OBIEE Infrastructure Tuning Whitepaper

The Oracle BI / EPM Product Assurance Engineering Team have published an updated version of their whitepaper, "Best Practices Guide for Infrastructure Tuning Oracle® Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.5, 11.1.1.6)" (see blog post). This has been updated to include version 11.1.1.6 of Oracle Business Intelligence.

Best Practices Guide for Infrastructure Tuning Oracle® Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.5, 11.1.1.6)

The first paragraph of the whitepaper describes who this document is intended for:

"This document is written for people who monitor performance and tune the components in a BI environment. It is assumed that readers know server administration, Oracle® Fusion Middleware (FMW), hardware performance tuning fundamentals, web servers, java application servers and database."

And, do note the disclaimer:
"Disclaimer: All tuning information stated in this guide is only for orientation, every modification has to be tested and its impact should be monitored and analyzed. Before implementing any of the tuning settings, it is recommended to carry out end to end performance testing that will also include to obtain baseline performance data for the default configurations, make incremental changes to the tuning settings and then collect performance data. Otherwise it may worse the system performance."

Happy reading.
Abhinav
12.12.12 (yes, another reason to post this today)
Bangalore

Certification Matrix for 11.1.1.6.2BP1

The Oracle Fusion Middleware Supported System Configurations page has been updated with the "System Requirements and Supported Platforms for Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 11gR1" (aka SR&SP) for the 11.1.1.6.2BP1 release. It is available as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, and can be directly downloaded here.

Screenshot of SR SP Certification Matrix for Oracle BI

Documentation for BI EE 11.1.1.6.2BP1

Shortly after posting my earlier post, announcing the availability of the Oracle Business Intelligence 11.1.1.6.2BP1 patchset, I realized I had missed out a couple of other pieces of information that would be immediately useful.

These two items are the certifications information and the documentation library.

The documentation library for this release is available at Business Intelligence Documentation for Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (11.1.1.6)
Within this documentation library, there are a couple of points worth noting.

The first is that there is a new doc for Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile. It is available at Oracle® Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) - Contents and it has PDF, Mobi, and ePub versions also available. So now you can not only download the PDF version, but also download an eBook reader-friendly version like .mobi and .epub.

For a list of new user features in this release, take a look at the New Features for Oracle Business Intelligence Users - 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) chapter from the User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition doc.

The OTN page for Middleware certifications should be updated with the BI EE 11.1.1.6.2BP1 certifications information soon I expect.
I will post an update once that is available.

11.1.1.6.0 Now Available

Oracle Business Intelligence 11g, version 11.1.1.6.0, is now generally available.

Here is information pertinent to the release.

Firstly, the bits. 

You can download it from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud, which where you download all licensable Oracle products. Customers should use this site.

You can also download the bits from the Oracle Technology Network from this page (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/downloads/biee-111150-393613.html). Note that downloads on the OTN site are provided for evaluators under the OTN License Agreement.

Download Oracle BI 11.1.1.6.0 from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud at https://edelivery.oracle.com/

The 11.1.1.6.0 release is available for download for the following platforms:

• Microsoft Windows x86 (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows x86-64-bit
• Linux x86 (32-bit)
• Linux x86-64-bit
• Sun Solaris SPARC (64-bit)
• Sun Solaris x86-64 (64-bit)
• AIX (64-Bit)

Second, the list of supported system configurations. 
Also known as the SR&SP guide by some. To get the doc, you need to go to the Oracle Fusion Middleware Supported System Configurations page at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/downloads/fusion-certification-100350.html. On that page, click the link for "System Requirements and Supported Platforms for Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 11gR1", which downloads a spreadsheet file with the required information. You could use this link directly - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/bi-11gr1certmatrix-166168.xls - but for the sake of getting the most current link, I would advise first going to the web page above, and then clicking the download link.

Third, the documentation.
You can get the documentation for this release from the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Documentation page at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/documentation/bi-ee-087853.html
Specifically, for the 11.1.1.6.0 release, this is the landing page: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/bi.htm

And if you are interested in the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine, there are two docs that should be of interest to you:
1. "Owner's Guide for Linux x86-64", which "describes how to set up, install, and commission the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine"
2. "Installation and Administration Guide", which "explains how to install and manage Oracle Business Intelligence products (including Oracle BI Enterprise Edition and Oracle BI Publisher) on Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine. Includes how to monitor and administer an Oracle Business Intelligence system"

Fourth, the Release Notes.
In general, the Release Notes is of immediate concern and use to most people in any new release. You can find the Release Notes for this release here (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/relnotes.htm).

This, then, is a list of links to get you started with the latest and greatest release in the world of business intelligence. The Oracle Business Intelligence 11g, 11.1.1.6.0 release.

Happy analyzing.

11.1.1.5.0 Doc Chapter on Mobile

Using Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile - to read up on the capabilities of Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile in v 11.1.1.5.0.
I must point out though that some of the screenshots of the app are a bit dated. We made some last minute changes to the user interface of the app, which happened after the doc had been frozen. Also, you will notice on at least one screen the version number of the app is listed as 11.1.1.4.0, which, you would realize, is not quite the correct version number.

Among the changes we made to the app, one of the more significant ones has been to provide easy access to Dashboards a user has access to. This is available by tapping the Catalog icon on the tab bar.

More later - once the app is available on the iTunes App Store.

Also see Oracle Business Intelligence Blog: 11.1.1.5.0 Release Announced and Oracle Business Intelligence Blog: 11.1.1.5.0 Available for Download

Discoverer 11g Doc

If you see the Discoverer 11g Documentation library at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/pfrd.htm, you will notice the familiar set of docs, with one new addition. There is now a doc for the Discoverer Web Services. The "Oracle® Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer Web Services API", 11g Release 1 (11.1.1), Part Number E10412-01 can be viewed at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/bi.1111/e10412/toc.htm, or downloaded as a PDF from http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/bi.1111/e10412.pdf

As a brief intro, these web services are a layer of SOAP based web services that sit on top of Discoverer, provide access to a variety of functions, and provide a level of abstraction from the underlying implementation of the functionality that these services expose.

The very first instance where these web services were used was in the integration between BI Publisher and Discoverer (see my posts on this topic from 2007), that happened with the BI Publisher 10.1.3.3.0 release and Discoverer 10.1.2.2 release in 2007. Actually, there was a one-off patch that had to be applied on top of Discoverer 10.1.2.2 which contained the web services libraries. However, these web services were not yet meant to be consumed externally by customers for building their custom integrations. The intent was to document these and release them with the Discoverer 11g release. There is a slightly fascinating history behind the evolution of this project that I will try and blog about in a future post.

The other place where these web services shall be used is in the integration of Discoverer with the Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus, also referred to sometimes as simply OBIEE. Specifically, and since this is about functionality not yet released, please bear in mind that some or all of this could change, so do not take this as official Oracle communication, the intent is to use these Discoverer web services to publish Discoverer worksheets to an OBIEE Dashboard page, and to also use these same web services to allow OBIEE Delivers to run and send Discoverer worksheets on a scheduled basis.

More later.

10.1.3.3 is now available

BI EE 10.1.3.3.0 is now available for download from OTN, and should also become available on eDelivery very soon. Also releasing with BI EE 10.1.3.3.0 is the standalone version of BI Publisher 10.1.3.3.0 as well as BI Applications version 7.9.3 ("Oracle Business Intelligence Applications").

See my earlier post - Go vote! - now one can quibble whether BI EE 10.1.3.3.0 did in fact release before Aug 14 or not, because it did go RTM on Aug 14, but it takes a few days for it become available on OTN for download. But anyway...

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 10.1.3.3.0 is the next (semi) major release for BI EE after the release of BI EE 10.1.3.2 that happened in January this year (see posts on 10.1.3.2). BI EE 10.1.3.2.1 released in April (see posts on 10.1.3.2.1), but it was a point release with support for some additional platforms , languages, and some targeted bug fixes. BI Standard Edition One was the other big news in the world of Oracle BI (see posts on BI SE1). While this - 10.1.3.3.0 - is not as big a new release as 10.1.3.2 was, which had more than 200 new features, 10.1.3.3 is still a big enough release to warrant a celebration (or not... depending on which side of the competitive fence you are on). In brief, some of the new features in 10.1.3.3.0 are (and I am reproducing verbatim from the new features doc):

• "Oracle BI Answers-Based Metadata Dictionary Feature"
• "Multi-Select Dashboard Prompts Feature"
• "Office Integration with BI Dashboard Feature"
• "Dashboard Link Types Feature"
• "Import Oracle Catalog Feature"
• "Embedded Database Functions Feature"
• "Drag and Drop XMLA Metadata Objects Feature"

• "Oracle BI Publisher Template Builder Enhancements"
• "Flash Templates for Oracle BI Publisher"
• "Oracle BI Publisher PowerPoint Output"
• "Oracle BI Publisher Integration with Oracle BI Discoverer"
• "Performance Improvements for Oracle BI Publisher"
• "Converting Reports from Oracle Reports to Oracle BI Publisher"
• "Support for Digital Signature in PDF Documents"
• "Support for Postscript Printers"

• "Installing Oracle Business Intelligence for Microsoft Office"
• "Microsoft Office Support"

In particular, I would like to call out attention to these features:

• Microsoft Office Integration: there are snazzy new Excel and PowerPoint Add-ins that access BI Presentation Server based requests, there is the ability to copy and paste BI views from Answers or Dashboards into Office documents, the ability to generate PowerPoint output from Answers views, and support for PowerPoint (.ppt) as an output format for BI Publisher.
• Integration between BI Publisher and Discoverer: which I think every Discoverer customer shall be delighted with, as it brings to Discoverer customers the ability to create hi-fidelity layouts from your existing Discoverer worksheets (relational as well as OLAP), and lots more.
• The ability to create interactive, nice looking, offline capable Flash dashboards using the Flex builder, and populate them with data supplied by BI Publisher. Flash therefore becomes an output format supported by BI Publisher, with all the attendant benefits.
• For those more interested in the server side of things, one feature that you will like is the ability to drag and drop XMLA metadata objects in the Admin Tool.

Some useful links:

• Download the software - home page (the page URL actually says 101320bi :-)
• Download BI EE 10.1.3.3 for Windows, Linux (1.3 GB downloads, and you also get downloads for Solaris - SPARC, HP - Itanium and PA-RISC, and IBM - AIX5L)
• Download BI Publisher 10.1.3.3 (Standalone version) for Windows, Linux (the download sizes vary from 700MB - 950 MB depending on the platform you choose to download for).
• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Documentation - home page
• Download the doc library for BI EE 10.1.3.3 (19 MB Zip file)
  
• View the doc library for BI EE 10.1.3.3 (HTML Welcome page)
• New Features Guide (HTML or download the PDF)
  
• System Requirements and Supported Platforms (PDF)
  

BI EE Documentation now available

The "Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Online Documentation Library 10.1.3.2" (you would be surprised how easily this rolls off your tongue once you repeat it a few hundred times) is now available for viewing (HTML) and for downloading (ZIP - 14.5MB) from the Oracle Technology Network.

This below is a screenshot of the doc library home page.

While the "Documentation" tab contains the URLs for all the books.