TECHNOLOGY: Business Intelligence

As Published In July/August 2011

Upgrade to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g

Take advantage of the latest OLAP analysis, mapping, KPI, and scorecard features.

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g introduces several new features that will be of interest to organizations using the previous (10g) release of the product. An overhauled and simplified user interface, integration of the Oracle Fusion Middleware MapViewer feature, key performance indicators (KPIs) and scorecards, and the new Action Framework are all new areas of functionality in the new release that I have covered in this column over the past few issues of Oracle Magazine. So you’ve seen the new features, and now you want to upgrade to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g—how do you go about it?

Luckily, Oracle has thought about the upgrade process right from the development of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g, by including in the release the easy-to-use Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant, which makes upgrading your Oracle Business Intelligence Repository, Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Catalog, and other metadata a simple process.

This column details how to upgrade the Sample Sales repository and Web catalog metadata, designed for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 10g, to work with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g. You can download this sample data set from Oracle Technology Network. 

Planning for the Upgrade

As with any other upgrade, you first need to consider the hardware, software, networking, and operating system environments you are upgrading from and to. Your first resources for these considerations should be the product documentation, in particular Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Release 1 (11.1.1), which describes the upgrade process in detail, including information about which components are automatically upgraded, and Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Release 1 (11.1.1), which details the hardware, operating system, and networking requirements for the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g release. 

After you have reviewed the documentation, install the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g software. Before you start the install, however, run the Repository Creation Utility to create the supporting database schema for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g, which brings together all the separate tables and schemas used in earlier releases. After you have run the Repository Creation Utility, run the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g installer, which copies the required product files onto your server and then configures Oracle WebLogic Server to create your Oracle Business Intelligence domain. 

Upgrading Your Metadata

With Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g installed, you can now use the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant to upgrade—and upload—your Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 10g metadata to the new environment. The Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant, part of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, is located in your [middleware_home]/Oracle_BI1/bin/directory and is named either ua.bat (for Microsoft Windows installations) or ua.sh (for UNIX or Linux installations). The Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant takes you step-by-step through the process and upgrades the following business intelligence metadata:

• Your repository (RPD file) and Web catalog, including users and groups in the repository

• The Oracle Business Intelligence scheduler schema

• The Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher report repository

• The Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher scheduler schema

The Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant produces an upgraded, working business intelligence system at the end of this process. Because the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant places the upgraded repository and Web catalog online and copies any users within your Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 10g repository into the Oracle WebLogic Server LDAP server as part of the process, you should test the process in your development and test environment before running it in production. In addition, the system you upgrade must not be clustered, so you should revert to a single node without a cluster controller configured before you begin the upgrade process.  

Using the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant

In this example, you will upgrade the repository and Web catalog objects provided as part of the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 10g Sample Sales data set. Download bit.ly/m3Kuw, and unzip the sample data to a directory on the server on which Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g is installed. 

First, check that your Oracle WebLogic Admin Server and Managed Server are running by using your Web browser to open the Oracle WebLogic Administration Console Web page at localhost:7001/em, and if the page is not available, start these components by using the supplied startup scripts. Now, in your file system, navigate to the directory where the Upgrade Assistant is installed, start the utility, and then follow these steps: 

1. With the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant displayed, review the Welcome message and click Next to continue.

2. On the Specify Operation screen, select the Upgrade Oracle BI RPD and Presentation Catalog option and click Next to proceed.

3. On the Specify Source Options screen, check the Upgrade Repository (RPD) checkbox and click Browse to navigate to the location in the file system where you saved the Sample Sales repository file (samplesales.rpd).

4. After you have selected the repository file, enter the Administrator User Name and Administrator Password for the existing repository file. For the Sample Sales repository, this is typically Administrator/Administrator.

5. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g repositories no longer have hard-coded administrator accounts within them; instead, you will use a repository password to secure access to them. In the Enter a Password which will be used to secure the upgraded RPD section, enter the password (such as welcome1) twice to provide an initial password for the new repository file.

6. To upgrade the Sample Sales Web catalog, check the Upgrade Catalog checkbox and click Browse—next to the Catalog Directory and Catalog Deliveries Directory text boxes—to select the Sample Sales Web catalog and Deliveries catalog, respectively, as shown in Figure 1.
    

 

Figure 1: The filled-in Specify Source Details dialog box of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant

 

7. Click Next to proceed to the Specify WebLogic Server screen. Enter a number (typically 7001) for Port, and fill in the Username and Password fields of the Oracle WebLogic Server administration account. Click Next to proceed.

8. On the Examining Components screen, check the Succeeded status and click Next and then Upgrade to start the upgrade process.

9. The upgrade process typically takes less than a minute for the Sample Sales repository and Web catalog but can take longer for more-complex sets of metadata. Once the process is complete, check that the upgrade status is Succeeded, review any warning or error messages, and click Next and then Close to exit the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant.

If you are upgrading your own business intelligence metadata, you can use other options provided by the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant to upgrade your scheduler metadata, Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher repository, and Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher scheduler. For now, though, let’s take a look at what’s been upgraded and any further postupgrade steps you need to perform to complete the process. 

Accessing the Upgraded Metadata

If you are upgrading your own business intelligence system by using the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant, you need to ensure that the TNSNAMES file within the [middleware_home]\Oracle_BI1\network\admin directory on your new server includes entries that correspond with the database connect strings referenced in the upgraded repository. For now, though, let’s first use the Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool to view the upgraded repository.

1. From your Microsoft Windows Start menu, select Start -> Programs -> Oracle Business Intelligence -> BI Administration.

2. When the Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool opens, select File -> Open -> Online and enter the following details when prompted: 

   Repository Password: <the repository password you entered earlier>
   User: <your Oracle WebLogic Server administration username>
   Password: <your Oracle WebLogic Server administration password>

   With the information entered, click Open to open the repository online. You will then see your upgraded business intelligence repository within the Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool.

3. The Sample Sales repository and Web catalog you upgraded came with a sample set of data in XML format, for display in dashboards. To make this data available for queries, locate the Sample_Sales_V1.3_Dataset.zip archive file from the Sample Sales download detailed earlier in this article and unzip it to the following location (you will need to create the directories shown in boldface type).  

    

   %MIDDLEWARE_HOME\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIServerComponent\
                   coreapplication_obis1\server\Sample 

    

    

   Then, using the Oracle Business Intelligence Administration Tool, select Manage -> Variables and locate the BIEE_HOME static repository variable. Double-click it to show the Static Repository Variable properties page, and update the variable initializer to reflect the path detailed above, without the additional (new) directories. For example 

    

   'C:\Middleware\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIServerComponent\
                   coreapplication_obis1'

    

    

   Select File -> Save to save your repository, and run the consistency checker.

4. Finally, you need to restart Oracle Business Intelligence Server. To do this, open your Web browser and navigate to Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control, using the URL http://localhost:7001/em (adjust as required for your installation). When prompted, enter the username and password of the Oracle WebLogic Server administration user, and then select Business Intelligence -> coreapplication from the menu. 

   When the core application screen is displayed, select Capacity Management -> Availability from the tabs and subtabs, click BI Servers, and click Restart Selected.

You can now access your upgraded Web catalog. Using your Web browser, navigate to the Oracle Business Intelligence home page (such as http://localhost:9704/analytics), enter the Oracle WebLogic Server administration username and password, and then select Dashboards -> Sample Sales -> 02 History and Benching. You will see one of the Sample Sales dashboards running within an Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g environment, as shown in Figure 2.
 

Figure 2: An upgraded Oracle Business Intelligence dashboard
 

After the Upgrade

Although the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant upgrades your metadata, any configuration changes you applied to your Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 10g environment that you want to reapply to your Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g environment will need to be applied manually with Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. For example, you may want to enable or disable query caching or add more instances of Oracle Business Intelligence Server or other system components to scale up or scale out your installation. Also, some configuration changes require you to manually edit the Oracle Business Intelligence Server NQSConfig.INI and Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Server InstanceConfig.XML configuration files. Check Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) for those business intelligence components that are not upgraded by the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant, including CSS and other user interface configuration files. 

Although Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g adopts the Oracle Fusion Middleware security model, your existing initialization blocks, LDAP directory connections, and Web groups will still work with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g. You may, however, want to consider upgrading these to use the Oracle Fusion Middleware security framework, to take advantage of the authentication, authorization, and directory integration features provided by Oracle WebLogic Server. Similarly, you may now want to revisit your analyses (the new term for requests), dashboards, and other business intelligence objects to take advantage of the new features and capabilities provided by the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g release, such as the pivot table, which uses the new hierarchical columns feature shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: An Oracle Business Intelligence pivot table 
 

Summary

Upgrading an Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 10g system to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g is a straightforward process when you use the Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant. It automatically upgrades your repository, Web catalog, Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher reports, and scheduler schemas. Once the upgrade is complete, you can take advantage of new Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g features, including online analytical processing (OLAP) analysis capabilities, mapping, KPIs, scorecards, and the new systems management framework built around Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Enterprise Manager. 

Mark Rittman is an Oracle ACE Director, cofounder of Rittman Mead, and an executive board member of the Oracle Development Tools User Group. He maintains a blog at rittmanmead.com.

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