More on High Availability: BI Publisher and BI Server authentication

I recently wrote up the various steps involved in setting up OBIEE in a cluster, here and here

I was recently asked by a client to outline the steps for setting up BI Publisher with a cluster. If you installed BI Publisher during the OBI installation you most likely have the default BIP security model of BI Server; BIP delegates user authentication to the BI Server. If a user is known by the BI Server then the same user is allowed to log in to BI Publisher. If you have now configured your OBI environment to make use of the robust high availability (and load balancing) Cluster Controller, the next step is to make sure that the BIP security model is changed to reflect this different scenario.

I am assuming that our primary cluster controller is called aravis2 and the secondary is aravis3 and both cluster controllers are running on the default port of 9706. If you are not sure on which port the cluster controllers are running, look at the OracleBI/server/Config/NQClusterConfig.INI file. Now, log in to the BI Publisher with administrative rights and navigate to the Security Configuration on the Admin tab. Locate the Connection String in the Security Model section and replace the default value (which tells BIP to connect directly to the BI Server) from

jdbc:oraclebi://aravis2:9703/

jdbc:oraclebi://aravis2:9706/PrimaryCCS=aravis2;PrimaryCCSPort=9706;SecondaryCCS=aravis3;SecondaryCCSPort=9706;

Take care to include the last semi-colon. Took me a little time to track that little fellow down ;)

Restart the BIP application and you should now be logging in via the Cluster Controller. Looking at the log we can see that all is well:

2009-04-03 15:31:13.477 NOTIFICATION connect to CCSSECONDARYCCS=aravis3;PORT=;SSLKEYSTOREPASSWORD=***;PRIMARYCCS=aravis2;USER=Administrator;IMPERSONATE=demo;PRIMARYCCSPORT=;TRUSTANYSERVER=;LOGFILEPATH=/tmp;SECONDARYCCSPORT=;TRUSTSTOREPASSWORD=***;LOGLEVEL=;SSL=;HOST=aravis2;CATALOG=;PASSWORD=***;