WORKING THROUGH RPD PATCH FILES

Most of us work in RPD through Admin Tool only – Changes, BMM layer changes, Creation of Variables, Updating variables, etc and what not.
However, there is one thing very interesting which can expedite making small incremental changes in RPD and that is – Patching.

A Patch file is xml file generated from RPD. This xml file can be either of whole Repository or can be a small file of differences between two RPDs.
The second option entice me very much as I think this can be used in multiple scenarios.

Let me illustrate how to work on Patch files by giving one example. There can be multiple applications of this but that I would leave to my readers as food for though for now.

Imagine you have a RPD (BiCoach.RPD) that has variables which define the connection pool details.

Here we have created three static Repository variables that are used in connection pool physical layer.

Now the value of connection pools change very frequently as per your OBIEE Environment. i.e Different database name, userid, password for integration environment or production environment or so on. We are taking here example of small number of variables but this list can be huge depending on your RPD.

Lets create a quick small patch file that has only details of these variables.
1. Copy the same RPD and rename it as BiCoach_Dev.rpd
2. Modify the values of those 3 variables.

3. Compare both the RPDs.
4. Create the Patch as mentioned. Save the file as ‘RPDDifference.xml’

5. This is how the created Patch file looks

6. You might notice that for each element, there is specific id and uid is generated. This remains constant. However, for our exercise, we can delete id and uid for each of the variables but lets retain this.
7. Now, I am making change in this xml file and updating values as per my Integration Environment.

8. Next Lets apply this patch in our original RPD – BiCoach.RPD.

9. Click Next. New RPD ‘BiCoach(1).RPD’ is created. Lets see our updated variables.

This really offer multiple avenue for its application: be it for Support team or Others. I will let this for readers to explore.

Please continue to drop your emails/ suggestions. Till next time,
Happy Exploring!