Selective caching BI Server

While there are several methods available in BI to clear the cache, I did want to write about selective caching. If your repository has report coming directly from the EBS or other real time data sources, then you want to make sure that caching for those specific tables is completely disabled, otherwise, you will not reap the benefit of connecting to real time sources.

To do so, open table properties in physical layer:

Check 'Override Source Table Caching Properties' (if it is an alias table)
Uncheck 'Cacheable'

Or to optimize, you can leave it Cacheable, but set cache persistence time to 1 hour.

Now this will fix the BI Server cache problem, however there still is an BI presentation level cache (and Internet Explorer cache, laotop cache blah blah blah....). For BI presentation level cache, it is typically set to an hour at server level for all reports, and it is not recommended to reduce it. The work around for this would be to inform users to use the 'refresh' link on the dashboards, which bypasses the BI presentation level cache.

For as to IE level cache, you will have to clear it yourself, it it appears to apply!!

Cache Purge Bug

If you want to purge cache for specific tables during the day, oracle has a utility SAPURGECACHEBYTABLE. However apparently it does not work with many versions of OBIEE. Refer to the bug:

The Bug 6906535 - SAPURGECACHEBYDATABASE AND SAPURGECACHEBYTABLE NOT WORKING IN 10.1.3.4.0 [ID 956345.1]