This is a very encouraging news from John Minkjan’s blog. Also, a positive example on how to be heard (main tip – be polite). Overall, good news, although, the wait has been long.
Gerard Nico is busy populating his OBIEE knowledgebase – is the latest – BIP DAP integration
Summer is approaching and it’s very busy in NYC.
Dear recruiters,
Please don’t ask for people with 15 years of OBIEE experience – OBIEE’s 1st version was officially released on Jan 27th 2007 – http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2007_jan/012907-OBIEE.html UPD: actually, it was available for download throughout 2006 – and many people used it back then (like beta, except it wasn’t). Just wanted to correct myself.
However, to be honest, the grandfather of OBIEE was a product called nQuire Suite (I believe there were versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0) which was initially shipped in 1999. A few years later, the company was purchased by Siebel. The software was re badged as “Siebel Analytics” and became even more successful. Oracle acquired Siebel in the end of 2005, and the product remained largely unchanged (I’m pretty sure someone commented they they have seen code from pre-2000).
I know this has been discussed numerous times, I just wanted to emphasize this one more time.
Good luck
Good afternoon all. In this post, I wanted to give my analysis of the current state of OBIEE market in the US. There’s a regular disclaimer that these opinions of mine – and not of my employers’, clients’, or other 3d party.
First observation: Dice. I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic, but it seems as Business Intelligence market in general is picking up. I use my own Dice job index, where, I enter keyword (OBIEE) – and track it through out time. The results aren’t statistically correct, since it’s been my experience that there’re many similar positions advertised on Dice by different consulting companies – which means that in reality it’s the same position. During fall of 2007, there were very few positions (150+) . In 2008, there were stale (150-200). 2009 starting to grow (on average 250-290). Now, I see 350+ on a regular basis (again remember -that doesn’t mean there’re actually 350 open positions, as frequently various vendors compete for the same position). Other trend I’ve noticed, most companies demand US Citizens/Green-Card holders, and many companies specifically exclude H1Bs (even through 3d parties).
Second observation: OBIEE blogging has cooled down. That might indicate that first, people are busy on their current assignments; second, there’s plenty of business to handle, so not much incentive to be involved in self-promotion. Third, warm weather could be attributing to general blogging cool-down.
Third: it seems as OBIEE has penetrated federal and state organizations throughout the U.S. It’s literally golden time for OBIEE consultants who are US Citizens and who are able to obtain security clearance (usually that means no criminal history of any kind, decent credit report/score, references/education check). I’ve seen full-time salaries on federal projects offered at 150-180k range + benefits, and I’m sure there’s potential for more. Hourly rates for independent consultants could also be above average. Unfortunately, for H1B consultants, it’s very difficult (if not impossible) to find a federal project which would allow foreigners. Some agencies (such as USCIS, DOD) will not even consider Green Card holders employees/consultants. Some agencies (such DOE) would allow consulting companies to place GC holders, provided they can obtain clearence. I’ve also seen a strong trend in state agencies to utilize OBIEE for reporting purposes. As US government is becoming more and more keen on disclosing various data gathered from federal agencies, OBIEE will be there to stay (foot-in-the-door-principle).
Fourth: even though the amount of positions/jobs have bounced back, the rates haven’t fully bounced back to 2005-2007 levels. However, with proper negotiation skills and market research, one can live a comfortable living. Without getting too much into details, I suggest ignoring ads that advertise their willingness to pay $50 Corp-to-corp to an OBIEE senior architect. On the other hand, people make mistakes while creating ads, so buy beware.
Fifth: There’re a lot more full-time OBIEE jobs than ever before, mostly in three types of companies: a) large consulting companies growing their OBIEE practice b) companies that have invested heavily in OBIEE and would like to make the best use of their investment c) small consulting vendors bidding on pieces of larger projects with their small-disadvantaged-minority-owned status
I invite you to participate in the discussion. I avoided discussing hourly rates for the reason that there’re many key factors that influence rates, mainly: immigration status, location, form of contract, consulting company’s cut, etc. etc. So that makes it difficult to weight-in. Do you think that an anonymous rate survey would be in order?
Good morning.
Today I want to discuss the multi-select prompt below. You should recognize this one easily – since most of you work with this quite frequently. Ta-da:
OBIEE multi-select
What’s wrong with it, can you ask me?
Well, the major one – I and many of the clients complained about when I worked for them – believe that it’s counter-intuitive to drag from right to the left. At least in Western culture (USA, Europe, Latin America), it’s been accepted that information is read from left to right. I won’t get into much details, but in most software that I use on a daily basis, such functionality works the other way than implemented in OBIEE – you drag from left to right. This is the biggest issue, which I hope Oracle’s developers would fix in 11g (if they don’t, I know it’s not their fault).
Second problem, you need to click Go button in order to get results. In this age of web 2.0, AJAX, etc. – it would be relatively easy to start outputting results once you start typing. I agree, this isn’t a bug per se, rather an interface issues. However, users now need to spend more time in the multi-select – instead of going straight to the data.
Third issue, 1-column positioning of data in the select window. There’s so much white space, that it could be spent better. I don’t think quality software should leave doubts in its user interface. There’s no doubt that it’s not a show stopper, but again, those little things might attribute to better acceptance by potential clients.
Finally, OK and cancel buttons should be positioned in the center. I’m not claiming to be a design and usability expert, but I observed people spending time trying to figure out what to do next, or worse, clicking on Cancel – subconsciously.
OBIEE’s Multi-select has been a source of frustration, anger, and complains from my users.
I always addressed this as a training issue, and I still hope for a fix.
P.S. while writing this I thought – “Is it possible to re-work the box?”…technically, that shouldn’t be difficult – script responsible for it is here: res/b_mozilla/prompts/gfpmultiselect.js By some java-script re-arranging – it should be possible to “reverse” boxes. Problem with that is it would constitute a major code change and loss of Oracle support, and possibly infringing on the license.
Just by looking at script – it seems as nothing have changed since 2002. Also, it would be nice to have a feature of designing own UI (such as using skins, templates, radio-buttons, other interface elements).
It’s been awfully quite and peaceful lately in the OBIEE environment. I think everyone is busy, which is a great thing – it means people are making money. I actually remember that the most active times are the ones when there’s slow amount of work. I quickly run through the list of the OBIEE blogs I usually attend to – and most (most – not all) of the posts are dated back in March. Myself, I’ve not had much time to blog – too busy on the project as well as developing network relationships. I apologize if I couldn’t answer one of your questions in the comments – I hope you were able to resolve the issue.
On another topic – OBIEE google’s group is doing well and growing strong (although the goal isn’t the numbers, but the quality). The quality of topics is amazing, as well as insight provided. I am starting to think that it would be advantageous to hide the material from public view (in order to encourage registrations and discourage lurkers).
I wonder how many people are doing beta testing of OBIEE 11g (and can’t tell due to NDA). I’ve already advised the client that many issues we’re battling would be solved in the new version, however, it doesn’t mean that the “fix” is right around the corner.
Stay well and feel free to connect.