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Oracle® Business Intelligence Beans

Deploying BI Beans Applications

Version 10g (10.1.2)

January 2005

Oracle supports the deployment of applications that are built with Oracle Business Intelligence Beans (hereinafter referred to as "BI Beans") to a variety of environments. The following sources provide information about deploying a BI Beans HTML-client application to releases of Oracle Application Server:

• For deploying to Oracle Application Server 10g (10.1.2) -- Refer to BI Beans Help, which is available in JDeveloper.

• For deploying to Oracle Application Server 10g (9.0.4) -- Refer to Setting Up a Separate OC4J Instance for BI Beans Applications, which is available on the Oracle Business Intelligence product page of Oracle Technology Network (http://www.oracle.com/technology/).

This document provides information about deploying BI Beans applications to additional environments as follows:

• For HTML-client applications, you can deploy to any of the following J2EE servers:

  • BEA WebLogic Server

  • IBM WebSphere Application Server

  • JBoss Application Server

  • Tomcat

• For Java-client applications, you can deploy to Java Web Start.

Deploying a BI Beans application to BEA WebLogic Server 8.1

Predeployment tasks for WebLogic Server

To prepare for deployment to WebLogic Server in an exploded archive directory, perform the following tasks:

1. In JDeveloper, create a new WAR deployment profile (for example, webapp.war) that includes the following libraries under the Contributors node for WEB-INF/lib:

   • BIBeans Runtime

   • BC4J Runtime

   • OLAP API

   • Oracle JDBC

2. To create the exploded archive directory, use the following steps:

   1. Create a new directory for your application under bea_home/weblogic81/server/bin where bea_home represents the directory in which WebLogic Server is installed. In this document, the name appdir is used for this directory.

   2. Copy the WAR file for the application from JDeveloper project to appdir.

   3. Expand the WAR file in appdir. (For example, you can use the command: jar -xvf webapp.war.)

   4. Delete the WAR file from appdir.

Deployment using the Administration Console

Perform the following steps to complete the deployment using the WebLogic Administration Console:

1. Log on to the Administration Console and select the domain that you want to work in.

2. In the left panel of the console, expand Deployments.

3. Under Deployments, right-click Web Applications Module and select Deploy a new Web Applications Module.

4. Navigate to your application's directory (appdir), select the button next to the directory name, and click Target Module.

5. In the Deploy a Web Applications Module page, enter a name for the application. The default name is the name of the application's directory (appdir). Examples in this document use appname for the application name.
   
   Important: The name that you enter here becomes the context-root for the application.

6. Click Deploy. The console then displays the Deploy panel, which shows the status of deployment. Eventually the status "Success" is displayed.
   

Finally, you can prepare WebLogic Server for running your BI Beans application by configuring this J2EE server. For guidelines on constructing the URL to run your application, refer to Starting a JSP or UIX application in a J2EE server.

Deploying a BI Beans application to IBM WebSphere 5.1

Predeployment tasks for WebSphere Application Server

To prepare for deployment to WebSphere Application Server, perform the following tasks:

1. In JDeveloper, create a new WAR deployment profile that includes the following libraries under the Contributors node for WEB-INF/lib:

   • BIBeans Runtime

   • BC4J Runtime

   • OLAP API

   • Oracle JDBC

2. Transfer the WAR file to a directory that is not included in the WebSphere installation. This directory can be on the machine that is running WebSphere.

Deployment using the Administrative Console

Perform the following steps to complete the deployment using the Administrative Console:

1. Launch WebSphere Application Server and log in to the Administrative Console.

2. In the left frame of the browser, expand the Applications node and select Install New Application.

3. Under Preparing for the application installation, perform the following steps:

   1. Select the Local path or Server path, as appropriate, and enter the full path to the WAR file that contains the BI Beans application.

   2. Specify a context root such as mybeansapp.

   3. Choose Next.

4. Accept the defaults and choose Next.

5. If the Application Security warnings page appears, you can add permissions and choose Next.

6. In the Step 1: Provide options to perform the installation page, you can accept defaults or select options as appropriate. Then, choose Next.

7. In the Step 2: Map virtual hosts for web modules page, select an appropriate virtual host. You can accept the default and choose Next.

8. In the Step 3: Map modules to application servers page, accept the default.

9. In the Step 4: Summary page, verify that the install options are correct and choose Finish. Eventually you should receive a message that your application was installed successfully.

10. To save the configuration of WebSphere, click Save to Master Configuration and then Save.

Finally, you can prepare WebSphere Application Server for running BI Beans applications by configuring this J2EE server. For guidelines on constructing the URL to run your application, refer to Starting a JSP or UIX application in a J2EE server.

Deploying a BI Beans application to JBoss Application Server 3.2.4

Predeployment tasks for JBoss Application Server

To prepare for deployment to JBoss Application Server, perform the following tasks:

1. In JDeveloper, create a new WAR deployment profile that includes the following libraries under the Contributors node for WEB-INF/lib:

   • BIBeans Runtime

   • BC4J Runtime

   • OLAP API

   • Oracle JDBC

2. Transfer the WAR file to the directory jboss_root/server/default/deploy where jboss_root represents the root directory for the JBoss installation.

Deployment to JBoss

Start JBoss Application Server. The application deploys automatically.

Finally, you can prepare JBoss Application Server for running your BI Beans application by configuring this J2EE server. For guidelines on constructing the URL to run your application, refer to Starting a JSP or UIX application in a J2EE server.

Note: If you deploy a BI Beans 10g (10.1.2) application to an instance of JBoss Application Server that already has applications from a previous release of BI Beans, then you might encounter a class loading problem at runtime. To resolve this issue, deploy applications from the latest release of BI Beans to a separate instance of JBoss Application Server.

Deploying a BI Beans application to Tomcat 5

Predeployment task for Tomcat

In JDeveloper, create a new WAR deployment profile that includes the following libraries under the Contributors node for WEB-INF/lib:

• BIBeans Runtime

• BC4J Runtime

• OLAP API

• Oracle JDBC

Deployment to Tomcat

Perform the following steps to complete the deployment to Tomcat using the Web Application Manager:

1. Launch the Tomcat Web Application Manager by entering a URL (such as http://host:port/manager/html) and log in.

2. Under the Deploy section of the page, use the following steps:

   1. Enter the Context Path for this Web application (for example, mywebapp).

   2. Select the WAR file to upload.

   3. Click Deploy.

3. Watch for the deployment to complete. At that time, the application will be listed under the Applications section of the page.

Note: For more information about Web Application Manager, refer to the html-manager-howto.html document in Tomcat documentation.

If Tomcat Web Application Manager is not available, then the Web application can be deployed manually, but this requires a server restart. To accomplish this, perform the following steps:

1. Copy the Web application WAR file to the tomcat_root/webapps directory, where tomcat_root is the directory of the Tomcat installation.

2. Restart the Tomcat server.

Consult Tomcat documentation for additional ways to deploy applications.

Finally, you can prepare Tomcat for running your BI Beans application by configuring this J2EE server. For guidelines on constructing the URL to run your application, refer to Starting a JSP or UIX application in a J2EE server.

Configuration for a J2EE Server

This section contains common configuration requirements for deploying a BI Beans HTML-client application to a J2EE server other than Oracle Application Server. Before you start the J2EE server, perform the following configuration tasks:

1. Ensure that the J2EE server classpath environment variable does not reference BI Beans or its dependent JAR files.
   

2. For UNIX machines, to provide for image generation, do one of the following depending on the JDK version:

   • For applications that use JDK 1.4, run in headless mode by setting the following system option for the Java VM of the WebLogic Server: -Djava.awt.headless=true

   • For applications that do not use JDK 1.4, set the DISPLAY environment variable and ensure that X Server is running on the middle tier. One option for obtaining X Server is to use X Virtual Frame Buffer (XVFB), which can run in "headless" environments -- that is, on machines that lack frame buffer hardware. You can download XVFB for Sun Solaris from the Oracle Application Server product page, Utilities section, on Oracle Technology Network (http://www.oracle.com/technology/ias/ias_utilities.html). XVFB for other platforms must be downloaded from the platform vendor's Web site.
     

3. (Optional) If you want your application to use the Oracle JDBC Thick (OCI) driver rather than the Oracle JDBC Thin (Pure Java) driver, and you are using the default pluggable connection drivers that ship with BI Beans, then it is important that you use JDBC jars that are compatible with the OCI driver on the J2EE server. To ensure this compatibility, use the following procedure:

   1. Copy the JDBC drivers from oracle_home/jdbc/lib (where oracle_home represents the directory in which the Oracle Database Client or Server is installed on the same machine as the J2EE server) to WEB-INF/lib of the deployed application thus replacing the application's JDBC drivers.

   2. In the J2EE server, set the following environment variables:

      • For UNIX
        ORACLE_HOME: Specify the full path to the Oracle Database installation on the machine that is running the J2EE server.
        PATH: Specify the first value in this variable as $ORACLE_HOME/bin.
LD_LIBRARY_PATH: Specify the first value in this variable as $ORACLE_HOME/lib.
ORA_NLS33: Specify the path to NLS as $ORACLE_HOME/ocommon/nls/admin/data.


      • For Windows
        ORACLE_HOME: Specify the full path to the Oracle Database installation on the machine that is running the J2EE server.
PATH: Specify the first value in this variable as %ORACLE_HOME%\bin.
        LIB: Specify the first value in this variable as %ORACLE_HOME%\lib.
        

   3. Edit the application configuration file as follows:
      

      • Locate the application configuration file in the application's WEB-INF/classes. The default name that is assigned to this file by JDeveloper uses the format ProjectxBIConfigy.xml, where x represents the numeric ID of the project and y represents the numeric ID of the configuration file within the project.

      • Change the value of JdbcDriverType to "oci" (when using Oracle Database 10g) or to "oci8" (when using Oracle9i Release 2 database) for the connection elements (either <PersistenceConnection> or <OLAP Connection> or both) that are to use the OCI driver.

Configuration of the J2EE server for BI Beans applications is completed. You can start your application.

Starting a JSP or UIX application in a J2EE server

To start a JSP application from a Web browser, enter the application URL using the following guidelines:

• The format of the URL is: http://<web-server-name>:<port>/<context-path>/<servlet-path>/<path-info>

• The following substitutions are used in the URL:

  • <web_server_name> -- The network host name of the production machine.

  • <port> -- The port number of the Web server.

  • <context-path> -- The application context path that you specified during deployment.

  • <servlet-path> -- The path section that directly corresponds to the mapping.

  • <path-info> -- The part of the request path that is not part of the context-path or the servlet-path.

• The following samples demonstrate URLs that you might use for different types of applications. These samples assume that 7001 represents the port number of the J2EE server and that appname represents the application context-path.

  • JSP sample:
    http://myMachine.oracle.com:7001/appname/myApplicationPage1.jsp

  • UIX sample:
    http://myMachine.oracle.com:7001/appname/myApplicationPage1.uix

  The information about starting JSP or UIX applications is completed.

Deploying a BI Beans Java-client application to Java Web Start

You can use Java Web Start to deploy a BI Beans Java-client application. References in this section apply to version 1.4.2; check the Sun Web site for updates. You can access documentation for version 1.4.2 from the Sun Web site (http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/developers.html).

The following procedure outlines the steps for deploying to Java Web Start:

1. Configure your Web server for Java Web Start, as described in the Java Web Start Developer's Guide (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/jws/developersguide/contents.html).

2. Use JDeveloper to deploy the Java-client application, as usual. In the deployment profile, you must:

   • Deploy the application as a JAR file.

   • Include the following libraries: BIBEANS Runtime, BC4J Runtime, and Oracle JDBC.

3. You must sign the application JAR file. For more information, see the Solaris documentation about signing (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/tooldocs/solaris/jarsigner.html) or the Windows documentation about signing (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/tooldocs/windows/jarsigner.html).

4. Generate the JNLP file (the configuration file for Java Web Start) for the application, then set all permissions for the <security> element.

5. Still in the JNLP file, set the <j2se version> element to 1.3. For example:

   <resources> <j2se version="1.3"/> <jar .../> </resources>

   Note: This step is necessary to work around a bug in Java Web Start with J2SE 1.4. If you must use J2SE 1.4, then you must use JDK version 1.4.2 or higher, which fixes this bug.

6. Copy the signed JAR file and the JNLP file to your Web server.

7. Create an HTML page that opens the JNLP file.

The process of deploying a BI Beans Java-client application to Java Web Start is completed.

Copyright © 2005 Oracle Corporation. All Rights Reserved.