External Database Authentication (simplified)

This article is about creating a external database authentication in OBIEE 10G.

When the number of users is so large the best practice to go for external-database authentication.
this can be done in two small parts.

Part 1:
This part deals with the database part and the steps are:

• Create and populate a table with these columns GROUP,USERNAME,DISPLAYNAME,PASSWORD,LOGLEVEL
• Commit all changes

Part 2:
This is what to be done in OBIEE 10 G Admin tool.

• Go to Manage> Variables
• In the left pane, under session you can find "Initialization Blocks", just click it.
• In the right pane, right click and select 'New Initialization Block' from it.
• Give a name for that block (say 'Security')
• Click on Edit Data Source
• In the text field  type the query "select USERGROUP,NAME,USERNAME,LOGLEVEL,ROW_ID from LOGIN where  LOGIN.USERNAME = ':USER' and  LOGIN.PASSWORD = ':PASSWORD' "
• select the connection pool of the database with login details and click ok.
• Now  you are back at the window where you gave the name 'Security'. Here click 'Edit Data Target'.
• In the newly opened window(window to create a session variable) click 'New'. Give it the name 'GROUP' click ok.
  similarly create session variables as DISPLAYNAME, USER, LOGLEVEL. While creating these variables there will be a prompt for using system defined variables.Accept all of them.Save Initialization block.
• Save the RPD

Restart the server services(BI Server and presentation services)
Try to login with a valid username and password that you have entered in Database.


Please comment with issues while setting up External DB authentication.