Here is a crib-sheet on creating a new Presentation Catalog in OBI 11g.

The Oracle BI Server and WebLogic Server should be up and running.

1. Stop the system component service for Presentation Services.
2. Specify a new web catalog folder location (one that does not exist) for the catalog on the Repository tab of the Deployment main tab page in Fusion Middleware Control Enterprise Manager.
   • Example: <INSTANCE_HOME>/…/catalogs/mynewcatalog
3. Apply Changes.
4. Activate Changes.
5. Restart Presentation Services.

Upon restarting presentation services the new web catalog folder will be  created for you automatically and be set as the active catalog.

References

• Oracle Presentation Services Documentation

Okay, I can’t help it, I have been sitting on so much code and I am getting ready to start Open Sourcing a lot of it.  More on that later this year.  But as I scan through a lot of the files that I’ve been using on many a personal project over the last several years I see that several of the scripts and code snippets that I have written may be useful to others.  So, consider this one of the many in a line of shared logic rants that are yet to come.

If you are an Oracle BI pro then you know that you can grab a better calendar from the BI Apps time dimensions. If you are SQL Server AS pro then you know that you can get a better calendar built by the time dimension wizard. However, if you are just looking for a quick and dirty calendar based a start and stop timeframe from which you have complete control, etc. then this will be a helpful start for your mission. Let me know if it helps. This was written originally for a SQL Server database but clearly just adopt it for Oracle by changing it to the related PL/SQL syntax.

Read the full story

You just have to love Oracle Business Intelligence and the enhancements over OBI 10g.  Again, my recommendation is to get OBI 11g in your org as soon as possible.  At a minimum a dev environment just so you can check out the cool features like the one this blog post talks about, data type sensitive prompts.

What exactly are we talking about here?  We are talking about intelligent object creation assistance.  Instead of just the typical, kludgy, “show all” functionality you see in some other tools when developing a dashboard, report, etc. in OBI 11g presentation services, the OBI 11g interface can intelligently provide you with options related to the context in which you are developing.  Let’s take for example the development of a simple dashboard prompt.  In this post I will seek to provide a quick tutorial “slash” illustration of this concept of context sensitive object creation.  I am using the SampleApp that can be downloaded from Oracle’s BI website download page.

First Example – Calendar Prompt via Date/TimeStamp Data Type

1. Login to the OBI 11g Portal
2. Choose to create a New > Dashboard Prompt
   
3. Select Sample Sales as the Subject Area
   
4. On the Dashboard Prompt creation page click the plus icon to expose the add prompt type list
5. Select “Column Prompt…”
   
6. From the Subject Area column selector prompt choose Time > T00 Calendar Date
   
7. When prompted make sure the User Input drop-down box has the Calendar option selected
   
8. Click OK
9. The prompt is now ready to previewed down in the bottom section.  Click on the calendar icon next to the empty field.
   
10. Viola! A beautiful calendar is present showing OBI 11g’s Web 2.0 functionality for date/timestamp data types.
    

Second Example – Slider Prompt via INT Data Type

1. Continuing from the first example, use the plus icon to expose the add prompt type list to create a second prompt.
2. Select “Column Prompt…”
3. From the Subject Area column selector prompt choose Base Facts > 1-Revenue
   
4. Click OK
5. In the New Prompt window, expand the User Input drop-down box and select Slider as the option
   
6. The New Prompt window will change shape to show additional options based on the selected user input context.  In the Lower Limit field input 1000000 (one million).  In the Upper Limit field input 10000000 (ten million).
   
7. Click OK
8. Viola! Again, another beautiful web 2.0 prompt is shown in the bottom section of the window showcasing the slider prompt.  This prompt can be used to predicate results to fall within a specific metric (Revenue) range while providing the user with an intuitive analytics experience.
   

Conclusion

In OBI 11g, clearly Oracle has done a great job with several of the front-end functional pieces of the application.  This is only the first release of OBI 11g and we are only 5 months in to the GA of the tool.  With the expected release of the R1 patch to enhance and fix several R1 bugs, with some customer feedback I think we all should be optimistic at what lies ahead for Oracle in the Business Intelligence space.