Another year has gone by, a lot of amazing things have transpired, and the ArtOfBI.com is still here sharing the good word on Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management.  Again, a big thanks goes to all of the readers of The Art of Business Intelligence.  This year we promise more great articles, associations, presentation, products, and hopefully a contest or two (yes, with prizes).

On a career note this was a big year for me personally.  The very brilliant Oracle BI specialist consulting (professional services) organization I’ve worked with for several years, BI Consulting Group (BICG), was acquired by Capgemini.  Capgemini is a very large Information Technology services organization based in France with global reach and a software agnostic portfolio of offerings.  My wonderful boss, Amy Mayer, did an amazing job building BICG and is still leading the troops behind the Capgemini Oracle Analytics practice.

ArtOfBI.com and another team that I have been helping develop some amazing open source tools, Fyght Group, has launched the first plug-in products for Oracle Business Intelligence 11g.  Project Amelia and Metadata Search (MDSearch) for Oracle BI 11g are both available for download.  Take a look at those when you get a chance. Get ready for Social Collaborative Business Intelligence from BITeamwork.

Oracle Open World 2011 was also a grand success this year. I had the esteemed opportunity to speak at the ODTUG user group session as well as at a main session with my colleague from Capgemini, Marty Mersinger, on Oracle BI 11g’s Action Framework.  Java, Java, Java – ‘nuf said.

2011 also marked the start of the ArtOfBI.com podcast which has had some amazing guests including authors, bloggers, and market analysis experts.  We are adding more interviews to the docket for 2012 for your listening enjoyment and intellectual ferment so keep an eye on our podcast feed.

The Oracle ACE program both rejected my application and approved me in 2011.  That might just be a first but I’ll have to confirm that with the good folks at the Oracle ACE program.  I am super stoked about that acheivement and I hope to contribute a lot in 2012.  I think my plan is to have Mark Hurd transition his current role to me in about 6 years.  I’ll start working on that next week – I’m not joking.  A big thanks to Justin, Lillian, and Brian S for the respect.  I just got my pully in the mail last week – it looks brilliant on.  Cheers!

Visitors and fans of ArtOfBI.com continue to increase.  So some people do like what I’m churning out over in this little corner of the web.  Monthly visits are now at ~10,000 per month.  Those are vanity metrics (thanks Eric Ries for the term) I know but artofbi.com is both a passion and an experiment.  There is consideration in 2012 to make ArtOfBI.com more of a destination than just a blog. The aim is for more growth and there is a path.  I’m just not sure if this site should start walking it.

Lastly, I’d like to thank everyone who is passionate about technology. If you understand that technology is a means to an end and not the end itself then you understand that in the end it is people who count the most.  At the end of the day, it is people that you work for and people that buy your product. It is people who innovate.  It is people who share and people who care.

Thanks again for a great 2011.

Best,

Christian

I was at a project recently where someone had updated several Linux config/text files using a Windows machine.
They FTP‘d the files to their desktop, used notepad or something similar to make the edits, and then FTP’d the file back to the Linux server thinking that all would work swimmingly. Unfortunately they overwrote the original files when they uploaded the files back to the Linux server.

Image via Wikipedia

As you know when this happens, Linux can recognize these foreign line breaks and places a nasty ^M at the end of each break as it interprets it as an actual character. This renders most config files, especially a XML based config file, useless for parsing by the program trying to read the file.

The solution is regular expression based and looks kinda funky but it works.

Basically open the file in question using the VI editor. Hit the colon command to start the menu input and enter the expression below against the file.

:%s/[ctrlkey+v and ctrl-key+M]//g

which will give you

:%s/^V^M//g

References

• http://thedaneshproject.com/posts/how-to-remove-m-character-with-vi/

When seeking to upgrade one must assess first the current version of applications that they are on.  There is an immediate path for Siebel Analyics 7.5.x (specifically 7.5.3), Siebel Business Analytics 7.7.x and 7.8.x, Siebel Life Sciences 7.8.x and of course OBIA 7.9.x.  But more important than determining if your current version of Siebel Apps or OBIA has a direct upgrade path is to consider why you would conduct a migration/upgrade to the latest verion in the first place.  This really, in my opinion, boils down to a business decision. But as Oracle states in its OBIA upgrade documentation perhaps one of the following reasons are compelling enough for your organization:

1. You are already upgrading your ERP system
2. A desire to rock n’ roll with Oracle BI 11g’s platform latest and greatest features
3. There is a need for OBIA’s latest db support, language support, and other features
4. Cost savings due to end-of-life support maintenance to support your existing legacy in-place ERP, DB, or ETL (Informatica) versions.
5. The business requirements just demand the best, latest, and greatest version and all that it can offer.  The future is for the taking.

Really Dude, What are my options?

I think it boils down to an executive decision.  Either conduct the upgrade of OBIA and go full bore and get all of the benefits or conduct the platform upgrade to Oracle BI 11.1.1.5 (or the latest version) just to ensure that your team gets the new platform features.  Either of those decisions get your team on the latest version of Oracle BI to leverage and learn Fusion Middleware and all that surrounds Oracles roadmap for integration.  It’s a good train, get on it.

Of course, there are implications to both.  The former option is clearly more resource and time intensive.  You’ll be setting up the latest Oracle BI foundation/platform infrastructure in either case.  However, if your team does not have solid Oracle BI (OBIEE) resources in house, I highly recommend getting some outside assistance from a Oracle partner that specializes in BI.  I think of a Oracle BI novice resource as one that has not yet implemented Oracle BI Apps although there are some clear levels of skill here which can vary that opinion.

Upgrading Oracle BI Applications with either approach should not be taken lightly.  Proper planning should take place but again it is highly recommended to bring in an Oracle BI partner for this process.  Because you don’t know what you don’t know and there are many hindering or costly factors which can affect an OBI upgrade which could be mitigated by bringing in that helping hand and guidance of a partner.

A platform upgrade for Oracle BI Apps or a simple Oracle BI platform/custom built solution have about the same level of difficulty regarding installation and configuration.  Clearly, depending on the complexity of a custom built OBIEE solution (i,e,: number of data sources, subject areas, and dashboards/reports), factors such as re-modeling, post-configuration updates, regression testing, etc. can take just as long as a platform update of your Oracle BI Apps implementation.  The benefit of doing a platform upgrade for OBIA is that you get a quicker win than doing a full OBIA implementation upgrade which would include installation of the DAC and Informatica toolsets, and the process that goes along with full loading and testing the ETL and custom modeling work.

Technically Speaking

Oracle’s upgrade document goes into some detail on the technical changes from upgrading OBI Applications.  I won’t do so here as the main point to draw on is that Fusion Middleware changes everything.  So, get a resource, stick him/her in the basement with a few books, the Oracle product docs, a few VM Images, and access to Oracle E-Delivery and let em rip into FMW.  You’ll need someone on your team that at least has begun to understand the basics of FMW or be prepared to get some outside help.

In the End – Parallel Test ’til the Cows Come Home

I’ve seen clients wanting to run OBI 11g over there existing OBI 10g environment infrastructure on the same servers.  This makes parallel testing tough but still possible.  But, no matter the challenge, parallel running of the OBI 10g and 11g environments (dev, UA, prod, etc.) to compare and contrast a stable previous version environment against the newly upgraded environment is paramount to the project’s success.  This process alone can take multiple weeks to complete.  Start the buy-in from the business/end-users early on in the project to ensure they have set time aside for this invaluable and crucial part of the project.  Without regression testing or without the end-user/business interaction it will be difficult to truly state that the migration/upgrade was a success.  And, yes, automated regression testing does have a place here but many are still leery of that when it comes to BI, just remember that.

Summary

So, to wrap it up, I feel better having written this post as experience with several upgrades has shown me what works and what doesn’t.  There is a lot more detail than what I have shared, clearly.  But the above should give you some indication to the right approach to upgrading and a few reasons why to upgrade and even then options in which type of OBIA upgrades are possible.  Key buzzwords to recap are planning, partner assistance, and parallel testing.

Resources

• http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E20490_01/bia.7963/e19040/upgr_overview.htm#sthref16
• Patching FMW
  • http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/doc.1111/e16793/patch_set_installer.htm#PATCH788