Trouble shooting error message "could not connect to Oracle database"

Sometimes you may encounter following error message while accessing OBIEE reports working with Oracle Database

State: HY000. Code: 10058. [NQODBC] [SQL_STATE: HY000] [nQSError: 10058] A general error has occurred. [nQSError: 17001] Oracle Error code: 1017, message: ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied at OCI call OCISessionBegin. [nQSError: 17014] Could not connect to Oracle database. (HY000)

In this case try following checks

1) Where ever is BI Server from that physical server try to ping(tnsping SID) oracle database then connect to database using credentials , which you mentioned in the connection pool of RPD.

2) If above one is passed , and still you see issue same issue on the reports/in the answers then go to RPD physical layer, locate any table and try updating row count if this is failed it means connection pool settings are not correct. If row count updated properly that means your NQSConfig.INI file was not configured properly.

Make sure AUTHENTICATION_TYPE = BYPASS_NQS was commented out and restart all the services.

OBIEE Analytics Using EMC Greenplum Database

Step by step approach to use Greenplum Database as data source in OBIEE can be found in following white paper.

for 10G: https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-14035

For 11G: https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-14023

Site Map of BI(OBIEE) Application

It's been more than a year was busy with projects and now got little time and thought of sharing with you all an interesting utility with you, I hope everyone loves it.

Now coming topic, each and every text book will have index(chapters) which helps you to navigate to straight to specific page instead of looking at each and every page and if you look at many corporate sites will be having site map(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_map) which allow users to navigate to there respective web pages.

Coming to BI application, will have many dashboards and page, if it is large organization then number of subject areas, dashboards and page may range in thousands. How do a user know which is a right dashboard or page which will provide what he is looking for. What kind of information he is looking for ? unless until there is a over view page or a site map exists.

In the Sample Application provided by Oracle will have over view page as shown below. This looks great, but it has lots of challenges. Every page and every dashboards you need create manually and there will not be any search capabilities, like subject area or measure search capabilities(Show me all the pages related to Opportunities Subject area or show me all the reports which are having Service Contracts etc). If there are metadata changes or page deletes you have to perform manually. If there are hundreds of reports then managing this page would be nightmare. How about automating this page, is it existing ? yes we can automate this.

How do we automate this process?

With a minimal manual intervention we can achieve Site Maps(Over view/Index page) in BI applications. Here are the steps to achieve this.

1) Using catalog manager generate a dashboard report.(This is a manual step but will not consume more than 10mins)

2) Feed this extract into a table( may be create insert scripts and push this into a table or create a ETL job )

3) Create a Fact and dimension using above table in the RPD physical layer.

4) Import into BMM

5) Create a Presentation layer with above information.

6) Create a report using above information.

Site Map - report look like below.

Advantages:

1) Provides dashboard description

2) Can directly navigate to that dashboard when you click open dashboard in a new window.

3) Provides page description, if you have mentioned what kind of measures you have on this page all those information will be displayed here.

4) Can directly landed on to page once you click on Open Page.

5) Can be filtered your reports with various informative ways(provided you added all those attributes into your table).

Things to remember:

1) If you have any special characters in your dashboard or page names or folder names , in those cases navigation links may not work properly as a thumb rule don't use any special characters while saving objects on to catalog.

2) Whenever you are creating any new object(report , folder, page, dashboard) add description as a general practice.

If you have any open questions feel free to reach me.

OBIEE 11g Download link

Find OBIEE 11g download link

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

Working with Oracle BI Briefing Books

Oracle BI Briefing Books are used to store/capture a series of static images of pages/requests at server, allowing the information to be viewed offline and shareable with others users or we can keep track of changes offline.

How do we enable this feature?

By default this functionality will not be available to everyone how is using Oracle Business Intelligence.We need to do few server side setting and client side settings to enable this feature.

Server Side configuration:

Go Settings – Administration -- Manage Privileges

In Access -- 'Access to Briefing Books' provide who are all can access the Briefing Books functionality

In Briefing Book section– 'Add to or edit a Briefing Book' in this section add people/groups who need this ability.

In Briefing Book section– 'Download Briefing Book' this enables to option to download or print captured information. Set who can download by users or groups.

Based on login, user will be able see Briefing Book icon/link where ever is applicable.

In Answers catalog section, user will be able to see one more folder called 'My Briefing Books' after enabling this feature.

If user is allowed to access Briefing Books, then on each interactive page bottom left they will be able to see Briefing Book icon .

If users are interested in requests to see in Briefing Book, then user need to enable this feature at request level, to do that follow these steps.

Go to Dashboard Editor – Select Request –Click on Properties –Chose Report Links from menu –Choose check box 'Add to Briefing Book' option.

Once User clicks on Briefing Book Icon/Link following page will pops up with in which Book and how to captured information will be there as follows.

Use new Briefing Book button to create new Book or select from drop down where do you want to add snapshot.

We can add content into briefing books by two ways:

Snapshot: This adds the content in its current state. Snapshot content preserves the original data

and is not updated when the briefing book is rerun. Snapshot content will not be updated using Oracle BI Delivers.

Updatable: The content is refreshed whenever the briefing book is downloaded,or when it is specified as the delivery content for an iBot in Oracle BI Delivers.

Where Briefing Books will be stored?

In the Presentation Catalog briefing books are saved under My Folder -- _briefingbook folder. Here you can rename Briefing Book names or you can delete completely Book.

How do we access Briefing Books?

All saved briefing books are accessible under My Briefing Books which is present under Oracle BI Answers catalog section.

To access briefing books user needs to have access to Answers access apart from Briefing Book related access.

When ever user desire to access snapshot he has to navigate to My Briefing Books then select which ever Briefing Book user needed.

To download the briefing book, click the Get Now button and specify the location in which to save it.

Downloaded briefing books are saved with an .ssb(Simply Safe backup archive) file extension.

If user chooses Print Now, in above screen it will create a PDF version of Briefing Book.

How do user views Briefing Book?

To view Briefing Books at client side, in client machine need to have Briefing Book Reader.

Where do we get Briefing Book Reader?

We can find Briefing Book Reader software in Client Ancillary folder.

OBIEESoftware\Installables\OracleBI\Windows\Client_Ancillary\Oracle_Business_Intelligence_Briefing_Book_Reader\

Client side configuration: Install installer and follow simple instructions.

Once Briefing Book reader installed just double click on sbb file, it will open captured requests/pages in Oracle BI Presentation style in a browser.

Is it possible to save a briefing book to a shared folder? I think no.

One very good feature which I always implement at all the client places is, have one updateable Briefing Book with all the dashboard pages in it , and schedule this briefing book after each data loads. Which will enable users with how interactive dashboard page was seen by them(in past) as of that date that data load. Holaaaaaa achieved point in time reporting with no ETL setup.

References: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12096_01/books/AnyUser/briefingbook.html

Hope you liked it.

Any valuable additions to this post/comments will be gratefully received!!

OBIEE 11g Product Launch on July 7

I am excited to look forward "OBIEE 11g" big bang.

Count down has started .. only 34 days to go hurrayyyyyyyy :)

If you want to join product launch event, click here to register

OBIEE On Cloud

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OBIEE On Cloud

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