OBIEE 11g installation on Windows XP

Just finished my OBIEE 11g successful installation on Windows XP Professional – SP3 with 2GB Memory and 50 GB available disk space. 

I have my local Oracle instance is running on the same machine as well. Before writing this article, I tested couple of demo reports and yes they are working, So If you are looking for the simple and clean installation steps, here you go ….

1) The first step is to download software.
Yes it is around 5 GB; you have to have high speed uninterrupted connection. Otherwise you end up with couple of hours in waiting to complete the download. 

Please follow following links to download OBIEE11g and RCU (Repository Creation Utility).

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/downloads/bus-intelligence-11g-165436.html

Accept the license and download all the four files belongs to”Oracle Business Intelligence, v. 11.1.1.3.0 (for Microsoft Windows x86 (32-bit)" and one file for”Repository Creation Utility (11.1.1.3.3) for Microsoft Windows (32-bit)"

2) If your system uses the dhcp to access network, make sure to install Look Back Adopter. Please refer following URL for installation details.How to install the Microsoft Loopback adapter in Windows XP

3) make sure you have enough disk space. Software needs 11 GB of free disk space,

4) Unzip the RCU zip file into some directory and run the rcu.bat under BIN directory. Make sure your database is up before running the RCU; this will install the BI and Metadata schema.

Click next...

Select Create option and click next…

Provide the Database connection details. Use the user, which has SYSDBA privilege. Better use the sys or system user to avoid any confusion. This user will be used to create the schema.

Oops!!, Warning !! . My Oracle database version is 10.2.0.2.0, while it is required minimum 10.2.0.4. Any way I clicked the ignore, so you can do the same or get the right version...

You can select an existing prefix or select the next prefix.

Check the Oracle Business Intelligence. Please note down the schema name. You will need it during OBIEE installation. It is DEV1_BIPLATFORM in this case. Metadata Services is already checked for you

Click Next.

 

The second part is OBIEE installation

Unzip all 4 zip files in one folder and open the Disk1 folder and run the setup.exe

Click next on welcome page...

Select the simple installation for demo purpose. Click Next
It will check the Prerequisite,
On Next step, specify the location, where you want to install the software. Make sure it has around 11gb free disk space.

Select the username, password for weblogic server, the same userid, and password will be use to access the OBIEE.

Click Next…

On Configuration component, select the component. I installed all three components.

 

On Database details screen, enter the Database details where we have installed the BI schema through RCU.  Our Database Schema was DEV1_BIPLATFORM, though, you see DEV1_BIPLATFORM in the above screen shot. Please do not get confuse, and enter the correct Schema as DEV1_BIPLATFORM and the password.

Skip the next screen security Updates and click Next...

Review the installation summary on following screen and click install...

After clicking the Install button, Installation process will start. The process will take some time, so have patient. In the middle of the process you will see a blank command window...

The installation proves will take around 20 minutes. It could be more or less depend on the available resources.

The next step is Configuration Progress, this will automatically start after completion of installation and it took around 30 minutes for me.

Finally the configuration 100% completed. Click the next button.

We can access the Enterprise Manager to administrator Web logic Server  through  http://localhost:7001/em and analytics as http://localhost:9704/analytics URL.

Let’s see if we can access the most awaited webpage.  If everything goes smooth during installation, you can access the presentation services through  http://localhost:9704/analytics URL.  Enter the use rid and password, the one we set during Weblogic server installation.

Here is the Home page...

Let's test one simple report to make sure, everything works fine.

Go to open tab and click it, it will open the Open popup window. Select the Revenue Budget Actual and Detail.xdo, this is a  BI Publisher Report from Sample Lite  folder.

If everything is fine, the report should render within the Report viewer

 If you could able to make up to this point, you have installed your OBIEE11g successfully.

Congratulation…!!!.



Protect Filter in OBIEE

                   The feature was already there from OBIEE 10g versions. We need to take some extra precautions before applying this in request filters which can be adopted as best practice in report development.

              This ensures that the filter used in the request is not lost or overwritten by another filter or dashboard prompt that may supersede the request.
              This option is only available if a value has been specified in the filter. If the filter item is set to “is prompted” then the Protect Filter option if not available.

To apply it as the filter in the Answers Request:

 Select Filter Options  button> Check the Protect Filter option as seen in the screen below...

And The filter is looks like the this. With the "key" icon on the filter icon to lock the values to restrict the change.

 

Upgrade OBIEE 10g RPD and web catalog to OBIEE 11g

Before running Upgrade Assistant configures TNSNAMES.ora in your 11g system so that it connects to any databases used by the RPD.

In addition, any custom changes to the Oracle BI EE 10g configuration files, for example, instanceconfig.xml, are not upgraded by Upgrade Assistant. You must manually edit the 11g configuration files to re-apply the customizations.

The following configuration changes may be necessary before running Upgrade Assistant:

1. Confirm any data sources used by your RPD are configured in the 11g system.
2. If you configured the nqsconfig.ini file in the 10g system for database authentication, you must copy over the same configurations to the 11g version of the files.

For example, to add the following parameter in the nqsconfig.ini file for this type of authentication:

SECURITY

AUTHENTICATION_TYPE = DATABASE;

DATABASE

DATABASE = "orcl";

Note: The Admin Server and the Managed Server must be running during the upgrade process.

Upgrade Assistant

OBIEE 11g upgrade assistant is installed by default and is located under Oracle fusion middleware home $ORACLE_FMW/bin.

Pre-Requisites:

•   Start up all the OBIEE 11g related services (BI Services and Web logic Server) and check that you can log in to Enterprise Manager,WLS Admin Console and OBIEE Answers.

         Enterprise Manager   : http://localhost:7001/em
         Web Logic Server Admin Console: http://localhost:7001/em console
         OBIEE Answers/Dashboard   : http://localhost:9704/analytics 

• All the relevant TNS names used in the 10g rpd connections are present in /Oracle_BI1/network/admin/tnsnames.ora file

    Step-1

In Windows:

Navigate to /Oracle_BI1/bin/ua.bat . This batch file is the Upgrade Assistant wizard. Launch the wizard by double clicking on it.

In UNIX: 

/app/oracle/product/Oracle_BI1/bin

[oracle@linux-db102 bin]$ ls -ltr ua

-rwxr-x— 1 oracle oinstall 12640 Jun  1  2010 ua

To launch the Upgrade Assistant GUI, just run the command ua

•   Step-2: 

 In this page select "Upgrade Oracle BI RPD and Presentation Catalog" radio button. Click NEXT.

Step-3:

  Here check the "Upgrade Repository (RPD)" checkbox.
Specify the location of the 10g RPD file.
Enter the Administrator credentials of the old 10g RPD file.
Specify the password for the upgraded 11g RPD and confirm it once again.

• Step-4: Specify the Weblogic Admin Console username and password. Port number is 7001

Click Next

During the examination process, Upgrade Assistant checks for the following:
• The source directory exists.
• The source directory is readable and contains a file for upgrade.
Under the Status column, the word succeeded should appear. If instead, the word failed appears, inspect the log file for details.

• Step-5: Check the upgrade summary and click UPGRADE to start the upgrade process.

 

 

• Step-6: Once the upgrade process completes the process log output is available at \Oracle_BI1\upgrade\logs.

 

The new RPD will be created as sh.rpd and

Placed at the following path:

\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIServerComponent\coreapplication_obis1\repository.

As part of upgrade, security is also upgraded from 10g to 11g. This includes the Users and Groups.
Manual customizations to files like instanceconfig.xml are not upgraded and must be redone after upgrade.

Same applies for nqconfig.ini, even though the nqconfig.ini parameters are fully controlled from the Enterprise Manager in OBIEE 11g.


We can use this Oracle Link for any clarification:
http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/fmw/bi/bi11115/upgrade/upgrade_to_11g.htm