OBIEE 11g 11.1.1.6.8 Patch Released

Oracle has released the 11.1.1.6.8 patch set and its available for download as of Feb 20th 2013.

Following is a list of bugs that were resolved in this patch (For BI component, patch #6 of 7 total):


11824623: NLS:FR:DOUBLE PERCENT SIGN AND WRONG DATA IN PIVOT TABLE ON FRENCH LOCALE
13065019: USAGE TRACKING ISSUE AFTER APPLYING PATCH 12925206- QUERY NOT INSERTED IN LOG
13802667: COMMA DELIMITED CSV FORMAT FOR AGENTS/IBOTS.
13949566: MASTER DETAIL VIEW INTERACTION CONTEXT IS LOST
14262536: OBIEE SSL DOES NOT WORK FOR ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE/ACTION LINK
14496280: OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0 CREATING HUGE CORE DUMP FILES
14509257: UNWANTED EXPANDATION OF BACKGROUND OF GAUGE CHART/BULB
14532515: SINGLE ACTION LINK POPUP ISSUE
14597361: OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2: UNABLE TO DELETE HEADER FROM NEWLY ADDED COMPOUND LAYOUT
14781767: QA: PROMPTS: RUNTIME PROMPTS IS NOT WORKING IN FIREFOX 16
14832439: BLOCKING ANALYSES BASED ON CRITERIA NOT WORKING ON RESULTS TAB
14832723: BLOCKING ANALYSES IS BROKEN AFTER SAVNG AND REOPENING THE ANALYSIS
15856175: NO METADATA AUTOSAVE IN NQSMODIFYMETADATA AND NQSIMPORTMETADATA PROCEDURES
15879674: WHEN A VALUE WITH THE '&' SIGN IS CHOSEN, SCORECARD WATCHLIST RESULTS ARE NOT BE
15886643: QA: CALC ITEM DISPLAY 0 OR NAN IN TABLE IF EDIT MEASURE FORMULA, EXCLUDED COL,
15891959: PRESENTATION SERVER CRASH
15899791: DRILLDOWN ADDS FILTER FOR THE EMPTY STRING ALTHOUGH THE VALUE IS NULL OR SPACES
15905237: CUSTOM COLUMN HEADING DOES NOT REFLECT IN THE FILTERS VIEW
15908937: OBIEE AUTHENTICATION PROCESS CHANGED AFTER UPGRADE FROM 11.1.1.6.0 TO 11.1.1.6.4
15917103: DISABLED LTS DURING AFTER UPGRADE FROM OBIEE 10 TO OBIEE 11 CANNOT BE ENABLED
15934601: NQSERROR22032 WHEN SORT ON COMBINED RESULTS BASED ON UNIONS,INTERSECT,MINUS
15934766: BIPS FAILS TO START WITH DNSUTILS::DNSNAMELOOKUPFAILED
15954886: GCMAP/GCWAP: ERROR IN CAMPAIGN LOADS AND LAUNCHES
15958318: 11.1.1.6.5 -EXPORT TO EXCEL/PDF DISPLAYING VIEW DISPLAY ERROR-LENGTH URL EXCEEDS
15961449: REQUEST VAR DEFAULT VALUE SET BY REPOSITORY VARIABLE DOES NOT WORK CORRECTLY
15963008: DIFFERENT RESULTS ARE SHOWN WHEN ACTION LINKS ARE USED WITH CONDITION
15966182: CSV FORMAT OF REPORT AND AGENT DELIVERED REPORT ARE NOT THE SAME OUTPUT
15998971: QA:PINNED KPI KEEPS SPINNING WHEN OPENING A KPI WATCHLIST
16059256: SAWSERVER MAY ALLOCATE VERY LARGE ALLOCATION WITH ODBC ERROR
16169478: ADMIN TOOL AND JOB MANAGER VERSION NOT UPDATED AFTER APPLYING 11.1.1.6.8 PATCHES
16219059: JOB MANAGER GETTING [NQSERROR: 86015] [NQSERROR: 77027] A FATAL ERROR OCCURRED

OBIEE 11g Configuration, log and script file locations

Although its best to configure BI using Fusion Middleware Control (also referred to as enterprise manager) or Fusion Middleware Control MBean Browser, yet some of the setting can be updated through text files only.

A warning to admins, each BI host has its own set of configuration files for the components that are deployedon that host. So any changes to one host, should also be made to all other hosts, this is specially true for clustered environments.


BI Configuration files:

1. NQSConfig.INI
and
logconfig.xml

\Middlewarehome\instances\instance1\config\OracleBIServerComponent\coreapplication_obis1

2. instanceconfig.xml

\instances\instance1\config\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1

3. ClusterConfig.xml
ccslogging.xml

\instances\instance1\config\OracleBIApplication\coreapplication

4. instanceconfig.xml     (Second instanceconfig.xml dedicated file for BI Scheduler)
\instances\instance1\config\OracleBISchedulerComponent\coreapplication_obisch1

5. config.xml
logging_config.xml
\instances\instance1\config\OracleBIJavaHostComponent\coreapplication_obijh1

6. bridgeconfig.properties (For BI Persentation services Plug-in)

\Middlewarehome\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\config\fmwconfig\biinstances\coreapplication

7. opmn.xml   (OPMN Config file)
/Middlewarehome/instance/instance1/config/OPMN/opmn/opmn.xml
(It contains the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH values for the system components and the port number for OPMN and optional SSL configuration.)

8. boot.properties
/Middlewarehome/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/servers/[managed_server]/security


Script files:

1. startNodeManager.sh
(Must be started to allow Managed Server to be started from Weblogic console)
/Middlewarehome/wlserver_10.3/server/bin/startNodeManager.sh

2. opmnctl(Command line tool to start BI services)
/Middlewarehome/instance/instance1/bin
-- OPMN can be used to automatically start BI on linux system. To do that following commands must be included in opmn startup script:

/Middlewarehome/instance/instance1/bin ./opmnctl startall

3. startWebLogic.sh(Script to start Weblogic server)
/Middlewarehome/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/bin.

./startManagedWebLogic.sh
/Middelwarehome/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/bin
To start Managed Server - But this typically can be started from Webogic Console after weblogic server is in running mode.

./startManagedWebLogic.sh bi_server1 http://administration_server_host_name:7001

Log Files:

1. Admin Server (Or weblogic server issues)
\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\servers\AdminServer\logs

2. Managed Server
\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\servers\bi_server1\logs\

3. BI Server
\Middlewarehome\instance\instance1\diagnostics\logs\OracleBIServerComponent\coreapplication_obis1

4. BI Persentation Server:
\Middlewarehome\instance\instance1\diagnostics\logs\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1

Modifying OBIEE 11g configuration settings

OBIEE 11g has miltiple configuration files and stored redundantly in different location. Changing configurations manually through text editor can be challenging, and admins have to take care that setting are updated and in sync in all the locations. This is even worse if environment is set to be clustered or has redundancy built in.

A better way to manage configuration is through one of the following two tools:

- Fusion Middleware Control - Also called enterprise manager - this is a web based tool that allows OBIEE 11g monitoring and configuration of basic components, like cache, RPD deployment etc. Tool can be accessed using following URL:

http://localhost:7001/em

- Fusion Middleware Control MBean Browser - This is much advanced tool for modifying OBIEE server settings. It internally takes care of multiple instances of config files in diferent directories and redundant servers.

The Mbean Browser can be accessed from within the Fusion Middleware Control, by navigating as below:

Weblogic Domain > bifoundation_domain > AdminServer > Weblogic Server drop down > System Mbean Browser

To start modifying, first step would be to take an exclusive lock on settings by following link:

Application Defined MBean > oracle.biee.admin > Domain:bifoundation_domain > BIDomain > BiDomain > Operations > lock > invoke

After that, admins can make any necessary changes that are required, and hit 'Apply'. After all changes have been applied, it required to select Commit from same screen where lock was acquired. Fortunately we also have rollback option, incase we want to revert at last minute.

Unexplained intermittent error in OBIEE UAT server only

We made few RPD changes and code was migrated to UAT server. Intermittently, in UAT, we were getting error on report side:

State: HY000. Code: 10058. [NQODBC] [SQL_STATE: HY000] [nQSError: 10058] A general error has occurred. [nQSError: 27005] Unresolved column: "Dim - Derivative"."Derivative ID". (HY000)

As a work around, we would clear the cache, delete cookies, close browser completely and try again. This time error was gone. The error kept coming back next day, and we could also recreate the issue just be repeating steps for work around.

I asked admin team to look at it, and we found that this was happening due to clustered environment in UAT. Probably one of the server was still pointing to old RPD.

Timestamp fields in database not showing in SQL Developer

The new GUI for SQL developer from Oracle, does not seem to show "time" value for a timestamp field when doing a select statement. I tried setting options, but did not help. Till I get a real solution, here is a workaround:

select to_char(calendar_date,'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS')) from W_Day_D

OBIEE - How to prevent automatic execution of reports in dashbaord

The ability to disable auto execution of reports is missing in BI. Neither it is not available in OBIEE 10g, nor in OBIEE 11g (up to 11.1.1.6.7 version). Some experts are saying its planned to be available in OBIEE 11.1.1.7 version. Going by number and speed of releases at one release a month, with currently 11.1.1.6.7, we should expect release of 11.1.1.7 within three month, i.e. May 2013.

In the mean time, here are few work around, if this cannot absolutely wait, or you don't plan to upgrade to new version in this time frame:

1. Use Prompts tab in Answers to create a prompt on a field. When this report is run on the dashboard, it will wait for the prompt to be selected, before execution will start. It may be difficult to integrate this with existing dashboard prompts though.

2. Another method is to default dashboard prompt to a dummy value, something like 'Select Month' etc, which will fetch 'No Results' unless users select an actual month. But this makes a prompt to be selected mandatory, and cant be left blank.

3. Last option that I can think of is to create an empty dashboard with just prompts and a basic answers report with out put as text field only. Ask users to select prompt values here, and make available a navigation link to actual dashboard. This way the values can pass either if the prompt has a scope set to "Dashboard", or through "guided navigation", as long as target dashboard has same set of filters.

Good luck.

OBIEE 10g Error from Dashboard layout

We had a requirement where we had hidden two tabs on a dashboard in development. When we requested to migrate dashboard layout to testing environment, we were getting error as below:

Dashboard Display Error
	Assertion failure: pRoot at line 107 of /net/sdchs20n529/vol1/users/anabuild/views/nightly/Tue/101341/RH_Linux/vobs/090414.1900/analytics_web/main/project/webxml/xmldocument.cpp   Error Details (javascript:void(null)) Error Codes: OQ78YWIW

Turns out, we are hitting a OBIEE known bug. When administrator logged in, the error went away, but the dashbaord were not hidden like we had expected. There are two work arounds for this:

1. Hide the tabs manually in Integration/UAT instead of moving the dashboard layout.
2. When moving the layout, try to modify the permissions of dashboard layout object, not sure it will work though.