Series id=”0″ color=”#A4D5F9″ borderColor=”#A4D5F9″/>
<Series id=”1″ color=”#5592D0″ borderColor=”#5592D0″/>
<Series id=”2″ color=”#EFD084″ borderColor=”#EFD084″/>
<Series id=”3″ color=”#687FA1″ borderColor=”#687FA1″/>
<Series id=”4″ color=”#CFC4E5″ borderColor=”#CFC4E5″/>
<Series id=”5″ color=”#8D9EB7″ borderColor=”#8D9EB7″/>
<Series id=”6″ color=”#5898AA” borderColor=”#5898AA”/>
<Series id=”7″ color=”#CEE4EA” borderColor=”#CEE4EA”/>
<Series id=”8″ color=”#90B5D1″ borderColor=”#90B5D1″/>
<Series id=”9″ color=”#F6E795″ borderColor=”#F6E795″/>
<Series id=”10″ color=”#C7C1C1″ borderColor=”#C7C1C1″/>
<Series id=”11″ color=”#85A8EE” borderColor=”#85A8EE”/>
</SeriesItems>

Make sure all the services restarted before the change to be effective.

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See below difference before applying the XML(11g Original) and after applying (aligned with 10g color).

N.B:- It has been observed that though the 10g color scheme applied for 11g but it is not at per with existing 10g colors and there are slight deviations in terms of colors which is not eye-catching but somehow not matching exactly due to the difference of the rendering engine of 10g and 11g.

A worth to note is that, in our implementation we have seen that in several charts the color change is not propagated and hence it seems that the color scheme is not applied properly as per the defined XML. However if you edit the chart and remove any measure and then drag the same measure again we see that the color starts changing as per XML . The behavior seems to be unpredictable for us. Assumption is that ,it might happened due to some internal cache specially for the chart engine here.  But the problem is not observed for any new reports created in answers in 11g and it starts reflecting the new colors scheme from very beginning.