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

OBIEE 11g Errors- nQSError: 43113, nQSError: 43126, nQSError: 37001

My Environment: Windows 2008 R2, Oracle DB 11gR2, OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0

One fine day no user even administrator was able to log in to OBI. We were receiving the following errors:

Unable to Sign In- An invalid User Name or Password was entered.
When trying to open the repository in online mode, following error messages are received:
nQSError: 43113, nQSError: 43126, nQSError: 37001

We tried everything including redeploying rpd and catalog, refreshing GUIDs, creating new users with Admin privileges, playing around with BI System User, etc. with no success.

NQServer Log:

Error Message For BISystemUser: User not authenticated.

Authentication failed: invalid user/password.

NQ Admin Tool Log:

[nQSError: 43113] Message returned from OBIS.

[nQSError: 43126] Authentication failed: invalid user/password.

[nQSError: 37001] Could not connect to the Oracle BI Server instance.

Presentation Log:

Could not create a system user connection to Oracle BI Server during start-up. Please check the error message and try again.

Authentication Failure.

Odbc driver returned an error (SQLDriverConnectW).

[nQSError: 10018] Access for the requested connection is refused.

[nQSError: 43113] Message returned from OBIS.

[nQSError: 43126] Authentication failed: invalid user/password.

After several hours of debugging we found that our DB schemas/user MDS and BIPLATFORM got locked/ expired. It was a setting in Oracle DB which makes schemas or users lock after a period of time. To check the status of account use:


SELECT USERNAME, ACCOUNT_STATUS FROM DBA_USERS;


You can use the following to unlock accounts:

ALTER USER MDS ACCOUNT UNLOCK;

ALTER USER BIPLATFORM ACCOUNT UNLOCK;

If the password has expired make sure to revert it back to the password you used during installation. Use the following:

ALTER USER MDS IDENTIFIED BY Admin123;

ALTER USER BIPLATFORM IDENTIFIED BY Admin123;

This did the trick and we were able to login to OBI Presentation Services.

Cheers!

Deepak