Recently I dusted off an old laptop of mine that was peforming terribly with Windows XP since it only had 1/2 GB RAM and the machine is about 4 years old.  So, I wanted to throw a Linux distribution on it.  I was going to wipe the hard drive and then thought to myself that I may actually want to keep the Windows OS as well and just run a dual-boot system.  I’ve done this before when I have installed both OS’s on on fresh HD and had no problems.

I thought this endeavor would also be no problem until I saw that the only volume on the laptop was set as the system partition - Basically only a C: drive consuming all 80GB of hard drive space.  I looked in WIndows Disk Management and there is no tool for reducing a partitioned space.  What?? You can’t shink a partition via Windows?

Then long and short of it is that I was not going to spend money on any Disk Management software like PartitionMagic, etc.  I called a Linux guru buddy of mine and he pointed me to a killer open source bit of software that runs on the Linux Kernel from boot via ISO download to CD burn.  The software is called GParted.  Just download the ISO, burn it to CD (or USB if so skilled), place the CD in the tray and reboot the machine.  GParted will start up (3 minutes or less) and the GUI is really intuitive.  Some user of GParted even wrote a nice detailed post with a checklist and warnings before partitioning a Windows environment, here.

Using GParted I was able to Shrink my parition (clearly I was not using the full HD on the laptop) by a substantial amount making room for a new parition which gets marked as “unallocated”. It took about 30 minutes to go from a full 80GB partition to a 40GB/40GB split.   I think the speed was due to the low RAM.  Once finished GParted reboots the machine and pops out the CD tray on exit.

I popped in my ISO download to CD burn version of Linux Mint 8, installed it and presto, a perfect dual-boot install.  Linux runs fast on this low RAM machine.  Time to install some BI stuff.

After my recent post on the Content Accelerator Framework and preparing for my deeper dive into the tool, I have begun looking at the inner workings of how to automate the tool for daily or weekly maintenance tasks.  This effort got me looking at some possible linkages between CAF and some existing OBIEE executables, nqXUDMLGen.exe and nqXUDMLExec.exe that reside in the ORACLEBI_HOME\Server\bin\ directory.

Andreas from Trivadis has done a spectacular job detailing the usage of XUDML in OBIEE, here.  I have also mirrored it here.

I should be posting my additional CAF findings this month.

Trivadis also has some other cool docs on BI which I have mirrored below:

• Hyperion Essbase/Planning Integration (German)
• Slowly Changing Dimensions (German)

Anyone who has installed OBIEE in the past few years knows that the default web/application server that comes with the installation binaries is OC4J.  A lot of clients question having the application server and the BI Server on the same box, not only from an infrastructure standpoint but as well as a valid performance concern when implementing a distributed environment.  You have probably heard some performance “red-flag” statements such as “don’t use OC4J if you plan to have more than 200+ users hitting the server”, etc. just like I have.  And, that might be a valid statement, however, I have not personally benchmarked it with any performance testing software but it does make perfect sense once you uncover what OC4J really is.

OC4J is a slimmed down version of Oracle Application Server. For those that have done an OBIEE install, you are familiar with the one installation prompt where you can choose either the standard or advanced option.  If you choose advanced you are prompted to provide Oracle Application Server connection information. Otherwise, you are defaulted to OC4J.  And, this version of OC4J that you get with OBIEE is a pre-packaged “StandAlone” (or, unmanaged) version that only has a little more than the basic functionality that the full-blown Oracle Application Server (OAS) has.  Think of OC4J as OAS-lite.
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I often get asked by clients when we are presenting the OBIEE solution or during an implementation what “iBot” stands for?  Of course, who wouldn’t want to know after seeing what OBIEE delivers is all about and we start talking about creating iBots?

iBot(s) is an acronym for Intelligent Bursting and Output Tool.

Understanding web services in general is a big benefit for anyone using integrated technologies today.  That includes any system that integrates a web client on a closed intranet network or open network with access to the world wide web.  Because OBIEE presentation services is ultimately a web-based tool using your favorite web browser one would hypothesize that utilization of web services could also be incorporated by bringing in external data or reading from network data sources. 

This post will show how to leverage presentation services to pull in a web service and integrate the web service data into our Dashboard.  This is a low level example just to get you thinking about the grand possibilities of the integration. 

The data we will consume stems from a Yahoo.com web service built inside an Answers report view.  It does not require any database integration or schema modifications. We will display it in the dashboard.  In the dashboard our final product looks like this:

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Google Maps is very popular and when someone first mentioned to me that an integration between OBIEE and the Google Maps API was possible I was totally stoked. For a sales, marketing, supply chain and many other subject area reporting analytics this is awesome.  You get the picture. 

Recently a colleague mentioned they were having problems getting the integration to work and I just had to chime in.  They had done several things right, such as getting the API key from google (one should always register it for http://localhost/ unless domain restrictions don’t otherwise allow for full blown testing using this URL) , they had built a simple report with city, state, and zip, and they downloaded a code snippet from another OBIEE blogger who has also been playing with the integration. That blogger had them off to a decent start but they immediately noticed problems with the logic. They were unable to view the map properly when editing, etc.  The other OBIEE Google map bloggers have probably never done any serious web development integration before and that’s where the problems start. I’ll seek to set you on the correct path in this blog series.  I’ll start you with a simple example of an Answers Google Map integration and the code that goes along with it.  So, if you want your report to look similar to the one below, without any glitches, then continue reading and follow along.

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Recently when configuring a JSP page based on Venkat’s walk-through of linking an HFR report to an OBIEE answers report we bumped into the following error when trying to access our SQL Server database. It turns out this error is caused when TCP/IP to the SQL Server server instance has been disabled. It is actually disabled by default. Below are the steps to resolve the issue. Once we’ve enabled TCP/IP our JSP page using the JDBC call worked like a charm.

Here is the error:

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We steadily brand our client’s OBIEE portals with their logos, color schemes, etc.  Usually this takes a tool like Photoshop to handle the graphics.  However, I just came across a very sweet, free, photoshop-like web tool that anyone can use to edit photos and even create graphics and color schemes with.

The group is called SmartSell and they are in the Netherlands.  Here is the link to the photoshop-like web tool.

I will throw out a quick disclaimer and state that I have not used SmartSell’s tool thoroughly and although I think it looks cool, I am not sure how powerful it is, if the site is maintained, etc.  And, I definitely don’t vouch for these guys. Check it out for yourself.

For color schemes I do use a nice tool that allows you to grab great hex codes for your CSS that you might manipulate when branding your OBIEE portals.  Check out ColorMatch5k when you get a chance to check your graphic art skills.

Update 9/22/2009

In addition to the graphics tool mentioned above, we have now run across Aviary, the tool which seems destined to be Photoshop’s replacement.  It is also web based and has an amazing approach to diagramming filter relationships.

Using the subsonic project ORM for .NET clearly has tons of benefits for DAL and BLL purposes.

A great way to get a list of records from the db is to use the collection object which is created for tables and view objects from the db.

Here are two examples of how to use the .Load() method and overload to get data in a collection for which you can loop through using a foreach() statement.

Using the Query Object with Collection Object

Query q = new Query(Views.Accounts);
q.WHERE("accountID", Comparison.Equals, _accountID.value.ToString());

AccountsCollection obj1 = new AccountsCollection();
obj1.Load(q.ExecuteReader());

Using only the Collection Object

AccountsCollection obj1 = new AccountsCollection().Where("accountID", Comparison.Equals, accountID.value.ToString()).Load();

Now, to loop through the Collection
Once the collection has been instantiated and the Load() method called a foreach() loop can take place to get the records.

if (obj1.Count > 0)
{
   foreach (Accounts x in obj1)
   {
      Console.Write("My Account Name is {0}", x.AccountName);
   }
}
else
   Console.Write("There are no accounts in the collection");