Lying with Charts - Global Warming Graph

Global warming is a serious yet controversial enough topic without bringing in bad data visualizations practices into it. The Wonkblog on the Washington Post has an article titled, "You can’t deny global warming after seeing this graph". The post reproduces a chart prepared by the World Meteorological Association that plots global temperatures by decade. While the data shows that the last decade, 2001-2010, was the hottest on record, the graph uses a broken Y-axis that begins at 13.4°C instead of starting at zero. The chart does not hide this fact, and you can see that the chart's Y-axis starts at 13.4°C, but the most visually prominent piece in the graph is, well, the graph! And it screams the message that global temperatures are going off the charts - it's time to panic. There is no denying that we as a world need to get serious about investing in alternative and renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, and even nuclear, but this graph is just plain bad.

Smart View Version to use with OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1

Users who have downloaded the latest version of Oracle Business Intelligence 11g - 11.1.1.7.1, and wish to use the Oracle Hyperion Smart View for Office add-in to connect to Oracle BI, need to use the latest version of Smart View - 11.1.2.3 - that is available for download on OTN here.
After downloading this version of Smart View, if you want this version of Smart View to be available as a link from the Home Page of Oracle BI EE (the "Download BI Desktop Tools" dropdown under the "Get Started..." section), you need to follow the instructions (also see Installing and Deinstalling Oracle Business Intelligence Client Tools)
You can find more information in the BI documentation library (Business Intelligence Documentation for Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (11.1.1.7)) or in the Oracle Essbase Documentation Library, Release 11.1.2.2.200

Happy Monday!
Abhinav,
Bangalore, July 08, 2013

BI Mobile HD Universal App Released

A new version (11.1.1.7.0.1879) of the Oracle BI Mobile HD App was released to the Apple iTunes App Store on Wednesday. This release has several new features of note. This updated version also fixes some issues that were reported in the update that went out late last week on the 28th of June.

• All users are recommended to upgrade to this version of the BI Mobile HD app. There were login issues with the iPad version of the earlier app and orientation issues with the iPhone app. Both issues were noticed almost immediately after the app went live on the App Store and development traced these to a problem with the configuration of the app uploaded to the App Store. 
• Users will notice that this is app now supports the iPhone (and iPod) device also. Therefore users will see this app on their iPhone when they search for it on the App Store. 

OBIEE 11.1.1.6.11 Bundle Patch Now Available

Last week saw the release of the OBIEE Bundle Patch 11.1.1.7.1 and on Friday bundle patch 11.1.1.6.11 for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition became available on the Oracle My Support Portal.

The tracking ids for the respective bundle patch components are:

• Oracle Business Intelligence Installer (BIINST): ID: 16747681
• Oracle Real Time Decisions (RTD): ID: 16747684
• Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (BIP): ID: 16747692
• Oracle Business Intelligence ADF Components (BIADFCOMPS): ID:  16747699
• Enterprise Performance Management Components Installed from BI Installer 11.1.1.6.x (BIFNDNEPM): ID:  16747703
• Oracle Business Intelligence: (OBIEE): ID: 16717325
• Oracle Business Intelligence Platform Client Installers and MapViewer: ID: 16747708

Happy Monday to all!

Abhinav

Bangalore