Tuesday, September 18, 2012

OBIEE- Administration: Default Compound Layout

You may have come across scenarios where more than half of the reports in a project requires a particular layout based on business needs e.g. a report should always have a title and a graph. This is different than the default available in OBIEE which is title and table/pivot view. Suppose in a project you have hundreds of reports with similar layout which include a title, narrative, view selector, table and a chart- wouldn't it be productive to have these views created by default when you start creating a report? 

This can also be a great interview question where interviewer can get to know Administration/Customization/Configuration knowledge of the interviewee. An interviewee can also tell about this as a proactive step taken to increase productivity. 

To configure a default compound layout let’s create a custom xml message file called defaultcompound.xml and save it under the custom messages folder. 

Folder location-
{MW_Home}\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\web\msgdb\customMessages 

If you have not done any customization you have to create this folder under msgdb. 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<WebMessageTables xmlns:sawm="com.siebel.analytics.web.messageSystem">
   <WebMessageTable system="Answers" table="ViewDefaults">
<WebMessage name="kuiCriteriaDefaultViewElements" translate="no"><HTML>
   <view signature="compoundView" >
      <cv signature="narrativeView" />
 <cv signature="viewSelector" />
      <cv signature="dvtchart" />
 <cv signature="tableView" />
   </view>
</HTML>
</WebMessage>
   </WebMessageTable>
</WebMessageTables>

Note that the views will be created in the same order as you define in your xml file.

Restart BI Services and start building reports with new default layout. You have reduced the task of creating multiple views in one single step making development many times efficient- in large projects this can even impact your budget and timelines. 

Hope it helps! 

Cheers! 
Deepak

For more information (or should I say less ;p)-
Configuring and Managing Analyses and Dashboards- 11g

Sunday, July 1, 2012

OBIEE 11g: Customizing Skins and Styles in 5 easy steps

I am aware that this topic has been covered in many blogs, Oracle’s customization whitepaper, and even OBE; just wanted to document it in a simpler format. I know.. I know.. I have listed 7 points below but point 4 comprises of all the modifications you may want to do in your skins and styles and point 7 is a restart of BI Services. 

1. Copy styles and Skins from C:\Middleware_Home\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\web\app\res (sk_blafp and s_blafp) to C:\OBIEE_SS
2. Rename these folders to sk_deepak and s_deepak respectively.
3. Copy WEB_INF from C:\Middleware_Home\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1\analyticsRes to C:\OBIEE_SS
4. Make modifications in Skins and Styles. As an example I am replacing oracle_logo.png file with my logo in C:\OBIEE_SS\sk_deepak\b_mozilla_4 and C:\OBIEE_SS\sk_deepak\login folders.
5. Modify instanceconfig.xml (location) file: Insert the following inside ServerInstance tags.
<URL>
<CustomerResourcePhysicalPath>D:\OBIEE11g</CustomerResourcePhysicalPath> <CustomerResourceVirtualPath>/OBIEE11g</CustomerResourceVirtualPath>
</URL>
<UI>
<DefaultStyle>deepak</DefaultStyle>
<DefaultSkin>deepak</DefaultSkin>
</UI>

More information here.

6. Deploy OBIEE_SS as an application directory from Weblogic Admin Console.
  a. Click on Lock and Edit (From Change Center)
  b. From Domain Structure select deployments under bifoundation_domain
  c. Click Install
  d. Select OBIEE_SS folder from path C:\OBIEE_SS and click Next
  e. Select Install this deployment as an application and click Next
  f. Give your deployment a name or keep everything default at this page. Make sure to select I will make the   deployment accessible through the following location and click Finish
  g. Select Take me to deployment configuration page and click Finish
  h. Make sure under target tab you have the Admin Server or BI Server selected and click Save
  i. Click Activate Chnages (From Change Center)
7. Restart BI Services.

Once BI Services are restarted you will see the modifications in Styles and Skins immediately.











Also, you will see the new styles deployed under dashboard properties.











Cheers!
Deepak

Thursday, March 29, 2012

OBIEE- Merge Repositories: the unconventional way


We all know about 2-way and 3-way repository merge. Here’s the documentation to know details: Merge Repositories. In this post I am showing a different way to manage and merge repositories.

Say you and another developer are working on a project. Both of you are developing different subject areas independent of each other, which end up in two repositories. Now, you want to merge them together in to a single repository. Of course merging them as per the information in the link above is ideal but there is another quick and easy way. This has worked for me very well so far.
-          Open two sessions of BI Admin tool and open both the repositories.
-          Copy objects from one rpd to other by simple right-click copy and paste
-          Below I am showing this for Physical Layer. Do the same for BMM and Presentation Layer.



-          Once done, do a consistency check. It should be consistent if you are using two consistent rpds.

Bingo! You have a merged rpd and can work on new Subject Areas after deploying this rpd.
      
     Cheers,
     Deepak

Friday, March 16, 2012

Oracle BI Publisher 11g- template upload error- Upload Failed: org.apache.commons.fileupload.FileUploadBase$SizeLimitExceededException


I was working on BI Publisher (11.1.1.5) recently and came across this error while uploading my rtf template. 

Upload Failed:
org.apache.commons.fileupload.FileUploadBase$SizeLimitExceededException:
the request was rejected because its size (132923375) exceeds the configured maximum (30000000)



I was not able to upload an rtf template because of its size. I did not realize that the four page template I created is over 130MB!!  It does not make sense to configure BI Publisher to handle this kind of size. I could sense that this is something related to my rtf file. I was using Microsoft Office 2007 to create this rtf. Here’s what I found at Microsoft Support website – “If an EMF, a PNG, a GIF, or a JPEG graphic is inserted into a Word document, when the document is saved, two copies of the graphic are saved in the document. Graphics are saved in the applicable EMF, PNG, GIF, or JPEG format and are also converted to WMF (Windows Metafile) format.” This according to Microsoft is by design.

Check this link to find out more- Document file size increases with EMF, PNG, GIF, or JPEG graphics in Word  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/224663). I ran the patch available on this page which reduced the size of the template to 3MB enabling me to upload the template.

Hope it helps.

Cheers!
Deepak