Setting up SSL for Weblogic

We recently needed to setup SSL for OBIEE so that we could accept the EBS cookie for single sign on between EBS and OBIEE (post to come soon on how to get that all wired up). Unfortunatly I don't have all of the steps, as someone else on the team handles the making of the actual cert, but I can provide all steps around the process.

Continue on to read what I did to create a private key, create a certificate request (CSR), and configure WebLogic to enable the SSL port for OBIEE.

Missing "Treat Text As" options in OBIEE 11g

Something I used to use back in OBIEE 10g was the Override Default Data Format for text to do things with HTML in my Answers Requests. I had assumed this would be available the same way out of the box with 11g, but alas it is not.

What I get:	What I want:

So as always, I did a little digging, and found that in order to have all options show, you need to have the privilege: Save System-Wide Column Formats. What's even better is that out of the box, this privilege is assigned to no one, so you can't even set it!

Continue on to read what I did to allow me to enable the setting for BI Administrators, and finally gain access to all the treat text as options.

Fix "Configuration Error" on 64-bit OBIEE 11.1.1.6.5 Client Tools

Ever since upgrading to 11.1.1.6.5, I was unable to use the 64bit version of the newly installed client tools. The program would always error out on launch. Oddly enough, if I installed the 32bit version, things would work *mostly* fine, well at least no errors on start-up. But then I had to update the 32bit ODBC entries, and it overall was just a hassle to manage.

So I did a little digging, and found that because it installs into Program Files, it creates it's own bi_init.bat file, which sets up it's own ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_INSTANCE, etc.

And guess what, this doesn't work!

Continue on to read what I did to change both the bi_init.bat and adjust some of my environment variables.

Quickly open OBIEE Admin Client in Online Mode

Something I have found myself doing quite often is checking who is connected in OBIEE prior to doing a deployment. The quickest/easiest means I have found is to fire up the Admin Client, and look at the sessions. This allows me to know if I need to notify anyone (and who), prior to taking down the server.

What was always a pain was to go through the multiple steps to open the client, choose Open in Online mode, and select my connection, across multiple environments. Luckily this can be scripted!

Continue on to read the steps to quickly script opening the Admin Client directly in Online mode.

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.

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.