OBIEE- Maintenance Mode

OBIEE Interview Question: What is Maintenance Mode? When and how it is used? Will users be able to save reports when it is ON?

Maintenance Mode is used for administration of Presentation Services. When Maintenance Mode is turned ON, users will not be able to save changes in Presentation Catalog- it goes in to a read-only mode at this point. This will make sure that webcat is consistent and no one is making changes to reports or saving new ones while you do your maintenance activities.  

When you as an Administrator/Developer are making changes (updating or migrating reports or archiving (taking backups)) in the Presentation Catalog in online mode, you should turn Maintenance Mode ON.

Maintenance Mode can be toggled/changed/switched from Answers/Analyses Administration page. You should be logged in as an Administrator to toggle Maintenance Mode. Click on Administration from Header Menu:

You can also go to http://{server}:{port}/analytics/saw.dll?Admin

Here on bottom left you will find a section for Maintenance and Troubleshooting. This is where you have Toggle Maintenance Mode link. Just click on this link to turn it ON or OFF.

If a user tries to make changes while Maintenance Mode is ON, she will receive the following error:

"Unable to change edit/view mode: System is in Maintenance Mode. Please try again later."

Note: In clustered mode make sure to Toggle Maintenance Mode in Presentation Services of each computer.

Hope it helps!

Cheers!

Deepak

OBIEE11g- Updating GUIDs

OBIEE Interview Question: How do you update GUIDs? 

During migration of Oracle BI artifacts it is optional to refresh Global Unique Identifiers (GUIDs), but it become necessary in case you have a different and not fan-out replica of LDAP identity stores in DEV/TEST and PROD. If not this may lead to authentication failures. If the same user name exists in DEV/TEST and PROD LDAP directory servers user GUID will have a mis-match with GUID in new directory server. 

Here’s the error I received when I moved around my BI components to a newer system.

I followed Oracle's Documentation but it did not work for me. I had to do a little different configuration to make it work on my environment. 

To resolve this issue changes in NQSConfig and instanceconfig.xml files are done when all Oracle BI Services are online. To refresh GUIDS Edit NQSConfig.INI file 

(location:\instances\instance1\config\OracleBIServerComponent\coreapplication_obis1) 

and set FMW_UPDATE_ROLE_AND_USER_REF_GUIDS to YES as shown below. Save and Close NQSConfig.INI file. 

Edit instanceconfig.xml file 

(location:\instances\instance1\config\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1) 

and modify or add the following:  <Catalog>
<UpgradeAndExit>false</UpgradeAndExit>
<UpdateAccountGUIDs>UpdateAndStartNormally</UpdateAccountGUIDs>
</Catalog>

Save and Close instanceconfig.xml file. 

Now to refresh GUIDs we have to restart the BI Services using Oracle Process Manager (opmnctl command) as below.

Now, revert back your changes to NQSConfig and instanceconfig.xml and restart services again. After this the GUIDs got refreshed and I was able to log in to OBI Presentation Services/Analyses. 

Hope this helps! 

Cheers! 

Deepak

References:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/core.1111/e10105/testprod.htm#BABCFDGB

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/bi.1111/e10541/configfileref.htm#sthref1056