I’m delighted to announce that a new useful OBIEE forum / discussion board is open. Idea was up in the air for a long time – and it seems as multiple people planned this for awhile independently (rnm1978, Mark Rittman, Adrian Ward, and other guys and myself included). Part of it was frustration with moderation on official Oracle’s board, and part of it was a need for a resource where OBIEE and business intelligent professionals could share secrets of the trade. The difficult part is keeping balance between sharing knowledge as well as providing a moderated environment.
The board is already active with several interesting topics going. If you’re interested in participating – please apply at Google OBIEE group
Thanks to Mark Rittman who organized the movement and to all those who agreed to become moderators.
Thanksgiving holiday, pre-Christmas routine, and a general lethargic state due to the weather. They don’t help us to write more about OBIEE. Also, I have a feeling that everyone has a feeling that all OBIEE topics have been covered. So everyone is just waiting for 11g – and then there’ll be a race.
RNM1978 posted a very good visual representation of OBIEE documentation – http://rnm1978.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/i-think-this-summarises-everything/
From one side, bad documentation has opened a niche for experts to blog and discover new things. On the other hand – if it’s not in the docs – it’s probably not covered by Oracle’s support – so some companies might be wary of installing new things.
As far as a new forum – I’m still working on identifying an open-source forum platform that would have all features that OTN has and more. There’re some candidates – but I’m still in the process of search.
I will be honest – I still check OTN – however, I give it a quick glance and then just leave. I still give respect to everyone who’s answering questions, however silly lazy ones. I’m wondering if the influx of new OBIEE will contribute to rates pushed down in the future. For one thing I’m sure now that there’re 2 different kind of “freshers” – one making a transition from another BI tool (Cognos, MS Analysis Services, Discoverer) or a closely-related area (Oracle data warehousing, OLAP) and those who have taken “$600 courses”. It’s very conflicting – since everyone has to start somewhere. However, starting by spamming OTN isn’t the right way to do it.
This is why I was actually against point system when it was implemented – it incentives seasoned consultants reply to silly questions – the ones they would have left without attention before.
Anyway, I hope everyone had a nice break! Back to work! And please stay healthy and well.
OBIEE consultants always deal with recruiters. I’ve had my share of good and bad experiences (mostly positive though) – and sometimes I wished there was a resources that would make it easier to review recruiters. Someone just sent me such a site to review recruiters. Meet – Recruiter Review. It’s still not large, but I can see its usefulness as it might help OBIEE consultants to distinguish between good,average and bad recruiters or companies.
It’s Tuesday, and there was a big tragedy in DC that everyone knows about. I ride on Red Line every day – and now I’m starting to think that I’m not riding in front car anymore. However, it’s quite possible that I’d have been riding the same train.
Official info about BI nomination is here – http://www.oracle.com/webapps/dialogue/dlgpage.jsp?p_ext=Y&p_dlg_id=7687732&src=6642150&Act=335
Probably the most interesting category for blog’s readers is this:
Using Oracle BI EE Plus to deliver intelligence and analytics from data spanning multiple sources and applications.
The criteria’s don’t seem too difficult – I suggest you at least forward the link to your manager – supervisor.The only thing that is not clear is whether the award is for 1 person, 10 people total, or 10 teams. Please let me know if you can figure it out.
Summer was slow for many business intelligence blogers – Adrian Ward posted something a humorous albeit interesting story – “Don’t Try This At Home Kids” . John Minkjan came up with some cool scripts, such as Getting All Users and Roles from RPD
Other interesting findings – I found a post about all OBIEE and legacy products versions – http://blogs.oracle.com/bi/2009/06/ships_in_the_night.html by Darryn Hinett.
Something I just learned by an accident - Venkatakrishnan J (one of the most respected Oracle BI experts and an author of authoritative OBIEE blog http://oraclebizint.wordpress.com/) joined Rittman Mead consulting. Congratulations and Best wishes for all parties involved. You can read about it here – http://www.rittmanmead.com/2009/06/22/my-first-post-here-joining-rittman-mead/
Please stay safe
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.