OBIEE

OBIEE

What Is OBIEE?

Today’s enterprise business scenarios are composed of multiple heterogeneous processes and systems that consist of transactional, ERP, decision support, analytical and custom homegrown desktop applications based on spreadsheets and Microsoft Access, etc. Data is distributed across the enterprise and integration among various systems to produce a single coherent view of the business performance of the enterprise is difficult.

Oracle business intelligence is a system that provides the single enterprise view of the business performance producing actionable insights across and deep down from top to bottom of the enterprise. This is most popularly known as Oracle business intelligence enterprise edition OBIEE.

Oracle business intelligence provides the following features as listed below:

Unified Enterprise Vie: Enables a single consistent and logical view of enterprise across multiple heterogeneous sources such as ERP, data warehouse, and operational systems.

Unified Semantic View: Models complex business information and modes from multiple sources to a common enterprise logical model.

End-User Self Service: Business users can develop ad-hoc analytic reports based on their own needs and only be concerned about the business view of information:

Real-Time Information Access: Technologies like federated access, micro ETL, direct integration with transactional systems as well as replication provides this

Performance Support By Oracle Appliance: Oracle Exalytics is OBIEE self-contained in an appliance. It is a hardware machine with preinstalled and configured OBIEE software

Open Scalable Architecture: Multi-tiered architecture enables it to scale vertically and horizontally in any tier.

Multiple Data Source Support: OBIEE supports multiple data sources ranging from ERP(EBS and Peoplesoft), Siebel CRM, data warehouses, OLAP cubes like Essbase and SSAS, spreadsheets, and text files. Oracle data integrator tool is the common hub for data integration that provides various adapters.

Built-In And Customizable Analytic Capabilities: OBIEE Applications are a suite of products on top of the platform consisting of built-in functionality that is extensible to Enterprise needs.

Foundation For Integrating Multiple Analytic Applications
Foundation for integrating multiple applications like Finance, procurement, HR, Transportation, etc.
Publishing And Integration With Microsoft Excel
Integrated OLAP Sources Like Essbase: Data can be pulled and integrated with Essbase in a horizontal (drill through) or vertical (drill-down capability)”
Enterprise Mobile Capabilities: OBIEE has built-in and customizable mobile platform capabilities in a distributed disconnected model.
Data Source Abstraction To Business: OBIEE provides a logical business data modal based on the Common Information model that hides the data source from the business.
Highly Customizable And Modular: OBIEE is customizable in all tiers 1, e reports, repository. Middleware, ETL, and data layer. Tiered architecture and functional subject areas provide modularity.
Interactive And Customizable Dashboards And Report
KPI, Alerts, Delivery, And Automation
Common Data Integration: Oracle data integrator provides the common data integration platform across transactional, OLAP, spreadsheet, and other external data sources

OBIEE Architecture

A typical OBIEE implementation consists of multiple tiers as shown in the architecture diagram below. Information from the data source layer is transformed and integrated along the way and presented in a manner that is consumable effectively to the end business user.

OBIEE Tiered Architecture
Client Tier: This consists of the browser and the URL for accessing the OVIEE system from a laptop or a desktop or across the internet or mobile devices.
Web Tier: This is a web catalog layer that stores the reports and dashboards developed by BI business users.
Application Tier: Metadata layer called repository that develops SQL queries based on user requests
Data Warehouse: This layer is the data warehouse that stores the historical data in a schema suitable for BI analysis
ETL: Extract transform and load is the tool that transforms the transactional data into a format that is suitable for BI analysis.
Data Source: The data source are the various kinds of transactional and spreadsheet data sources.

The Oracle BI domain consists of two components

Weblogic Domain: The Weblogic domain consists of the logical division of applications in the applications we server layer with a common architecture to administer them, called Admin servers and managed servers to perform the web applications work performed by the applications.

Admin Server: This consists of a set of admin servers to manage the processes running in the domain.

Managed Server: These are product-specific processes that run within Weblogic. The core architecture is designed such that multiple managed servers can be started across multiple machines for load balancing as BI usage increases. The managed server consists of different application-specific services like BI publisher (responsible for generating pixel-perfect reports), BI Office (integration with MS office components like excel and ppt), Action service (responsible for navigation based on the action defined for a data cell in the reports).

Oracle BI System Components: The Oracle BI systems components are the server-side components of the WebLogic application layer domain that performs a specific set of work. The system components are managed in an integrated fashion by a central process Oracle process manager (OPMN)
Oracle BI Server: Performs generation of SQL queries based on the Oracle BI repository metadata and the user requests. The SQL queries are then directed to the data source or the data warehouse to produce the desired results.

Oracle Presentation Server: This is responsible for rendering the report catalog with the data retrieved from the SQL queries to the dashboard.
Oracle BI Scheduler: Responsible for executing Oracle BI requests and in a scheduled automated manner and delivery of BI content such as generated reports to business users’ email. Responsible for monitoring the different business alerts set in the BI system.
Oracle BI Cluster Controller: Responsible for cluster control in high availability and failover environment in conjunction with Oracle cluster ware. Process failures detected in one node will results in automatic failover to the other nodes.

Oracle BI Java Host: This is responsible for enabling the BI Presentation server to support various Java tasks for BI Scheduler, Publisher, and graphs.

Oracle BI Enterprise Edition:
Is a comprehensive suite of enterprise BI products that delivers a full range of analysis and reporting capabilities

It has the following components:

Oracle BI Server – Common enterprise business model and abstraction layer

Oracle BI Answers – Ad-hoc query and reporting

Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards – Highly interactive dashboards for accessing business intelligence and applications content

Oracle BI Delivers – Proactive business activity monitoring and alerting

Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics – Full analytical functionality for the mobile professionals

Oracle BI Publisher – Enterprise reporting and distribution of “pixel-perfect” reports

Oracle BI Briefing Books – Snapshots of dashboard pages to view and share in offline mode

Oracle BI Applications:
Are complete, prebuilt BI solutions that deliver intuitive, role-based intelligence for everyone in an organization

Oracle BI Applications are built on the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition

Provides all that the standalone application does, plus:

Applications for common industry analytical processing such as Service Analytics, Sales Analytics, Marketing Analytics, and so on
Prebuilt role-based dashboards to support the needs of line managers to chief executive officers
A prebuilt database (Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse) designed for analytical processing with prebuilt routines to extract, load, and transform data from the transactional databases.

OBIEE Architecture

Is made up of five main components:

Web Clients

Oracle BI Presentation Server

Oracle BI Server

Oracle BI Scheduler

Data Sources

Web Clients

Provide access to bi information

Web browser

Enterprise application

Corporate portals

Oracle BI Presentation Server

Provides the processing to visualize the information for client consumption -1. Is implemented as an extension to a web server 2.Uses the presentation catalog to store aspects of the application
Receives data from the Oracle BI Server and provides it to the client that requested it

Oracle BI Presentation Catalog

Stores the application dashboards request definitions and information about scheduling reports
Contains information regarding permissions and accessibility of the dashboards by groups and users
Is created when the Oracle BI Presentation Server starts
Is administered using Oracle BI Catalog Manager

Oracle BI Delivers

A client application that:
1.Is used to create iBots

     2. Deliver alerts to subscribed users

     3. Is integrated with Dashboards and Answers

Job identifies what information to filter when it should run, and who to send alerts to

Oracle BI Presentation Services Administration
Is used to access administrative functions of Oracle BI presentation services and view information about the currently installed system
Oracle BI Server
Provides efficient processing to intelligently access the physical data sources and structures the information

Uses metadata to direct processing
Generates dynamic SQL to query data in the data sources
Connects natively or via ODBC to the RDBMS
Structures results to satisfy requests
Provides the data to the Oracle BI Presentation Server

Several important components are used by the Oracle BI Server:

Repository file (.rpd)
Cache
NQSConfig.ini
DBFeatures.ini
Log files

epository file (.rpd)
Contains metadata that represents the analytical model
It is created using the Oracle BI Administration Tool
It is divided into three layers:
Physical layer – represents the data sources
Business and Mapping layer – models the data sources into facts and dimensions
Presentation layer – specifies the users view of the model; rendered in Oracle BI Answers
2.CACHE :
Contains results of queries

Is used to eliminate redundant queries to the database:

Speeds up request processing

3. NQSConfig.INI
   Is a configuration file used by the Oracle BI Server at startupSpecifies values that control processing, such as:
   1. Defining the repository (.rpd) to load
   2. Enabling or disabling caching of results
4. DBFeatures.INI
   Is a configuration file used by the Oracle BI Server
   Specifies values that control SQL generation:
   1. The features supported by each database
5. Log Files
   NQServer.log records Oracle BI Server messages
   NQQuery.log records information about query requests

Oracle BI Scheduler:
Manages and executes jobs requesting data analytics
Schedules reports being delivered to users at specified times
In windows, the scheduler runs as a service
Data Sources:
Contain the business data users want to analyze
Are accessed by the Oracle BI Server
Can be in any format, such as

     1. Relational databases

     2. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) databases

     3. Flat files

     4. Spreadsheets

Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse
It is a predefined data source to support the analytical requirements of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications:1. Relevant data structures support Oracle BI Applications
It is in a star schema format
It is included with Oracle BI Applications (not available with standalone OBIEE purchases)

Data Warehouse Administration Console
Data Warehouse Application Console (DAC) Client:
Used to schedule, monitor, configure, and customize OBAW extraction, transformation, and load

Accesses meta-data about ETL mappings and dependencies in the DAC repository

DAC Server:
1. Organizes ETL requests for processing

Third-party Informatica Server populates the OBAW from the transactional Database (PeopleSoft database):
1. Uses extract, transform, and load (ETL) routines

Sample Request Processing

User views a Dashboard or submits an Answers request
The Oracle BI Presentation Server makes a request to the Oracle BI Server to retrieve the requested data
The Oracle BI Server, using the repository file, optimizes functions to request the data from the data sources
The Oracle BI Server receives the data from the data sources and processes as necessary
The Oracle BI Server passes the data to the Oracle BI Presentation Server
The Oracle BI Presentation Server formats the data and sends it to the client

REAL-TIME Implementation :

Oracle BI components are often implemented across several computers on the network
Clustering Oracle BI Servers
Cluster Server Feature:
Allows up to 16 Oracle BI Servers in a network domain to act as a single server
Servers in cluster share requests from multiple Oracle BI clients, including Oracle BI Answers and Oracle BI Delivers
Cluster Controller is a primary component of the Cluster Server feature:
Monitors status of resources in a cluster and performs session assignment as resources change
Supports detection of server failures and failover for ODBC clients of failed servers

OBIEE Repository Basics

Stores the metadata used by the OBIEE Server in a file format with. RPD as an extension
Is accessed and exposed using the Administration Tool
Is created by the server architect who:
Imports – metadata from databases and other data sources
Simplifies and reorganizes the metadata into business models
Structures the business model for presentation to users for requesting information
Exposes the Oracle BI repository in three separate panes, called layers
Physical layer
Business Model and Mapping layer
Presentation layer