IMPROVING SPECIFIC REPORT PERFORMANCE

OBIEE 11g analysis has query performance option to “Share query with multiple users”

BiCoach Tip: This option is more to do with BI Presentation Server Cache. This has no impact on settings saved for BI Server Query Cache.

To enable this option,

* Analysis’ Advanced tab

* In the bottom of the page select “Share query with multiple users (may improve performance after initial run)

* Click “Apply” and save your analysis.

CHANGING COMMA SEPARATOR

Let’s explore today something related to Locale settings in OBIEE 11g.

We have thousand separators in OBIEE:

What if this comma(,) is to be replaced with underscore ( _ ) or any other symbol:

Open localedefinitions.xml. Usual path (\Middleware\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\web\display)

Locate the below tag

<property name=”thousandsSeparator”>,</property>

Replace comma with underscore

Save the localedefinitions.xml and restart the services.

Run the same analysis.

We are now having _ as separator.

Continue Exploring !

GROUPING VALUES IN PROMPT

Hi Friends,

Recently, we got a requirement to have grouping in the Dashboard prompts. I remember doing that few years back but thought to blog it as not many details are available. This is pretty easy stuff and should not take long for you to incorporate in your BI kitty.

Let’s say we have a Column ‘Day Name’. We would like to categorize our weekend (Saturday and Sunday) as Holiday so that if user selects ‘Holiday’, prompt will pass both Saturday and Sunday to the Report.

Now since we don’t have ‘Holiday’ included in our database, we are going to create a Group to achieve the same.

• Create an analysis on that subject area and go to the Results tab. Click the icon with 3 blue dots and a star in the menu bar.

• Create your group by choosing a Display Label (“Holiday“) and selecting the column and the value you want to put inside (Saturday and Sunday)

• Expand the Selection Steps pane at the bottom of the screen and click on your group (Holiday) –>Save Group As… and save it under the subject area content folder.

• In your Dashboard prompt add the same column, expend the Options and for Choice List Values select Specific Column Values, then click the Plus sign.

• Add all the possible column values (all 7 days of the week in our case) from Column Values pane and add our group (Holiday) from Catalog pane.

Bi Coach Remarks: The usage of Groups in Prompts is only limited “Specific Custom Value” option only. Thus, the demerit of this option or the best place where Groups should be used is where the prompt values are supposed to remain static over the period of time. Else, all those changing values would have to be included in Selection. (Not the option that I would recommend)

We are done. You can see all the days of the week and our created group in the prompt

Till next time, Happy Exploring!

DISABLE CACHE FOR A PARTICULAR REPORT

Hi Friends,

This will be a quick post – Let’s say we have a requirement where we want to disable caching only at the Report Level, i.e to say – for a specific Report, we don’t want to refer to Cache.

Simply,

• Go to advance tab,

• In the prefix section, paste SET VARIABLE DISABLE_CACHE_HIT=1;

• click on apply button,

• save your report.

Didn’t I say – this is going to be a quick post  :)

MIGRATING CUSTOM COLUMN FORMAT

Formatting columns at OBIEE is easy.

However, during the migration of catalog from one environment to other, these column formattings are lost as the conventional migration process only covers RPD and Catalog migration.

Mentioned below is set of small work around to achieve this:

1. Apply required formatting in any column and save it as ‘System Wide Default’

2. Once the column formats are saved as default, a entry is made in the system file. This system file is located in : Root Folder->System->Metadata. The name of the file will be same as Subject Area.

3. BI Coach Tip: This metadata folder is not easily editable. Thus, open the catalog of your target environment in offline mode.

4. Go to the same folder location in Target Environment as mentioned in Step 3

5. Paste the File (named as per your Subject Area) from Source to Target Catalog.

6. Restart the BI at target Location.

7. Your first race is won :)

Happy Learning!!