OBIEE +

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Oracle Data Integrator 10.1.3.5 – Connectivity to Open LDAP of Shared Services Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on June 9, 2009 One of the features of Oracle Data Integrator is its ability to connect to a lot of disparate data sources using JDBC. One such feature is its ability to expose any LDAP directory as a relational source. If you are on earlier releases of Hyperion EPM like 9.3, where there is no out of the box SSO and authentication/authorization capability to BI EE with open LDAP, one approach is to configure BI EE to authenticate against OpenLDAP and then get the user-group information from some other custom table(or by using the DBMS_LDAP package). I had shown how to configure BI EE to authenticate against OpenLDAP here. Since BI EE cannot automatically pick up the groups directly from OpenLDAP in prior releases, one way is to get the user-group related information from OpenLDAP and then populate that into a set of custom tables. Then BI EE can be used to get these groups from the custom tables. The architecture would look something like this

Lets look at what it takes to setup the OpenLDAP connectivity from ODI. As a first step lets first log into Topology Manager and create a new LDAP connection. Choose the “Sunopsis JDBC Driver for LDAP” as the JDBC driver

And then choose the JDBC URL.

To enable the connectivity to any LDAP directory, the password would have to be passed in an encoded format. To encode the password, run the below command from a command prompt. 1 java -cp {OracleDI}\oracledi\drivers\snpsldapo.jar 2 com.sunopsis.ldap.jdbc.driver.SnpsLdapEncoder 3

Copy the above encoded password. In the JDBC URL, enter the below URL 1

jdbc:snps:ldap?ldap_url=ldap://localhost:28089/ &ldap_password=KILAKMNJKKLHKJJJDDGPGPDB

2 &ldap_basedn=dc=css,dc=Hyperion,dc=com

The basedn above is what would be used for searching all the users, groups, roles etc. In the Data Server definition, enter the username as root user who has traversing access to the entire OpenLDAP directory

You should be able to test the connection to the LDAP from here. The root user of OpenLDAP is different from the admin user. In fact, the admin user’s original cn is not admin. It is 911. admin is the givenName attribute of the 911 user. The root user password is by default root. One behavior that i noticed across the releases, was the fact that in 9.3 release admin user had the traverse directory privilege. But in EPM 11, 911 user does not have the traverse directory privilege. In my case, the default root password did not work. So, i had to reset the root user password from shared services.

As a side note, if you feel that shared services web console does not give you the actual LDAP directory structure, i would recommend a free LDAP client like JXplorer. The screenshot of shared services OpenLDAP using this free client is given below

Now, if you go to the Designer and reverse engineer this data source using selective reverse.

This should convert the entire directory structure to a relational format. From this point onwards, its a matter of building the interfaces and loading the custom user-group tables. Though the setup of the above is pretty straight forward, this can come in very handy especially when you are trying to consolidate/report against multiple user sources. Posted in All Posts, EPM, Hyperion Shared Services, OBI EE Plus, Oracle Data Integrator | 1 Comment »

Oracle Data Integrator 10.1.3.5 – Using OBI EE as a Data Source – Using BI EE JDBC Driver Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on June 7, 2009 In a prior blog entry here, i had shown how to use BI Server as a data source for loading data from Essbase into custom tables. That approach basically used the Sun ODBC-JDBC bridge which in most cases has bad performance. Today we shall see how to use the native BI Server JDBC driver to connect to BI Server and in-turn use that for loading Essbase Data into a custom table. One of the major advantages of ODI is the fact that it can be used to connect to any data source that has a valid jdbc driver. In order to make ODI to use the BI EE JDBC driver, we need to make the JDBC driver (jar file) of the BI Server to be accessible by ODI. The jar file(bijdbc14.jar) of BI Server can be obtained from the BI Publisher web server installation folder {OracleBI}\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\applications\xmlpserver\xmlpserver\WEB-INF\lib. The main reason why we are going to the BIP folder structure is because BIP uses the JDBC driver of BI Server to do reporting on BI EE metadata.

The above screenshot basically provides the database driver class and the connection string of the JDBC driver of BI EE. Now copy this driver jar file to {OracleDI}\oracledi\drivers directory.

Now open up Topology Manager and create a new Universal Data Server. Use the above driver class and connection in the JDBC URLs.

Ensure that you are able to test the connection using Administrator username and password.

Now, in the physical schema choose any subject area in the Presentation Layer.

Now once this is done, go to the Designer and create a Project. And import the necessary Knowledge Modules that i had shown in the last blog entry. Since we are using JDBC, we can do a selective reverse of all the necessary tables.

But be aware that, BI EE supports multiple presentation tables with the same name across subject areas. But ODI currently does not support multiple table import with the same name (as there is no BI EE specific RKM. This can be resolved if you build a separate RKM. Also, though you might be able to reverse objects with special characters, they would not work within an Interface. So, its better to create aliases with proper ODI supported naming conventions. ). Lets choose just 4 such tables, Basic, Market, Scenario and Year.

Now lets build a very simple interface wherein we would be inserting Gen2, Market and the Measure value into a dummy table. Remember in BI EE, whenever you are bringing in multiple tables from a single presentation subject area, no joins are needed i.e. a cross join would have to be configured across multiple tables.

If you execute this interface you would notice that BI Server would generate the MDX accordingly and would then insert the output of the MDX to the database table.

This should give you an idea of how to go about using multiple BI EE subject area tables in an ODI interface and then using that interface to load data into a database table. Also, this method should typically be as fast as your BI Server is since it uses the JDBC connectivity as opposed to the JDBC-ODBC bridge. Posted in All Posts, EPM, Hyperion Essbase, OBI EE Plus, Oracle Data Integrator | 3 Comments »

Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 – Handling Complex String Manipulations – Using Regular Expressions (RegEx) and Evaluate Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on June 4, 2009 One of the requirements that i recently came across involved some complex string manipulations that cannot be solved easily by using BI EE specific functions. Just to illustrate the requirement, take a look at the screenshot below

As you see, the above is a simple BI EE report containing the customer related details. But the major problem with this report is that, it contains all the details of a customer in a comma separated format. Basically the source application has inserted the data into this table in such a fashion. One key aspect to this is the fact that the comma delimited customer details follow a specific pattern. That is the details column is nothing but a concatenation of the below customer attributes in the same order 1. Customer First Name 2. Customer Last Name 3. Customer Gender 4. Customer Email Address 5. Customer Phone Number 6. Customer Street Address 7. Customer City 8. Customer State 9. Customer Country The requirement is to get a report containing the Customer ID, Country ID, Customer Phone Number and the Customer Email address. Normally the best place for handling this would be in the ETL stage wherein individual attributes can be split into multiple columns and then used for reporting. Unfortunately in most cases we would have to work with what we have. To do this in the reporting layer requires some complex INSTR, SUBSTR logic. Today we shall another approach for handling such requirements. Instead of using normal string manipulation functions, we shall be using a new feature of Oracle 10g called as the Regular Expressions. Regular Expressions or RegEx make string manipulations easy and in fact provides quite a few advanced formatting, filtering options. The regular expressions come as 4 different types of functions 1. REGEXP_SUBSTR – Advanced Sub-String function 2. REGEXP_INSTR – Advanced String position evaluation function

3. REGEXP_LIKE – For doing advanced filtering on a result set 4. REGEXP_REPLACE – For doing advanced multiple-iterative string replace In order to achieve the above requirement, we need to use these database functions. And of course, we need to use EVALUATE to call these database functions. To split the above comma separate customer attributes, we need to use RegEx functions given below 1. Customer Phone – REGEXP_REPLACE(CUSTOMER_DETAILS,’(.*),(.*),(.*),(.*),(.*), (.*),(.*),(.*)’,'\4′) 2. Customer Email – REGEXP_REPLACE(CUSTOMER_DETAILS,’(.*),(.*),(.*),(.*),(.*), (.*),(.*),(.*)’,'\3′) Now use EVALUATE and pass down the above RegEx functions back to the database.

If you look at the report now, you should basically have the individual attributes in a separate column as shown below.

The above was one requirement. Lets look at another requirement now. In some cases, when you are reporting against transactional applications, you would have columns which get entered as free flowing text. The requirement is to classify these columns into 3 types. One is numeric, the other is free text without numbers and the third is alphanumeric. The requirement is to basically give a provision to the end users to choose a specific type and then that column should only the corresponding text i.e. for example if numeric is chosen only the text where numbers were entered should be displayed. In normal sql terms, filtering for numerals and alpha-numerals require separate logic and is complicated as well. We shall see how we can achieve this using RegEx. Lets first take a look at the report

Now, lets create a prompt which will produce just 3 values (Numeric, Alphabets, AlphaNumeric).

1 SELECT 'Numeric' FROM RegEx WHERE CUSTOMERS_DETAILS.COMMENTS IS NOT NULL 2 UNION ALL 3 SELECT 'Alphabets' FROM RegEx WHERE CUSTOMERS_DETAILS.COMMENTS IS NOT NULL 4 UNION ALL 5

SELECT 'Alpha-Numeric' FROM RegEx WHERE CUSTOMERS_DETAILS.COMMENTS IS NOT NULL

Make this prompt to set a presentation variable called AlphaNum.

Now go to the original report and create a filter as shown below 1 CASE WHEN '@{AlphaNum}{Numeric}' = 'Numeric' 2 THEN EVALUATE('REGEXP_SUBSTR(%1,''^\d+$'')',CUSTOMERS_DETAILS.COMMENTS) 3 WHEN '@{AlphaNum}{Numeric}' = 'Alphabets' THEN EVALUATE('REGEXP_SUBSTR(%1,''^[a-zA-Z]+ $'')',CUSTOMERS_DETAILS.COMMENTS) ELSE EVALUATE('REGEXP_SUBSTR(%1,''^[a-zA-Z0-9]+ 5 $'')',CUSTOMERS_DETAILS.COMMENTS) END IS NOT NULL 4

Now include this report in the main dashboard along with the prompt.

As you see, the RegEx functions are pretty powerful. And of course, with the advent of EVALUATE, we now have the capability to leverage them from BI EE itself. This saves time and effort in implementing complex string based logics. Posted in All Posts, OBI EE Plus | 3 Comments »

Oracle Data Integrator 10.1.3.5 – Using Oracle BI EE as a Data Source – Loading Essbase data into custom tables – Using JDBC-ODBC Bridge Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on June 2, 2009 In the blog entry here, i had basically shown multiple ways of loading data into Essbase. Today we shall see an approach wherein one can extract data from Oracle BI Server using the JDBCODBC bridge. The idea is to use BI Server to import Essbase metadata. Then Oracle Data Integrator would be used to extract the Essbase metadata through MDX via the BI Server and then load into a custom table. Though there are no out of the box RKM’s to reverse engineer BI Server metadata, we can work around them using some other functionality. If you want to extend this, you can create your own custom RKM to reverse-engineer BI Server metadata tables. To start with lets first import a sample Demo->Basic cube into our BI EE repository. While creating the subject area of this cube, ensure that you do not have spaces/special characters in the column names. If you need the special characters for Answers, then add aliases with new no space/special characters name. For example, if you have Gen1, Year as one of your column names, add an alias as Year.

The idea behind doing this is to ensure that we can treat these tables as normal tables using the AnalyticsWeb ODBC connection. Of course, we can make ODI to append double quotes if special characters are present in a column or a table name. But for now lets go with this approach. Once the aliases have been added, go to the Topology Manager and create a universal Data Server using the SUN JDBC-ODBC bridge.

Create a physical schema. Ensure that you are entering the correct subject area name in the schema.

Ensure that you are able to test the connection. Once this is done, create a logical schema and assign it to the Physical Data Server through the Global Context.

After this go to the designer and create a project. Import the the following Knowledge Modules in to the Project. 1. LKM SQL to SQL 2. CKM SQL Then create a model. Since we do not have a RKM to reverse engineer the data sources automatically (though you can actually extend other RKM’s for this purpose). So, for now lets manually enter the tables and columns in the Model as shown below

Use the Aliases as the column names.

Now ensure that you are able view the data directly from Essbase using this.

If you look at the screenshot above, BI Server would be showing the data against the actual names (Gen1, Year etc). So, you can be sure now that the aliases can be accessed even outside of BI EE using the ODBC connection. Now, to make this simple lets create a straight forward table called YEAR_DIM_ESS in any database schema (this will act as our target) 1 CREATE TABLE 2 YEAR_DIM_ESS ( 3 YEAR VARCHAR2(100), 4 QUARTER VARCHAR2(20), 5 MONTH VARCHAR2(20));

Import this table to another Model. And then create an interface mapping the columns from the source to the target. Ensure that you are using the SUNOPSIS_MEMORY_ENGINE as the staging area.

Now, if you execute the interface, you would have essbase data loaded inside the database table.

This is one other good option to consider if you have full set of end to end oracle tools like ODI, Essbase, BI EE etc. In this case today, i have used the JDBC-ODBC bridge. Later i would be covering how we can use the JDBC jar of BI Server directly within ODI. Posted in All Posts, EPM, Hyperion Essbase, OBI EE Plus, Oracle Data Integrator | 3 Comments »

Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 & Essbase Connectivity – Displaying Member Intrinsic & Custom Properties – Aliases and UDAs Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on May 31, 2009 One of the common questions asked in the existing BI EE to Essbase connectivity is the ability to display member names in a report instead of the alias names. Currently BI EE does not support displaying the member names(if default alias exist already) in a direct way. So, lets take a look at an approach today which basically extends on the method described here in the modeling guide. Actually,. the method described there is correct but the explanation is partly wrong(in a different context it is right though). It is described there that Member Names are supported for only Level-0 members. It is actually supported for all the generations. But when a drill happens the alias names will return. Lets look at why this happens and of course understand the capability of BI EE in displaying other member intrinsic properties. The most common question that generally comes up with regard to member names is, why not EVALUATE can be used to display them directly. The main reason why this is not possible is, Member Name is an intrinsic property of a member. There are no MDX functions which can actually be used to display a member name. An essbase member has many intrinsic properties. The intrinsic properties are listed below 1. MEMBER_NAME 2. MEMBER_ALIAS 3. LEVEL_NUMBER 4. GEN_NUMBER 5. IS_EXPENSE 6. COMMENTS 7. RELATIONAL_DESCENDANTS

8. MEMBER_UNIQUE_NAME 9. ANCESTOR_NAME Apart from the above there are other properties like custom UDA properties etc. Now lets take the example of the Demo Basic cube. If you look at the outline of this cube, it has aliases at the Time dimension level and also for the quarters(not for the level-0 though). Now, our aim is that, whenever we include these levels in the report, the report should automatically display the member names instead of the alias names.

The intrinsic properties are typically referred directly in the repository as the External Name.

So, in order to refer the alias, lets create a custom physical cube column as shown below.

The name for the column can be anything. Basically we are creating an Member Name column for the level that has aliases. In our case it is the quarter level.

Assign this new column to the Gen2, Year of the year dimension.

Also, make this column to be part of the BMM and the presentation layer. Now, if you create a report on this column and a measure, you would get a report only with the member names for the Quarter Level.

But the problem with this approach is that, once you drill on this column, the drills would return. That can be manipulated by re-arranging the level keys accordingly. The main reason why i introduced this was to show a very good feature that can be derived using this approach. In many cases, you would have a report containing 2 or 3 dimension levels and a fact measure. In the same report, you might want to know which dimension member has a specific UDA assigned. For example, consider the outline below

If you look at the Market dimension, the 2nd generation has multiple UDAs assigned. Assume that we have a report like the one shown below

In the above report, we need one more column stating whether that member has a “Major Market” UDA assigned or not. This is not possible using MDX as the UDA based MDX functions will filter the members based on a UDA (which is not our requirement). So, to start with lets create a custom Physical cube column. In the External name of the column enter Major Market as the External Name. UDA is a custom property of a member. Hence it can be referenced directly as an External name as shown below

Now, include this UDA in the Gen2, Region level of the Market Dimension.

Once this extra column is included, just include this in the BMM and the presentation layer. Now in the above report, pull in this column. This would basically show all the members having the Major Market UDA as 1. Remaining members that do not have this UDA assigned will be shown as 0.

The above technique can be used for other solving other interesting reporting requirements as well. Its heartening to see every aspect of MDX being available in some form or other for customization. Posted in All Posts, EPM, Hyperion Essbase, OBI EE Plus | 2 Comments »

Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 – Writebacks to Essbase – Using JAPI and Custom HTML – Part 1 Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on May 25, 2009 Considering the amount of expectations surrounding the BI EE and Essbase connectivity, i thought it would make a lot of sense to blog about another interesting piece of the Essbase and BI EE integration i.e Writebacks to Essbase from BI EE. Actually i have seen this question being asked by customers/users in quite a few internal presentations that i have been involved recently. Writebacks to Essbase from BI EE is not supported by default. Having said that one can create a custom solution to enable a writeback to an Essbase cell. We shall see one approach of doing this today. As you would probably know, Writebacks to a relational source from BI EE is supported through custom XML messages. Unfortunately, as of this release, this method cannot be reused for non-relational sources. Basically our requirement is pretty simple. In a BI EE report (reporting against an Essbase source), the end user should have the ability to enter custom values and update the corresponding intersections back in Essbase. The below screenshot explains the requirement pretty clearly.

The high level architecture diagram to enable these writebacks is given below

The high level flow is, for every cell update, the end user will enter the new value and then will click on the update button. That will pass on the parameters to a JSP page using the HTML Form GET method. The JSP will accept the parameters and will in turn pass on the values to the JAPI. The JAPI will then update the Essbase cell. To illustrate this, we shall use the default Demo->Basic cube. Remember the fact that one cannot use the write backs textboxes directly as currently BI EE does not provide a means of referencing the updated/entered value in a cell outside of the XML template. So, we would need to write our own custom HTML to generate textbox and the update buttons. Import the Demo Basic cube into the repository and create the BMM and presentation layers by drag and drop. Change the physical and the BMM layer aggregations(of the all the measures for which you want to enable writebacks) to SUM instead of Aggr_External. The main reason for doing this is to ensure that we can use string manipulation functions like concatenation from

Answers. For more details on each of these aggregations check my blog entries here, here, here and here.

Now, lets go to JDeveloper and create a simple JSP page. Use the below code in the JSP. You can customize this to your needs. 01 03 04 05 06 07

08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

18

WriteBackEssbase

19



20 21



22 23 76 77 78



79 80

I would not explain this in detail as the JSP is self-explanatory. But there is one aspect to writebacks using JAPI that one would have to be aware of. Whenever JAPI is used for writebacks ensure that you have a IEssGridView which basically visualizes your output as an Excel add-in grid. The rows and columns are numbered in an increasing order from zero.

The code snippet that actually does the writeback is given below

Once this is done, this JSP would have to be deployed on a web server that is accessible to BI EE. In order to accomplish that, create a custom WAR profile which would basically contain all the dependent jar files and also the manifest related information.

Then deploy this WAR file on the same application server as BI EE (or OC4J).

Once the deployment is done, test the jsp page by passing the url as shown below http://localhost:9704/WriteBack/WriteBack.jsp? 1 &p_Value=2000&p_Market=Market&p_Product=Product&p_Accounts=Accounts&p_Scen ario=Actual&p_Year=Qtr1

Once this is done, lets create a BI EE report containing all the dimensions. Remember that for writebacks to work in Essbase, we would need a value/member from every dimension. Create a custom column and in the custom colum enter the formula as shown below

1

'

2 3 4 5 6 9 '

And change the column format to HTML.

Basically what the formula above does is, it create an HTML input field in the report itself. One parameter p_Value would be obtained from the value of the textbox and the remaining hidden form parameters will be used for passing the dimension member attributes to the url. If you go to the report now, you can alter the existing values and on submit, these values would be submitted back to Essbase.

The same methodology can be used for writing data back into Oracle OLAP as well. This is one method of doing writebacks. There is one more method as well wherein one can use the Writeback template itself. I will discuss that in future. But for now, the above should give an idea of how Writebacks can be enabled in BI EE against Essbase data sources. There are quite a few moving parts. But again these are required due to the nature of the connectivity as of today. Posted in All Posts, EPM, Hyperion Essbase, OBI EE Plus | 2 Comments »

Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 – Scheduling Essbase/Planning Calculation Scripts – Action Framework & Custom Java Remote Procedure calls Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on May 21, 2009 In the blog entry here, i had shown you how to run an essbase calculation script from the BI EE dashboards. To make it even more complete, lets look at a means of calling a calculation script through BI Scheduler. So, our idea is to use BI EE as a scheduler to schedule Essbase/Planning calculations. In order to do that there are certain pre-requisites. I have covered this in my blog entry before here. Once the setup is done, lets open the JDeveloper and create a new project. Include the schedulerrpccalls.jar, Ess_japi.jar and Ess_es_server.jar as part of the project properties.

The idea is to basically write a custom java program which in turn will run an Essbase calculation script through the Java API. The java program would then be bundled in the form of

a jar file and called from an iBot. Use the below code to login to Essbase and then to execute the calculation. 01 package bischeduler; 02 03 import java.io.*; 04 05

import com.siebel.analytics.scheduler.javahostrpccalls.SchedulerJavaExtension;

06 import com.siebel.analytics.scheduler.javahostrpccalls.SchedulerJobInfo; 07

import com.siebel.analytics.scheduler.javahostrpccalls.SchedulerJobException;

08 09 import com.essbase.api.base.*; 10 import com.essbase.api.dataquery.*; 11 import com.essbase.api.session.*; 12 import com.essbase.api.datasource.*; 13 import com.essbase.api.domain.*; 14 import com.essbase.api.metadata.*; 15 16 public class BIScheduler implements SchedulerJavaExtension{ 17 public BIScheduler() { 18 19

String s_userName = "admin";

20

String s_password = "password";

21

String s_olapSvrName = "localhost";

22

String s_provider = "http://localhost:13080/aps/JAPI";

23 24

try

25

{

26

IEssbase ess = IEssbase.Home.create(IEssbase.JAPI_VERSION); IEssDomain dom = ess.signOn(s_userName, s_password, false, null, 27 s_provider); IEssOlapServer olapSvr = 28 (IEssOlapServer)dom.getOlapServer(s_olapSvrName); 29 olapSvr.connect(); 30 IEssCube cube = olapSvr.getApplication("Global").getCube("Global"); String maxLstat = "import database 'Global'.'Global' data connect 32 as 'global' identified by 'global' using server rules_file 'UnitsLd' on error abort;"; 3 //cube.loadData(IEssOlapFileObject.TYPE_RULES,"UnitsLd",0,"SH",fa 31

3 lse,"global","global"); 34

cube.calculate(false,"CalcAll");

//cube.beginDataload("UnitsLd",IEssOlapFileObject.TYPE_RULES,"glo bal","global",0); //IEssMaxlSession maxLsess = 36 (IEssMaxlSession)dom.getOlapServer(s_olapSvrName); 37 //maxLsess.execute(maxLstat); 35

38

}catch (EssException x){

39

System.out.println("ERROR: " + x.getMessage());

40

}

41 42

} public void run(SchedulerJobInfo jobInfo) throws 43 SchedulerJobException{ 44

new BIScheduler();

45

System.out.println("JobID is:" + jobInfo.jobID());

46 47

System.out.println("Instance ID is:" + jobInfo.instanceID()); System.out.println("JobInfo to string is:" + jobInfo.toString());

48

}

49

public void cancel(){};

50 51

public static void main(String[] args) {

52

new BIScheduler();

53 54 55 }

}

Once this is done, create a deployment profile to bundle the code as a jar file. Ensure that the deployment also bundles the 3 jar files mentioned above. Then deploy the jar file.

Now copy the deployed jar file to the {OracleBI}\web\javahost\lib directory (or a directory that you have mentioned as the lib path in the Java host config.xml). Now create an ibot and then in the advanced tab call the deployed jar file as shown below.

You can create ibots in such a way that once the java class run is completed, it would trigger another ibot to deliver a report based on an Essbase cube. This will ensure that the administrator is sure of the fact that the calculation has run successfully.

Now you should be able to run essbase calculations from BI Scheduler directly. One can even run ODI packages using BI EE. I would cover that as well in future. Keep watching this space next week for a method to do write backs into Essbase. I would present a couple of methods and both of them can be used effectively in a prod like environment. Posted in All Posts, EPM, Hyperion Essbase, OBI EE Plus | 5 Comments »

Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 and Essbase Connectivity – Report Based and Essbase based Grand Totals – Answers Based Aggregation Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on May 20, 2009 This post here by Christian prodded me to write about another interesting feature in the BI EE and Essbase Connectivity. As you would probably know BI EE supports report based grand totals/sub-totals in a table view. There are 2 types of totals. One is BI Server based totals wherein BI Server would do the totalling on a result set. The other is data source specific totalling wherein the query is fired back to the underlying data source to obtain the totals. For example, lets just quickly import the Demo->Basic cube in to the repository and build a very simple report as shown below.

As you see, it is a very simple report containing a report based total and a sub-total at the market level. Before going further, lets look at the outline of the Basic cube first. As you see, every dimension top member is set as a stored only member.

If you look at the MDX of the above report, you would notice that 3 MDX queries would be fired. One for the base report , one for the grand total and the other for the market sub-total.

The aggregation for the Measure Sales is Aggr_External in both the physical and logical layer. In Answers, the aggregation is set as default. Now, lets go to the outline and convert the Year Dimension top member to be a label only member as shown below.

Now, try running the same report above. You would notice that the report level totals and subtotals are totally wrong as shown below.

The main reason for this is the fact that since we have converted the topmost member of the outline to be label-only. So for the Year dimension, it will always pick the Qtr1 value instead of totalling all the quarters. For report developers, this would turn out to be an absolute nightmare considering the fact a report based total is created under the assumption that, the totalling is done on the report and not at the data source level. Now, from Answers lets change the aggregation os the sales measure to SUM.

And look at the report.

Basically, a report level SUM ensures that all the custom aggregations/totalling occuring in a pivot table/table are done at the report level instead of at the Essbase layer. So by default, ensure that you always have SUM at the report level to ensure that you do not get wrong answers especially for totals and sub-totals.

This should have given you an idea of how the aggregations at 3 layers (Physical, BMM and the Answers) can affect a report. I would cover the usage of Report Aggregations across different BMM and Physical Layer aggregations in the future. Posted in All Posts, EPM, Hyperion Essbase, OBI EE Plus | 5 Comments »

Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 – Consuming Web Services in BI EE – Displaying Live Stock Quotes – Using UTL_HTTP and EVALUATE – Part 1 Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on May 19, 2009 When i was at the BI Forum in Brighton, one of forum participants had a question on using Web Services in BI EE. BI EE currently does not support direct WSDL response consumption by passing a request. So, in order to achieve this one way is to write a pl/sql wrapper which would basically call the web service and then use EVALUATE within BI EE to display them. There are other approaches as well like writing a pipelined table function etc. We shall see the other approaches in a later blog entry.

Assume that we have a table as shown below containing the companies and their corresponding Stock Symbols.

The requirement is to display the live stock feeds(Day High as well as Day Low) from a live Web Service feed at http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx?WSDL within BI EE. One good thing about this service is that they offer a variety of web service feeds along with their statuses. In order to consume the stock feed, lets first create a pl/sql function which is nothing but a wrapper, that sends a request to the WSDL above and gets the response back. The request sent would pass the Stock Symbol as a parameter. The Pl/Sql function would basically extract the Day High and Day close (or any other parameter) values directly from the stock feed. 01 create or replace function stock_quote 02 ( p_symbol in varchar2 default 'ORCL', 03 p_tag in

varchar2

default 'High'

04 ) 05 return varchar2 06 as 07

s_request varchar2(32000);

08

s_response varchar2(32000);

09

h_request utl_http.req;

10

h_response utl_http.resp;

11 begin 12

s_request:= ' 14 15 16 17 18

'||p_symbol||'

19 '; 20 h_request:= utl_http.begin_request 21 ( 'http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx?WSDL' 22

, 'POST'

23

, 'HTTP/1.1'

24

);

25

utl_http.set_header(h_request, 'Content-Type', 'text/xml');

26

utl_http.set_header(h_request, 'Content-Length', length(s_request));

27

utl_http.write_text(h_request, s_request);

28 29

h_response := utl_http.get_response(h_request); utl_http.read_text(h_response, s_response);

30

utl_http.end_response(h_response);

return substr(s_response,instr(s_response,'')+length(p_tag) 3 +8,instr(s_response,'')-instr(s_response,'') 1 length(p_tag) - 8); 32 end;

As you see the above function basically does a string manipulation to extract the parameter values. Typically this is not a recommended approach. The recommended approach is to use an XMLType function or a Regex function to extract the parameter values. But in our case, the string is sufficient. If you are behind a proxy, ensure that you set the UTL_HTTP.set_proxy before the begin request function. To test this out, lets fire the function from command line. 1 select stock_quote('ORCL','Low') from dual;

As you see we get the Oracle stock quote high and low for the day directly from this function. Now, lets go to BI EE and call this function through EVALUATE.

As you see we have now displayed the response of a WSDL directly from BI EE. We shall look at other approaches in future. Posted in All Posts, OBI EE Plus | 3 Comments »

Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 – Time Based Aggregation – Essbase Equivalence – Part 1

Posted by Venkatakrishnan J on May 17, 2009 Right now i am in the process of comparing certain Essbase related functionalities in BI EE and vice versa. One of the main reasons why i am doing this is to understand how the feature of one product can be leveraged while working with the other, now that more and more customers seem to have both of them together. While doing a quick comparison, one of the key Essbase functionalities that came to the forefront was the ability to do Time based aggregations. Any Essbase user would be aware of the fact that both Block Storage and Aggregate Storage (to an extent) essbase cubes support time based aggregations. Time based aggregations are nothing but aggregations of measures wherein the aggregation rule varies for the time dimension alone. There are 3 types of time based aggregations 1. Time Based Last – In some cases, when we are at a year level, we would like to see the amount sold for the last month(December) alone instead of a summation of all the months. But the aggregation for all the other dimensions (and their levels) would be SUM. 2. Time Based First – In some cases, when we are at a year or a quarter level, we would like to see the amount sold for the first month of that quarter or year instead of a summation of the all the child months for that quarter/year. But the aggregation for all the other dimensions would be SUM. 3. Time Based Average – In some cases, when we are at a year or a quarter level in the Time dimension, we would like to see the amount sold as an average of all the corresponding child months for that quarter/year. But the aggregation for all the other dimensions would be SUM. Just to explain this a bit further, lets consider the screenshot below

As you see, we basically have 2 dimensions. One is Product and the other is Year. In the report containing Top Level of Product and Year Level of Time, the report has produced a number which is nothing but sum of amount sold for all the products in the last month of that Year (December). So, basically there are 2 kinds of aggregation for the same measure. The method for achieving this though is pretty simple, i wanted to introduce this here so that this can act as a pre-cursor to even more complex dimension based aggregations which i would show in the coming blog entries. To achieve this, open up the repository and go to the aggregation tab of the measure that you are reporting against.

Now choose the based on dimensions option. In the aggregation list first choose Other Dimensions and enter the aggregation as SUM. After that choose the Time dimension and enter the aggregation as LAST.

Ensure that the order of the dimensions listed above are the same. So basically what this does is, it sets the aggregation of the measure for all the dimensions apart from Time as SUM. For Time alone it would do a LAST aggregation. The order of the dimensions ensure that the LAST operation is carried out after the SUM. Now create a report on Time and Product. You would notice that whenever upper levels of Time dimension is queried upon, it would result in LAST aggregation.

If you look at the actual query fired, you would notice that TIME based LAST aggregation would be performed on a Summed up product dimension. 01 select D1.c1 as c1, 02

D1.c2 as c2,

03

D1.c3 as c3

04 from 05

(select distinct D1.c2 as c1,

06

D1.c3 as c2,

LAST_VALUE(D1.c6 IGNORE NULLS) OVER (PARTITION BY D1.c4, 07 D1.c5 ORDER BY D1.c4 NULLS FIRST, D1.c5 NULLS FIRST, D1.c7 NULLS FIRST ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) as c3, 08

D1.c4 as c4,

09

D1.c5 as c5

10 11

from (select T3663.TOTAL_PRODUCT_DSC as c2,

12

T3683.YEAR_DSC as c3,

13

T3663.TOTAL_PRODUCT_ID as c4,

14

T3683.YEAR_ID as c5,

15

sum(T3720.UNITS) as c6,

16

T3683.MONTH_ID as c7

17

from

18

PRODUCT_DIM T3663,

19

TIME_DIM T3683,

20

UNITS_FACT T3720 where ( T3663.ITEM_ID = T3720.ITEM_ID and 21 T3663.TOTAL_PRODUCT_DSC = 'Total Product' and T3683.MONTH_ID = T3720.MONTH_ID ) group by T3663.TOTAL_PRODUCT_DSC, 22 T3663.TOTAL_PRODUCT_ID, T3683.MONTH_ID, T3683.YEAR_DSC, T3683.YEAR_ID 23 ) D1 24

) D1

25 order by c1, c2

The above was pretty straightforward. But there is one more similar use case of Time based properties in Essbase which is more tougher to simulate in BI EE against a relational source. Time based aggregation can vary on different products. For example, for one product we would need Time Based aggregation of LAST, the other FIRST and the other AVERAGE. In such cases the above cannot be used as the aggregation is constant across a dimension(in the example above). In the above case, we had the same TB property for all members within a dimension. We shall see how to go about achieving such complex members based other dimension Time Based Aggregations in a future blog entry( in Part 2)