OBIEE and session cookies, and Google Chrome rambling

I was wondering about different behavior while using OBIEE in different browsers – by the way, Answers isn’t working in Google Chrome, I’ve created an enhancement request – but I don’t think it’s a critical issue as of right now. Reason for my amusement was that Chrome is supposedly very good and robust at handling Java scripts. However, in Answers, it’s not rendering left frame at all. I’ve not checked it thoroughly, but I think, it’s because of the way the Java-Script is produced on the server.

But to keep us on track here, I read about the following question.

Why is this happening?

1. User logs into dashboard .
2. After the dashboard is shown the user opens another browser instance and selects the link from the dashboard login window.
3. After that the dashboard is shown without asking for the login/pwd.

Why its not asking for the login/pwd again when another browser instance is opened?

They also noticed that this happens when they used tabs in the same window. But when they open a new window and put the link it shows the log in page first. They want to know why this is so?

Answer.

This is happening because the Presentation Server is probably using the same cookie. If you connect and have a cookie that hasn’t expired, then it will assume you’re the same user. Check the URL – does it have a sessionid?

One test you could do is to log in first and than open the session viewer and note how many sessions are open (the top half lists the sessions with their unique sessionID’s). Now open another browser window and copy the dashboard link….check your session viewer again do you have a new session? If not than you will need to check your browser settings to make sure the cookie is not being saved.

Regarding the last question “when they open a new window and put the link it shows the log in page first” this is normal – the tabs are sharing the same cookie session file. If they close the window, they loose the active session. The cookie is keeping track of the browser session in use. That’s why when they open a new browser window, they still have to login.

That’s it for now. Have a great week