OBIEE Blog

Still there’s nothing from Oracle in regards to official OBIEE certification. Latest official info is here: http://blogs.oracle.com/certification/2008/09/obiee_certification.html

My personal opinion is that although a certification program would be nice, but not by any means necessary. I see several major problems with Oracle’s OBIEE certification:

a) possible requirement for compulsory training at Oracle University before taking certification – while taking training is not a bad idea in itself, financial issues arise. Who’s going to cover costs of this training? I’m sure that many people wouldn’t get reimbursed by  their employers at this economy.  Should they be paying by themselves? I’m sure that shelling out thousands of dollars out-of-pocket isn’t an attractive option for many people.  My last argument is that some people don’t really need (or feel that they need) to take training in order to pass the qualification exam.

b) Passing the majority of certifications is rarely requiring more than just answering multiple-choice questions. So in reality, it’s just about how well someone answers the questions, not the level of knowledge / proficiency with the technology. Of course, someone who’s adept at OBIEE would have no problems whatsoever answering the questions, but so is someone who just crammed the documentation well. There’s no way objectively distinguishing between them if they both passed the exam. I’m not even talking about brain dumps where one can get all the questions.

To be successful, the certification should involve some lab work. It should be accessible to anyone who could prove OBIEE proficiency (maybe with some preliminary test). And it shouldn’t be burdensome, Oracle shouldn’t use the certification as a revenue maker, but instead focus on building relationships and trust between consultants / developers and clients.

It always amazes me how some people don’t bother doing simple research before asking question on OTN. I’m sure that sometimes they just don’t have time to explore the issue by themselves or maybe they don’t know where they should look for information. Questions in one sentence like “My BI Server isn’t starting” or “I have ODBC error” without detailed description pop-up all the time on OTN. I’m a huge fan of metalink (i’m using metalink 3) – I’ve been able to locate some answers always instantly especially before OTN has become such a useful place as it’s now. Filing a service request is a sure way to at least get to the cause of the problem. Of course many times you would hit a BUG or a ENHANCEMENT REQUEST but at least you would know that it’s not your fault.  Through trial and error I’ve compiled a list of best practices that will help you to maximize your Oracle Support experience. Enjoy my SR tutorial:

Most important pre-SR exercise – run a simple search in Metalink / OTN to make sure that this issue haven’t been identified yet – there’s nothing worse than going through days of support e-mail back and forth and then receiving an e-mail that it’s a well-known bug / feature.

1. Make sure to give as detailed description of the problem as possible. Try to describe circumstances when it happens. If you have a question about functionality, be specific about your needs and what you are trying to achieve. If your description is very long – I suggest you type it in word and attach along with the rest of your SR.

2. Take screen shots of the error screens. Circle the problematic area or error message to help support analyst to pinpoint the problem.

3. Put your RPD, web catalog, screen shots into 1 archive. Attach lines from relevant log files (not the whole thing, but extracts). And attach it to the SR. Don’t forget to give your RPD’s admin password.I realized that most of the time, support would request those anyway, so you can be proactive about it. Why shouldn’t you do it now, rather than wait for them to ask you to submit those.

4. Be patient. You SR is important, but sometimes analysts get busy with high-priority tickets. Don’t escalate if nobody is replying within 1 day.  My experience shows that people want to help – it’s just maybe they’re taking their time to counsel with someone else and that’s the reason of the hold-up.

5. Be courteous. If there’s an update or request for more information – do your diligence and reply right away. If you receive an Oracle survey afterward, take a few minutes and fill it out. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess that can have an impact on someone’s job. If they helped you, why shouldn’t you help out.

Do you have your favourite SR tips? Please share them in the comments.

I think this is an interesting question especially for those who would like to know how BI “thinks”.

The goal is to understand what rule is followed when several fact are at the same content level

Normally the server uses the content level to pick the correct fact table.

The server is looking for the most aggregated source.

First choice is a query in which the grain of the query matches the grain of the content filter.
If there are no sources which match that criteria, it will look to other means to chose.

It looks at how many dimensions are associated with the fact table (size of the content filter), levels of the content filter, number of values from the level definitions multiplied.

I just had a terrible catalog security situation, and while looking for solution stumbled into this bug. I think it’s important, because the error message is confusing and it’s really hard to troubleshoot this sort of problem.

Catalog Manager copy/paste removes correct permissions on Users subfolders, causes error “access denied for user to path..” at OBI login

Applies to:
Business Intelligence Server Administrator – Version: 10.1.3.2 to 10.1.3.4.0 [1900] – Release: 10g to 10g

In OBIEE 10.1.3.4, users are copied from one web catalog A (TEST environment) to another web catalog B (PRODUCTION Environment), using the Catalog Manager. After loading the new web catalog B, users are unable to login into OBI and see the following error:

access denied for user to path /users/…/_portal/dashboard layout.
Error Details
Error Codes: O9XNZMXB

Cause

In the Catalog Manager, when copying users in the catalog manager, permissions are not copied. The users are part of the system folder (i.e Catalog Manager > Users > Properties > Owner Account = System Account) , which is why Catalog Manager does not transfer the permissions.

The behavior was reproduced with 2 copies of Paint web catalog A and B.
Note: Before copying from Web Catalog A, here are the privileges for

a) Users folder – Owner – System Account
Explicit Permission – Presentation server Administrator(full), Everyone(Traverse)

b) Users > Paint Folder – Owner – System Account
Explicit Permission – Paint (change/delete)

c). Users > Paint > _portal folder – Owner – paint
Explicit Permission – paint (change/delete)

After pasting user folder in web catalog B, here are the permissions:
Note how the properties and permissions changed after pasting the user to the following:

a) Users > Paint Folder – Owner – System Account
Explicit Permission – Presentation server Administrator(full), Everyone(Traverse)

b). Users > Paint Folder – Owner – System Account
Explicit Permission – Presentation server Administrator(full), Everyone(Traverse)

Solution
The following has been raised to address a product enhancement request:

BUG 8316638 COPY AND PASTE USERS IN CATALOG MANAGER DOES NOT COPY PERMISSIONS

The current workarounds are:

a). Manually change the permissions on the user_id, _portal and other subfolders in the target web catalog so that they are the same as the source web catalog.

b). Use SAWREPA utility to promote the changes from TEST to PRODUCTION instead. The process works online, so you do not lose any up-time, and it should promote the users permissions correctly too.

Information about SAWREPA is documented in the following:

Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide > Administering the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog > Replicating Presentation Catalogs

Please note that SAWREPA requires that both the PROD and TEST webcatalog were originally developed from the same web catalog. If the PROD webcatalog was created from scratch, it could cause problems with SAWREPA since it relies upon common attributes in both catalogs.

1. Just like everyone else, I got excited about Content Accelerator Framework. Christian Berg posted about it here “OTN: CAF” and Venkat posted about it on his blog as well content accelerator framework. Unfortunately, it’s only going to work with version 10.1.3.4.1 which hasn’t been released yet. It’s a good step forward though, as the developer community has waited for such a tool for quite some time now. I’ve seen numerous service requests on Metalink asking Oracle about such functionality.

The most interesting thing about this sitation is that I was going to post about various issues of maintaining several OBIEE environments on the same day. And on the same day, I got the same assignment – to figure out a better and newer way to parallely run development, issue maintenance fixes (such as adding new users), and keep environments in sync.

2. OBIEE OTN forum has become a very competetive place – frequently questions are answered within minutes. mma1709 (please let me know if that’s ok to state your name), Christian Berg and Naresh Meda have gained Pro Status. Congratulations! Please keep up the good work!

3. OBIEE Job market. Judging from Dice -  it’s down. I’ve been tracking Dice’s posts using OBIEE keyword for a few months now. It’s been declining steadly for past few months (not a big surprise really, since the total job postings fell from 90+k to 48k).  For OBIEE the number went from 300 in fall 2008 to 186 today. Some of the postings are clearly for the same positions (through different vendors). Again, I’m sure that there’s always a project for someone with relevant OBIEE experience and skills, however, I’m sure that it hurts less experienced folks as companies are trying to reduce staff. Also, the situation is decreasing rates as desperation forces some people and companies to work for less. Stability is more important than a higher paycheck these days, so some companies use it as an excuse to lower salary / rate. Moreover, hurting financial sector makes it difficult to start new capital IT projects.  I’m unwilling to predict the future at this time, however, I’d like to say that – if you have the right skills and personality – do not be afraid – this time might be an opportunity.