Sunday, February 24, 2013

How to Enable Usage Tracking on OBIEE 11g (11.1.1.6.5)

A usual requirement is to enable usage tracking to gather statistics about usage of OBIEE, things like performance, which Dashboards/Reports are being utilized, who is logging in, etc. Out of the box, Oracle includes a robust usage tracking capability with OBIEE, and in fact includes a sample RPD with the Usage Tracking Subject area during install.

There are three main components:

  • Changes/configuration in the RPD
  • Configuration in Enterprise Manager
  • SQL to run to setup Usage Tracking schema.

Continue on to read the steps to enable Usage Tracking.

Migrate Enterprise Manager Application Roles and Weblogic Users and Groups between environments

Managing users across environments, when using the built-in Weblogic LDAP was a tedious process. What I have found to work well is create the users once, and then have a script which caries them across to the rest of the environments. This has been very useful in our Development and Test environments when getting the users seeded.

The Enterprise Manager (EM) migration script utilizes a very cool java program that ArtofBI developed and posted to Github. I've tweaked the code a bit for my needs, so attached to this post also includes the modified javasource and complied JAR.

Continue after the break for links to the files, and example scripts for both Enterprise Manager and Weblogic.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Configure Change Password for Weblogic users in OBIEE 11g

Initially at my current engagement, we were using the inbuilt WebLogic LDAP for controlling user access to OBIEE 11g. We have since switched to using the EBS-ICX cookie SSO method (blog post on how to set this up coming soon), and are currently researching OID integration for SSO.

Side note, the "EBS-ICX" cookie method does not allow for use of Agents or BI Publisher within OBIEE. These are known oracle bugs, but according to the SR I had opened, they are not high on the list to be fixed.

[Update - 10/30/2013: I found a solution to this. Read my post here.]

One of the draw backs to using Weblogic for your Identity Store is that if a user wants to change their password, there is no means of doing so from within OBIEE. I searched the web, and found articles that covered parts, but not the whole thing. Continue on to read step by step instructions to get setup.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Changing password of the MDS and BIPLATFORM schemas used by OBIEE 11g

At my current engagement, we are required to change the passwords for everything every 60 days. After doing some research I found a blog post by someone who showed how to do this from Enterprise Manager, but they only covered three of the four locations to change the password. As I have mentioned previously, I like automation, so I build a script which takes care of all the tasks.

After the jump is an example script, along with the python for WLST, to perform this task.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Scripted OBIEE 11g Web Catalog deployments using runcat.sh and WLST

I had never looked deeply into automating the OBIEE Web Catalog, as on previous engagements I had a technical architecture team which handled all deployments. They were used to doing a manual process utilizing the Catalog Manager. On my latest engagement, I am the technical architecture team, and I like automation.

After poking around, I found that you can call the catalog manager form the command line, and along with WLST scripting, you can do a fully automated web catalog deployment.

After the jump is a script which can be used to do OBIEE 11g web catalog deployments. This script assumes you have setup ssh keys on the various servers so you can login without typing a password (http://www.linuxproblem.org/art_9.html).

Scripted RPD deployments using UDML and WLST

Automating the RPD deployment in OBIEE 10g was as simple as doing an SCP of the RPD to the OBIEE server, and then bounce the processes. With OBIEE 11g, RPD deployments are now handled through Weblogic, so we need to take some additional steps. Luckily these can be easily scripted thanks to WLST.

After the jump is a script which can be used to do OBIEE 11g RPD deployments. This script assumes you have setup ssh keys on the various servers so you can login without typing a password (http://www.linuxproblem.org/art_9.html).

Creating a UDML file for OBIEE 11g RPD

The ability to use UDML for scripted OBIEE RPD changes has been around since OBIEE 10g. UDML files are very useful in order to do migrations, as they can contain the connection pool information and any variables which are environment specific. I am currently using UDML within our enivonrments to allow for migration of an RPD from Development through to Produciton.

Take a jump to view the steps to create UDML files for your environments, along with a sample UDML file.