MAPVIEWER – CREATING MAPS IN OBIEE

OBIEE 11g allows embedding maps in to Oracle BI Dashboards. Integrating these maps require configuration of MapViewer which is a Java Application used to render maps. This doesn’t require additional licenses and comes pre built with standard OBIEE 11g installable.

Before starting, lets know little more about Oracle Spatial Architecture

An Oracle Spatial Architecture consist of the following components:

1. Oracle Database  It stores the definitions of spatial objects (using special geometry data types). The option “Locator” database can be used for querying, filtering, joining spatial data. Where as option “Spatial” database can be used for manipulating and aggregating spatial data.
2. Oracle MapViewer  This is an J2EE application which is used for rendering interactive map images and features of interest. This is invoked by a series of XML, Java, PL/ SQL and Javascript APIs. These details are highlighted in the document. To facilitate query performance, Oracle MapViewer also provides a layer of Caching.
3. Oracle MapBuilder  This is a development tool for the MapViewer. It enables you to define the content and structure of maps and their rendering rules.

Spatial features requirements:

One method of rendering maps within OBIEE 11g is to have all your “spatial” data stored in an Oracle Database using a special “spatial” data type called SDO_GEOMETRY.

Though the Spatial data is available from several vendors, we will be referring data from NAVTEQ, which is available as a free sample download from Oracle Technology Network for Oracle customers. The sample NAVTEQ dataset contains spatial data at the countries plus states/provinces level, plus detailed sample data for 3 world cities. If the customer requires additional data, it can be purchased from NAVTEQ or a NAVTEQ reseller.

The NAVTEQ spatial data can run on any version of Oracle Database 10g or later with the Locator or Oracle database Spatial Option.

Integration with MapViewer :

1. Add the following <SpatialMaps> tag in instanceconfig.xml

2. Restart the presentation service. This enables the connectivity between BI EE and Mapviewer.

3. Download the Mapbuilder application which will enable to create a custom maps.

4. Start the Mapbuilder application and login to the respective schema to start creating maps. This application can be downloaded from the below link:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/mapviewer/downloads/index-100641.html

4.1 After downloading the Mapbuilder, start the application by double clicking on it.

4.2 Import the respective spatial schema (here MVDEMO Schema).

Once the MVDemo Schema is configured in above step, below screen will appear. MVDemo schema contains a lot of built-in themes, maps, tiles, layers by default.

CreateBase Maps

To Create Base Maps, Right Click on Base Maps and select “Create..”

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1. Select the Themes and give the name.

2. Preview: Click on preview tab to see the boundaries within a simple map.

Create Tile Layer

1. After base map is created, create tile layer to help in defining the zoom levels, boundaries, etc within the map. Right click on Tile Layer and select “Create..”

2. Define the Tile layer

3. Define the Boundaries

Expose maps to the MapViewer

1. Click on Manage Tiles (Note: Mention correct hostname and listener instead of default one i.e. http://<HostName&gt;:7001/mapviewer)

2. Change MapViewer Server to “ http://<HostName&gt;:9704/mapviewer “

3. Login to the mapviewer admin screen using the following credentials:-

Username: weblogic

Password: password

Manage Map Data

Relationship between BI EE repository columns/subject areas and Mapviewer maps are done from the Manage Map Data screen in the presentation services admin console.

We need to import the layers, maps and the images that are required as shown below:

There need not be any relation between the column used in spatial and the column mapped in BI EE. All we need to ensure is the attributes should match.

Then navigate to the Tile Layer in the background maps and add the Theme

Create Dashboard Report

1. Lets create the report with the columns “Region”, “Cust Acct”, “Volume”.

2. Use the new Map View option to create the map.

3. This will render the map that we created in mapviewer. It will automatically apply some color coding to the region which is part of the report. But as the Region column is not in sync with the spatial data in MVDEMO schema, we will not be able to see any color coding applied.

Congrats. You have just added your first Maps into OBIEE.

Happy Exploring!!