ODI other New features in OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1

Oracle is moving ahead with the ODI integration to the BI Package, in the words of Oracle,

"With the 11.1.1.7.1 release of the Oracle BI Applications, you can now use Oracle Data Integrator 11g (ODI11g) as the embedded data integration engine within the product. Along with the introduction of several new BI applications and extensions to existing ones, the introduction of ODI11g has allowed Oracle to simplify the configuration process for the BI Applications as well as leveraging ODI's high-performance "ELT" (Extraction, Load and Transform) for data loading."

Apart from this other features include:

Visualization Enhancements: Performance Tiles, 100% Stacked Bar, Freeze Headers, Waterfall  Chart, View Suggestions, Trellis Chart Grid

User Interaction Improvements: Navigation/Action from Totals, Breadcrumbs, Pass context

to ADF, Search with Endeca MDEX, Save as Analysis on Dashboard, Trellis Actions

BI Mobile HD Enhancements: Analytics available on mobile without additional development,  Data dense visualizations enabled by in memory analytics, enhanced right click interactions, better interactivity with native gestures, offline access to content with fine grained security to grant or revoke privileges

Port Setting in BIPublisher 10 G standalone

 This article is dealing only with BIP Standalone and reader should not get confused with OBIEE+BIPublisher Port setting.


1. Locate the default-web-site.xml file.

Note:  Usually the path is like oc4j home/j2ee/home/config/default-web-site.xml. OC4J reads this file when it starts up.

2. Open the file in text editor. In this file you can see the default port which had been set during the installation. Change the port value to thee desired port number.

3. Stop then Start the OC4J server.

4. Log into the application with new port number.

I came across this when I wanted to set my BIP's port to 80 but OC4J was not starting up when I tried to start after editing the port number. When I gave port number as 8080 it started up and I was able to access the application.

The possible reasons is, there are some other applications in my machine which requires a server and it might be creating a clash. Anyway my experiment continues.

BI Publisher java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

When I was doing some crazy experiments with XSL variables in BI Publisher,
came across the error "java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException".
The error was generated by the MS Word Addin of BIP while creating a pdf preview. as shown.

The error screen was the following.

A little googling saved me!!! the reason for this error in java is mainly due to incorrect datatype.
Say a variable of type "Number" is getting assigned with a value of type "Text".

Bingo... the error might be in the variable I decalred as below..!!!

<?xdoxslt:set_variable($_XDOCTX,'V_NA',0)?>

and what generated the error should be,

<?xdoxslt:set_variable($_XDOCTX,'V_NA',NAME)?>

The error was resolved by changing the code to

<?xdoxslt:set_variable($_XDOCTX,'V_NA','xyz')?>

And tried again to get a preview.... Ta..da... It Worked.

BI Publisher Parameters in the URL

Through this post am discussing about the parameters specified in the report link / URL

Consider a URL like this

http://<ip/address>:<Port>/xmlpserver/Sales/Sales+Report/Sales+Report.xdo?_xpf=&_xpt=1&_xdo=%2FSales%2FSales+Report%2FSales+Report.xdo&Id=1-104x&_xt=Standard&_xf=html

The URL after the report name consists of:

?_xpf=&_xpt=1&_xdo=%2FSales%2FSales+Report%2FSales+Report.xdo&Id=1-104x&_xt=Standard&_xf=html

Note the following standard URL syntax:

? - The first parameter is added with a question mark in the beginning.

& - Additional parameters have to be specified like this.

The BI Publisher parameters are as follows:

_xpf - Its an application internal string. Not to be used by the developer.
_xpt - Chooses the report rendering way or style.

    0 - uses the BI Publisher window (iFrame)

    1- renders just the document

_xdo - Provides the path to the current report. To be note that it is not mandatory to give this parameter.

dept - Report specific parameter that we created in the report.

_xt - Specifies the template to be used. Usually for the reports which have more than one templates.

_xf - Controls format of the output file. Accepted values are: pdf, html, excel, rtf, or data.

Steps to Enable BI Publisher logging

 When ever we face an issue in configuration of BI Publisher the easiest method to resolve is by looking into logs.Please find below the steps to enable BI Publisher logging:

1. In the Bi Publisher enterprise go to Admin > Server Configuration.
2. Under General Properties, set Debug Level to Debug.
3. Create a target folder for the logs like D:\BIPLogs.
4. Create xdodebug.cfg with the following test:
  LogLevel=STATEMENT.
  LogDir=D:\BIPLogs.
5. Place the file in jdk\jre\lib in the OraHome folder where the application server is installed.
6. Restart Bi Publisher server.
7. Do some activities in BIP like scheduling.
8. Wait for some time and attach the logs from D:\BIPLogs folder.

Macro Cannot be found error in BI Publisher- MS Office

After installing BI Publisher for MS Office Suit I got an error stating "Macro Cannot be found..." Just like anybody else i was also frustrated when i saw the following error for the first time.

Solution
Close all MS Office Applications (Including Outlook, Groove etc)
For 64-bit operating systems, type the following in command prompt:
Regsvr32 "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\MSCOMCTL.OCX"
For 32-bit operating systems, type the following in command prompt:
Regsvr32 "C:\Windows\System32\MSCOMCTL.OCX"

It worked fine for me and my colleagues

.
Waiting for your valuable feedback.

What is Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Publisher ?

Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Publisher is a template-based publishing solution delivered with the Oracle E-Business Suite, Peoplesoft Enterprise, and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. It provides a flexible and robust approach to report design and publishing by integrating familiar desktop word processing tools with existing data reporting. BI Publisher leverages standard, well-known technologies and tools, so you can rapidly develop and maintain custom report formats. The flexibility is a result of the separation of the presentation of the report from its data structure. The collection of the data can still be handled by existing report tools, but with BI Publisher you can design and control how the report outputs will be presented in separate template files. At runtime, your designed template files are merged with the report data to create a variety of outputs to meet a variety of business needs, including: • Customer-ready PDF documents, such as financial statements, marketing materials, contracts, invoices, and purchase orders utilizing colors, images, font styles, headers and footers, and many other formatting and design options. • HTML output for optimum online viewing. • Excel output to create a spreadsheet of your report data. • "Filled-out" third-party provided PDF documents. You can download a PDF document, such as a government form, to use as a template for your report. At runtime, the data and template produce a "filled-out" form. • Flat text files to exchange with business partners for EDI and EFT transmission.