Robin Moffatt - Rittman Mead (Page 4)

Introducing obi-metrics-agent - an Open-Source OBIEE Metrics Collector

Understanding what is going on inside OBIEE is important for being able to diagnose issues that arise, monitor its health, and dig deep into its behaviour under stress in a load test. OBIEE exposes a set of metrics through the Dynamic Monitoring Service (DMS) and viewable through Enterprise Manager (EM)

Oracle BI Suite EE

Date formatting in OBIEE 11g - setting the default Locale for users

A short and sweet blog post this one, simply to plug a gap in Google that I found when trying to do achieve this today. How user’s see things like date formats in OBIEE is determined by their locale, which is usually related to language but not always the

Oracle BI Suite EE

Exploring OBIEE Web Services through Python

My very first blog post for Rittman Mead [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2011/11/calling-bi-publisher-11g-web-services-from-bpel/] was on the subject of Web Services in BI Publisher 11g, and now I want to return to the subject here, looking at the Web Services of OBIEE itself. Web Services are basically a

Oracle BI Suite EE

Automated Regression Testing for OBIEE

In the first article of this series [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2014/01/obiee-regression-testing-an-introduction] I explored what regression testing is, why it matters, and by breaking down the OBIEE stack into its constituent parts where it is possible to do it for OBIEE. In this posting, I explore some

Oracle BI Suite EE

OBIEE Regression Testing - An Introduction

In this article I’m going to look at ways to test changes that you make to OBIEE to ensure that they don’t break existing functionality. In all but the simplest IT systems it’s common for one (planned) action to inadvertently cause another (unplanned). What IS Regression Testing?

Oracle BI Suite EE

Make Use of OBIEE's Command Line Tools with Reduced Exposure of Plain Text Passwords

Introduction We all love a good commandline utility. It gives us that warm feeling of control and puts hairs on our chests. Either that, or it means we can script the heck out of a system, automate many processes, and concentrate on more important matters [http://phoboslab.org/ztype/]. However,

Oracle BI Suite EE

Monitoring OBIEE Performance for the End User with JMeter from EM12c

This is the third article in my two-article set of posts (h/t [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilogy_in_five_parts]) on extending the monitoring of OBIEE within EM12c. It comes after a brief interlude discussing Metric Extensions [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2013/11/collecting-usage-tracking-data-with-metric-extensions-in-em12c/] as an alternative

Oracle BI Suite EE

Collecting Usage Tracking Data with Metric Extensions in EM12c

In my previous post [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2013/11/building-alerts-in-em12c-with-obiee-usage-tracking-data/] I demonstrated how OBIEE’s Usage Tracking data could be monitored by EM12c through a Service Test. It was pointed out to me that an alternative for collecting the same data would be the use of EM12c’s

Oracle BI Suite EE

Building alerts in EM12c with OBIEE Usage Tracking data

Introduction Enterprise Manager 12c is the latest and greatest incarnation of Oracle’s toolset for Enterprise Management (the clue’s in the name), of which Cloud Control (neé Grid Control) is one of the key tools. It can be used for a unified overview of disparate services including servers, databases,

Oracle BI Suite EE

OBIEE "Act As" (ActAs) vs "Impersonate"

There will come a point in the lifecycle of an OBIEE deployment when one user will need to access another user’s account. This may be to cover whilst a colleague is on leave, or a support staff trying to reproduce a reported error. Password sharing aside (it's

Oracle BI Suite EE

Tips and Tricks for the OBIEE linux sysadmin

As well as industry-leading solution architecture, consultancy and training on Oracle BI, here at Rittman Mead we also provide expert services in implementation and support of such systems. In this blog I want to share some of the things I find useful when working with OBIEE on a Linux system.

Technical

TimesTen and OBIEE port conflicts on Exalytics

Introduction Whilst helping a customer set up their Exalytics server the other day I hit an interesting problem. Not interesting as in hey-this-will-cure-cancer, or oooh-big-data-buzzword interesting, or even interesting as in someone-has-had-a-baby [https://twitter.com/andybolton/status/359568006545809408/photo/1], but nonetheless, interesting if you like learning about the internals

Oracle BI Suite EE

The Rittman Mead scripts github repository

Here at RittmanMead we’re big fans of working smarter, not harder. One of the ways we do this is not re-inventing the wheel. There’s only so many ways that products such as OBI and ODI can be implemented, and we’ve probably seen most of them. The corollary

Technical

Learn OBIEE 11.1.1.7 from the experts!

Here at RittmanMead we write and deliver our own courses on Oracle's products including OBIEE, ODI, OWB and EPM. Our trainers also consult and deliver projects, meaning that our training is based on real-world usage of the products. We offer public courses in UK, US, India and Australia,

Oracle BI Suite EE

Patch OBIEE the quicker way - with OPatch napply

Since 2012, Oracle's patching strategy for OBIEE has been Bundle Patches released approximately once a month. These bundle patches are usually cumulative ones, applied on top of the .0 version of the product. Patching is done through Oracle’s standard OPatch tool, which manages the application of patches

Oracle BI Suite EE

Using OBIEE SampleApp 305 in VM Fusion

Oracle distribute the new OBIEE SampleApp [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html] as a VirtualBox image, but it is dead easy to run it on VM Fusion instead. Here’s how: 1. Unzip the SampleApp archive files [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html] , and

Oracle BI Suite EE

Testing aggregate navigation on OBIEE and Exalytics

One of OBIEE’s many great strengths is aggregate navigation; the ability to choose from a list of possible tables the one which will probably give the optimal performance for a given user query. Users are blissfully unaware of which particular table their query is being satisfied from, since aggregate

Technical

Incremental refresh of Exalytics aggregates using native BI Server capabilities

One of the key design features of the Exalytics In-Memory Machine [http://www.oracle.com/uk/solutions/ent-performance-bi/business-intelligence/exalytics-bi-machine/overview/index.html] is the use of aggregates (pre-calculated summary data), held in the TimesTen In-Memory database. Out of the box (“OotB”) these aggregates are built through the OBIEE tool,

Technical

Upgrading OBIEE to 11.1.1.7

OBIEE 11.1.1.7 was released earlier this week, and brings with it the usual delights and challenges of the Fusion Middleware (FMW) platform. Because OBIEE is part of Fusion Middleware, and because it is made up of OBIEE-specific components (such as the BI Server) and FMW-generic components (such

Technical

Performance and OBIEE - Summary and FAQ

This article is the final one in a series about OBIEE and performance. You can find the previous posts here: 1. Introduction [/2013/03/performance-and-obiee-introduction] 2. Test - Define [/2013/03/performance-and-obiee-test-define] 3. Test - Design [/2013/03/performance-and-obiee-test-design] 4. Test - Build [/2013/03/performance-and-obiee-test-build] 5. Execute [/2013/03/

Technical

Performance and OBIEE - part VII - Optimising OBIEE performance ("Tuning")

Potato potato? When I first drafted this blog post, I gave it the title “Tuning”, rather than “Optimising”. Tuning is the word used so often in the context of performance, but it can actually be a bit misleading. A system that has fundamental design flaws doesn’t need “tuning” -

Technical

Performance and OBIEE - part VI - Analysing results

This part of the OBIEE performance cycle is the one which arguably matters most. Having defined what we’re going to test, built a means by which to test it, and executed that test, we now need to sift through the tealeaves and work out what the data we collected

Technical

Performance and OBIEE - part V - Execute and Measure

Having designed [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2013/03/performance-and-obiee-test-design] and built [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2013/03/performance-and-obiee-test-build] our tests, we now move on to looking at the real nitty-gritty - how we run them and collect data. The data that we collect is absolutely crucial in getting

Technical

Performance and OBIEE - part I - Introduction

Performance matters. Performance really matters. And performance can actually be easy, but it takes some thinking about. It can't be brute-forced, or learnt by rote, or solved in a list of Best Practices, Silver Bullets and fairy dust. The problem with performance is that it is too easy

Technical

Performance and OBIEE - part IV - Test - Build

This article is the fourth in a series about performance and OBIEE. In previously articles I described how test design should be approached, and in this article I explain in detail how to use some of the tools available to build the tests. JMeter JMeter is open-source software maintained by