Catalog Manager - point release upgrade

I tried to open OBIEE 11.1.1.6.9 catalog manager using OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1 client tools, but I get following error thrown back

Unable to conned to OracleBI Presentation Server. Please check if Presentation ServerfWebServer is running and URL is corredly typed http:fI< host>/analytics/saw.dll. {urn:f/oracle.bi.webservices/private/v8)SAWSessionService is not a valid service. Valid services are: (urn://oracle.bi.webservices/v6}SAWSessionService,,{urn:f/oracle.bi.webservices/v6}W ebCatalogService1(urn://oracle.bi.webservices/vt}XmlViewService,(urn://oracle.bi.we bservices/v6}SecuritySei-vice,(urn://oracle.bi.webservices/v6}ConditionService,{urn:// oracle.bi.webservicesfv6}HtmlViewService,{urn://oracle.bi.webservicesfv6}IBotService ,{urn://oracle.bi.webservices/v6}JobManagementService,{urn:f/oracle.bi.webservices/ Æ}MetadataService,{urn://oracle.bi.webservices/v6}ReplicationService{urn://oracle.b i.webservicesfv6}ReportEditingService

 

Looks like even though its just a point release, yet we will  have to go through upgrade assistant utility (ua.bat) in order to move to new version. Note, this is not true for RPD version. When I open the RPD version, it pops open with no issues. When saving the RPD, it gives a message that you are upgrading version of the RPD file, and once upgraded, it cannot be opened in older version of AdminTool (which makes perfect sense. Anyways it’s a good idea to work on a copy of RPD file to revert back just in case).

 

 

 

Catalog Manager does not launch / open in version 11.1.1.7.1 (and 11.1.1.7.0)

Issue:

I was unable to launch catalog manager for 11.1.1.7.0 / 11.1.1.7.1 version of OBIEE. I installed Catalog Manager using client tools installation for 64bit machine.

 

The full path where OBIEE 64bit client tools were installed was:

C:\Program Files\Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus Client Tools\

 

The AdminTool works fine but catalog manager does not open. When I launch CatalogManager from programs menu, nothing happens.

I went to the following path using windows explorer:

C:\Program Files\Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus Client Tools\oraclebi\orahome\bifoundation\web\catalogmanager

and manually executed  - runcat.cmd 

And got error

Solution:

Then I edited the  runcat.cmd file and specified the actual path for variable $USER_INSTALL_DIR$. Note since the path has space in it, we have to provide path in quotes. This appears to be known bug for 11.1.1.7.x version of OBIEE.

The above should resolve the issue for most. If you still face issue, the easiest thing to do would be to uninstall the client tools and reinstall it under C:\obiee folder instead of c:\program files OR with any folder which doesn’t have a space in its path.

OBIEE 11g Catalog Manager Extract Report

Last year I posted an article about Catalog manager export in 10g version, below it the link for anyone's reference.

http://obiee911.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-to-find-rpd-column-usage-in-bi.html


There was an issue in this export in 10g, i.e. export would sometime insert uneven number of 'Tabs' as seperation for columns. This would mess up when opening the export in excel, as columns would get misaligned and make analysis difficult.

Looks like Oracle has made some fixes to handle this in 11g. I saw option to make export excel compatible:

After using this option, I have so far not faced any issue of misalignment, hopefully the issue is resolved for good!!. This is a big achievement according to me, as it helps us developers as well as business analysits for mapping the columns usage in the reports and dashboards.

The catalog manager report extract provides a list of presentation columns used in the reports, and similar report created from RPD admin tool, can provide mapping from presentation layer all the way to physical column name. This is a big help for Subject Area any clean up excercises or when making a decision on column changes which impacts multiple dashboards.

For your info, I tried this on OBIEE 11.1.1.6.6 version.



Copying Items OBIEE in My Folders to another machine by administrator

We have several occasions when a user is transferred from a department to another and his work needs to be handed over to new person. All the work is often saved under users My Folder.

Well there is only one way to access user’s My Folders but administrator, and that is using catalog manager in ‘offline’ mode. I don’t know why it won’t let you access in online mode..

Catalog report file issue

When using Catalog Manager export feature, it creates a tab delimited file. Unfortunately, if some of the columns formulas have tab too, while converting to excel will throw off the tab delimitation. Does anyone have a work around for this?

How to find RPD column usage in the BI reports?

A column could have been used in several reports spread across the OBIEE dashboards, and the question as to where exactly it is being referred is the one many business analysts like to be answered, and becomes more relevant when a change has to be made to physical column and impact analysis needs to be done for production reports. While there are several third party tools that build the complete column lineage, from dashboard to subject area, to physical column, and then to column in source system, I found OBIEE also has something nifty that can be used to answer many questions of not all.

Try this,

-          open catalog manager (offline mode preferred for faster response).

-          Select folder /shared (or whatever you are trying to explore)

-          Navigate to ‘tools > create reports’ and viola you are at the screen that will let you build the column mapping report

-          Select the columns you need in the report, specify the output report name with path, and hit OK.

-          Be patient, depending on the catalog size, this runs for a long time, in my case a good 20 mins, as we had several prebuilt dashboard as well.

This process will map the reports, you can run it again to have another output for dashboards. To go a step further, export the two outputs to access or a database, and you could possibly join to now map dashboard to column names. Now if you are thinking what I am thinking, you can join it to RPD extract to go upto the physical column name. Pretty neat…  huh?

Catalog Manager Does not open in offline mode

I don't know when exactly the issue was started, but we had recently upgraded our platform from 10.1.3.3.1 to 10.1.3.4.1. We also installed a patch for date format issue that started coming after upgrade. We installed patch p8599681_101341_WINNT.zip for bug# 8599681.

When I was trying to migrate catalog to new version of BI Apps, I had to use Catalog Manager in offline mode and it did not open, online was working although. I checked the log file for errors:

D:\OracleBI\web\catalogmanager\workspace\.metadata\.log

Following error were logged every time I tried to open webcat in offline mode:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.ui 4 0 2009-12-22 15:11:46.694
!MESSAGE no perfapi in java.library.path
!STACK 0
java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no perfapi in java.library.path
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1682)
at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:823)
at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1030)
at com.siebel.analytics.web.catalogmanager.JNIConnection.init(JNIConnection.java:62)
at com.siebel.analytics.web.catalogmanager.JNIConnection.<init>(JNIConnection.java:22)
at com.siebel.analytics.web.catalogmanager.OfflineConnectionManager.<init>(OfflineConnectionManager.java:17)
at com.siebel.analytics.web.catalogmanager.CatalogmanagerPlugin.setOnline(CatalogmanagerPlugin.java:105)
at com.siebel.analytics.web.catalogmanager.dialogs.OpenCatalogDialog.okPressed(OpenCatalogDialog.java:195)
at org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.Dialog.buttonPressed(Dialog.java:409)
at org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.Dialog$2.widgetSelected(Dialog.java:556)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.TypedListener.handleEvent(TypedListener.java:90)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(EventTable.java:66)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:843)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Display.java:3080)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Display.java:2713)
at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.runEventLoop(Window.java:809)
at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.open(Window.java:787)
at com.siebel.analytics.web.catalogmanager.actions.OpenCatalogAction.doRun(OpenCatalogAction.java:43)
at com.siebel.analytics.web.catalogmanager.actions.CMAction.run(CMAction.java:92)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.Action.runWithEvent(Action.java:996)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ActionContributionItem.handleWidgetSelection(ActionContributionItem.java:538)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ActionContributionItem.access$2(ActionContributionItem.java:488)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ActionContributionItem$5.handleEvent(ActionContributionItem.java:400)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(EventTable.java:66)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:843)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Display.java:3080)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Display.java:2713)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench.runEventLoop(Workbench.java:1699)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench.runUI(Workbench.java:1663)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench.createAndRunWorkbench(Workbench.java:367)
at org.eclipse.ui.PlatformUI.createAndRunWorkbench(PlatformUI.java:143)
at com.siebel.analytics.web.catalogmanager.CatalogManager.run(CatalogManager.java:170)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.runtime.PlatformActivator$1.run(PlatformActivator.java:226)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:376)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:163)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:334)
at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:278)
at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:973)
at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.main(Main.java:948)


Next, I tried to uninstall the patch for bug fix. To my surprise catalog manager was working. Another example of shabby bug fix by Oracle. This bug fix has two brand new bugs. First messing the catalog manager offline function, and second, dashboard date default by repository variable throws error in underlying reports (session variable work fine).