Oracle DB 11g Editions

If you ever wondered which is the most appropriate Oracle DB you should be on, then here is where you could find this info:
http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/product-editions-066501.html

Upgrade RPD from 10g to 11g

on Windows: Command Line prompt: cmd>SET ORACLE_INSTANCE=C:\oracle\bi\instances\instance1\
   where C:\oracle\bi is your middleware home.
cmd>C:\oracle\bi\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\server\bin\obieerpdmigrateutil.exe -I C:\TEMP\demo10g.rpd -O C:\TEMP\demo11g.rpd -L C:\TEMP\demo11g.ldif -U Administrator
 

New Release

Finally I'm at pace with the news: OBIEE 11.1.1.6.0 is out and can be downloaded from
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/downloads/bus-intelligence-11g-165436.html
This release delivers a BI platform specially designed to leverage:
• Oracle Exalytics hardware’s large memory, processors, concurrency, and other hardware features and system configurations.
• Enhancements to Times-Ten for Exalytics for analytical processing at in-memory speeds
• Dynamic user interface enhancements that complement large amounts of data to present business information in meaningful and compelling ways
• A new BI Server Summary Advisor for Exalytics for aggregate generation and persistence
• Essbase memory usage optimizations and concurrency improvements for Exalytics to deliver efficient distribution of processing
• BI Publisher performance, lifecycle, workflow and report creation enhancements
• New and enhanced Scorecard views and BI Mobile improvements
• Numerous Security, Management/Diagnostic and Lifecycle enhancements
• Certified BI and EPM Applications on Exalytics
  
The good news is that this release can be used with BIA 7.9.6.3
- Enjoy!

I'm still here..

It's been so long since I haven't posted anything on my BI blog but hopefully I'm gonna fix this somehow. I've been side tracked by working on other projects but today I had a go on my virtual's machine BI and I have faced something that people were blogging /emailing about for weeks now: Firefox 10 does not work with OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0

Workaround:
1) Easiest is to revert to a previous version of Firefox.
2 )  Keep Firefox 10
- Type "about:config" into an address bar
- Right-click in the window and select New/String
- Name: "general.useragent.override"
- Value: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; Windows NT 6.1; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0"
- Refresh OBIEE login screen.. and tut-tut! it works

Solution
Oracle seems to have released a patch for this: patch 13564003

OBIEE 11g - Basics

Node Manager Basics

BI Publisher Debugging

OPTIONS:

1. Add "debug" in the xmlp-config file -- restarting the app server (oc4j or tomcat).
For Enterprise Release the debug level can be set from Admin > Server Configuration UI. Setting value as “Debug” from the LOV turns on the debug mode. Restart the Application to make this change effective. This change sets the DEBUG_LEVEL property to “debug” in xmlp-server-config.xml configuration file. The location of xmlp-server-config.xml is under Repository (./XMLP/Admin/Configuration).  The debug log will be available in server log.

2. Create file xdodebug.cfg and save under c:\program files\java\jdk\jre\lib
content of file:
LogLevel=STATEMENT
LogDir=c:\temp

OBIEE 11g Start/Stop Services - boot.properties

When starting/stopping the Managed Server or Admin Server (WebLogic),
./startManagedWebLogic.sh bi_server1 http://hostname:7001
./startWebLogic.sh
the user is prompted to enter username and password

Instead, you can enable auto login using a boot identity file. A boot identity file contains
user credentials for starting and stopping an instance of WebLogic  Server. An Administration
Server can refer to this file for user credentials instead of prompting you to provide them.
Because the credentials are encrypted, using a boot identity file is more secure than storing
unencrypted credentials in a startup or shutdown script. If there is no boot identity file when
you start a server, the server instance prompts you to enter a username and password. The boot
identity file can be different for each server instance in the domain

A) To configure the boot.properties file for the Managed Server, perform the following steps:

1. Browse to
$MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/servers/bi_server1/security and edit the boot.properties file
$ vi boot.properties


2. Modify the file to reflect the following and save it:

username=admin_username
password=admin_password

3. Browse to
$MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/bin
./startManagedWebLogic.sh bi_server1 http://hostname:7001/console

B) To configure the boot.properties file for the AdminServer (WebLogic), perform the following steps:

1. Browse to
$MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/servers/AdminServers/security and edit the boot.properties file.
$ vi boot.properties

2. Modify the file to reflect the following and save it:
username=admin_username
password=admin_password

3. Browse to
$MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/bin
./startWebLogic.sh

Note that the boot.properties file is identified and you are not prompted for a username and
password. The server is in the running mode. Nagivate to boot.properties and notice that the content of the file is now encrypted.