Previewing Three Oracle Data Visualization Sessions at the Atlanta US BI Forum 2014
Many of the sessions at the UK and US Rittman Mead BI Forum 2014 events in May focus on the back-end of BI and data warehousing, with for example Chris Jenkins’ session on TimesTen giving us some tips and tricks from TimeTen product development, and Wayne Van Sluys’s session on Essbase looking at what’s involved in Essbase database optimisation (full agendas for the two events can be found here). But two areas within BI that have got a lot of attention over the past couple of years are (a) data visualisation, and (b) mobile, so I’m particularly pleased that our Atlanta event has three of the most innovative practitioners in this area – Kevin McGinley from Accenture (left in pictures below), Christian Screen from Art of BI (centre), and Patrick Rafferty from Branchbird (right), talking about what they’ve been doing in these areas.
If you were at the BI Forum a couple of years ago you’ll of course know Kevin McGinley, who won “best speaker” award the previous year and most recently has gone on to organise the BI track at ODTUG KScope and write for OTN and his own blog, Oranalytics.blogspot.com. Kevin also hosts, along with our own Stewart Bryson, a video podcast series on iTunes called “Real-Time BI with Kevin & Stewart”, and I’m excited that he’s joining us again at this year’s BI Forum in Atlanta to talk about adding 3rd party visualisations to OBIEE. Over to Kevin…
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told someone that I can’t precisely meet a certain charting requirement because of a lack of configurability or variety in the OBIEE charting engine. Combine that with an increase in the variety and types of data people are interested in visualizing within OBIEE and you have a clear need. Fortunately, OBIEE is web-based tool and can leverage other visualization engines, if you just know how to work with the engine and embed it into OBIEE.
In my session, I’ll walk through a variety of reasons you might want to do this and the various approaches for doing it. Then, I’ll take two specific engines and show you the process for building a visualization with them right in an OBIEE Analysis. In both examples, you’ll come away with a capability you’ve never been able to do directly in OBIEE before.”
Another speaker, blogger, writer and developer very-well known to the OBIEE community is Art of BI Software’s Christian Screen, co-author of the Packt book “Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial” and developer of the OBIEE collaboration add-in, BITeamwork. Last year Christian spoke to us about developing plug-ins for OBIEE, but this year he’s returned to a topic he’s very passionate about – mobile BI, and in particular, Oracle’s Mobile App Designer. According to Christian:
“Last year Oracle marked its mobile business intelligence territory by updating its Oracle BI iOS application with a new look and feel. Unbeknownst to many, they also released the cutting-edge Oracle BI Mobile Application Designer (MAD). These are both components available as part of the Oracle BI Foundation Suite. But it is where they are taking the mobile analytics platform that is most interesting at the moment as we look at the mobile analytics consumption chain. MAD is still in its 1.x release and there is a lot of promise with this tool to satisfy the analytical cravings growing in the bellies of many enterprise organizations. There is also quite a bit of discussion around building new content just for mobile consumption compared to viewing existing content through the mobile applications native to major mobile devices.
The “Oracle BI Got MAD and You Should be Happy” session will discuss these topics and I’ll be sharing the stage with Jayant Sharma from Oracle BI Product Development where we’ll also be showing some cutting edge material and demos for Oracle BI MAD. Because MAD provides a lot of flexibility for development customizations, compared to the Oracle BI iOS/Android applications, our session will explore business use cases around pre-built MAD applications, HTML5, mobile security, and development of plug-ins using the MAD SDK. One of the drivers for this session is to show how many of the Oracle Analytics components integrate with MAD and how an Oracle BI developer can quickly leverage the capabilities of MAD to show the tool’s value within their current Oracle BI implementation.
We will also discuss the common concern of mobile security by touching on the BitzerMobile acquisition and using the central mobile configuration settings for Oracle BI Mobile. The crowd will hopefully walk away with a better understanding of Oracle BI mobility with MAD and a desire to go build something.”
As well as OBIEE and Oracle Mobile App Designer, Oracle also have another product, Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, that combines a data aggregation and search engine with dashboard visuals and data discovery. One of the most innovative partner companies in the Endeca space are Branchbird, and we’re very pleased to have Branchbird’s Patrick Rafferty join us to talk about “More Than Mashups – Advanced Visualizations and Data Discovery”. Over to Patrick …
“In this session, we’ll explore how Oracle Endeca customers are moving beyond simple dashboards and charts and creating exciting visualizations on top of their data using Oracle Endeca Studio. We’ll discuss how the latest trends in data visualization, especially geospatial and temporal visualization, can be brought into the enterprise and how they drive competitive advantage.
This session will show in-production real-life examples of how extending Oracle Endeca Studio’s visualization capabilities to integrate technology like D3 can create compelling discovery-driven visualizations that increase revenue, cut cost and enhance the ability to answer unknown questions through data discovery.”
The full agenda for the Atlanta and Brighton BI Forum agendas can be found on this blog post, and full details of both events, including registration links, links to book accommodation and details of the Lars George Cloudera Hadoop masterclass, can be found on the Rittman Mead BI Forum 2014 home page.
Connecting OBIEE to MySQL on Linux
by Antony Heljula
If you wish to connect OBIEE 11.1.1.7+ to a MySQL database then the good news is that OBIEE now comes with native support for MySQL. This means you no longer have to install extra odbc drivers, change library paths or make configuration changes to opmn.xml.
Here is how to configure MySQL connectivity on Linux:
1) Open up the odbc.ini file for editing:
[FMW_HOME]/instances/instance1/bifoundation/OracleBIApplication/coreapplication/setup/odbc.ini
2) Add a new line underneath [ODBC Data Sources]. For example, if your new ODBC connection is going to be called "MySQL_DB":
| [ODBC Data Sources] MySQL_DB = MySQL ODBC DRIVER |
3) Paste in the connection details for your new "MySQL_DB" ODBC driver:
| [MySQL_DB] Driver = [FMW_HOME]/Oracle_BI1/bifoundation/odbc/lib/SEmysql23.so Description = Connector ODBC 3.51 Driver DSN HostName = [HOST or IP ADDRESS] PortNumber = 3306 Database = [NAME OF MYSQL DATABASE] |
4) Restart Oracle BI Server
5) You can now connect your RPD to the new data source, using the following settings:
| Database Type: Connection Pool "Call Interface": Connection Pool "Data Source Name": |
MySQL ODBC 3.5 MySQL_DB (or whatever you specified in the odbc.ini file) |
Preview of Maria Colgan, and Andrew Bond/Stewart Bryson Sessions at RM BI Forum 2014
We’ve got a great selection of presentations at the two upcoming Rittman Mead BI Forum 2014 events in Brighton and Atlanta, including sessions on Endeca, TimesTen, OBIEE (of course), ODI, GoldenGate, Essbase and Big Data (full timetable for both events here). Two of the sessions I’m particularly looking forward to though are ones by Maria Colgan, product manager for the new In-Memory Option for Oracle Database, and another by Andrew Bond and Stewart Bryson, on an update to Oracle’s reference architecture for Data Warehousing and Information Management.
The In-Memory Option for Oracle Database was of course the big news item from last year’s Oracle Openworld, promising to bring in-memory analytics and column-storage to the Oracle Database. Maria is of course well known to the Oracle BI and Data Warehousing community through her work with the Oracle Database Cost-Based Optimizer, so we’re particular glad to have her at the Atlanta BI Forum 2014 to talk about what’s coming with this new feature. I asked Maria to jot down a few worlds for the blog on what she’ll be covering, so over to Maria:
“Given this announcement and the performance improvements promised by this new functionality is it still necessary to create a separate access and performance layer in your data warehouse environment or to run your Oracle data warehouse on an Exadata environment?“At Oracle Open World last year, Oracle announced the upcoming availability of the Oracle Database In-Memory option, a solution for accelerating database-driven business decision-making to real-time. Unlike specialized In-Memory Database approaches that are restricted to particular workloads or applications, Oracle Database 12c leverages a new in-memory column store format to speed up analytic workloads.
This session explains in detail how Oracle Database In-Memory works and will demonstrate just how much performance improvements you can expect. We will also discuss how it integrates into the existing Oracle Data Warehousing Architecture and with an Exadata environment.””
The other session I’m particularly looking forward to is one being delivered jointly by Andrew Bond, who heads-up Enterprise Architecture at Oracle and was responsible along with Doug Cackett for the various data warehousing, information management and big data reference architectures we’ve covered on the blog over the past few years, including the first update to include “big data” a year or so ago.
Back towards the start of this year, Stewart, myself and Jon Mead met up with Andrew and his team to work together on an update to this reference architecture, and Stewart carried on with the collaboration afterwards, bringing in some of our ideas around agile development, big data and data warehouse design into the final architecture. Stewart and Andrew will be previewing the updated reference architecture at the Brighton BI Forum event, and in the meantime, here’s a preview from Andrew:
“I’m very excited to be attending the event and unveiling Oracle’s latest iteration of the Information Management reference architecture. In this version we have focused on a pragmatic approach to “Analytics 3.0″ and in particular looked at bringing an agile methodology to break the IT / business barrier. We’ve also examined exploitation of in-memory technologies and the Hadoop ecosystem and guiding the plethora of new technology choices.
We’ve worked very closely with a number of key customers and partners on this version – most notably Rittman Mead and I’m delighted that Stewart and I will be able to co-present the architecture and receive immediate feedback from delegates.”
Full details of the event, running in Brighton on May 7-9th 2014 and Atlanta, May 15th-17th 2014, can be found on the Rittman Mead BI Forum 2014 homepage, and the agendas for the two days are on this blog post from earlier in the week.
Final Timetable and Agenda for the Brighton and Atlanta BI Forums, May 2014
It’s just a few weeks now until the Rittman Mead BI Forum 2014 events in Brighton and Atlanta, and there’s still a few spaces left at both events if you’d still like to come – check out the main BI Forum 2014 event page, and the booking links for Brighton (May 7th – 9th 2014) and Atlanta (May 14th – 16th 2014).
We’re also able now to publish the timetable and running order for the two events – session order can still change between now at the events, but this what we’re planning to run, first of all in Brighton, with the photos below from last year’s BI Forum.
Brighton BI Forum 2014, Hotel
Seattle, Brighton
Wednesday 7th May 2014 – Optional 1-Day Masterclass, and Opening Drinks, Keynote and Dinner
- 9.00 – 10.00 – Registration
- 10.00 – 11.00 : Lars George Hadoop Masterclass Part 1
- 11.00 – 11.15 : Morning Coffee
- 11.15 – 12.15 : Lars George Hadoop Masterclass Part 2
- 12.15 – 13.15 : Lunch
- 13.15 – 14.15 : Lars George Hadoop Masterclass Part 3
- 14.15 – 14.30 : Afternoon Tea/Coffee/Beers
- 14.30 – 15.30 : Lars George Hadoop Masterclass Part 4
- 17.00 – 19.00 : Registration and Drinks Reception
- 19.00 – Late : Oracle Keynote and Dinner at Hotel
- 08.45 – 09.00 : Opening Remarks Mark Rittman, Rittman Mead
- 09.00 – 10.00 : Emiel van Bockel : Extreme Intelligence, made possible by …
- 10.00 – 10.30 : Morning Coffee
- 10.30 – 11.30 : Chris Jenkins : TimesTen for Exalytics: Best Practices and Optimisation
- 11.30 – 12.30 : Robin Moffatt : No Silver Bullets : OBIEE Performance in the Real World
- 12.30 – 13.30 : Lunch
- 13.30 – 14.30 : Adam Bloom : Building a BI Cloud
- 14.30 – 14.45 : TED: Paul Oprea : “Extreme Data Warehousing”
- 14.45 – 15.00 : TED : Michael Rainey : “A Picture Can Replace A Thousand Words”
- 15.00 – 15.30 : Afternoon Tea/Coffee/Beers
- 15.30 – 15.45 : Reiner Zimmerman : About the Oracle DW Global Leaders Program
- 15.45 – 16.45 : Andrew Bond & Stewart Bryson : Enterprise Big Data Architecture
- 19.00 – Late: Depart for Gala Dinner, St Georges Church, Brighton
Friday 9th May 2014
- 9.00 – 10.00 : Truls Bergensen – Drawing in a New Rock on the Map – How will of Endeca Fit in to Your Oracle BI Topography
- 10.00 – 10.30 : Morning Coffee
- 10.30 – 11.30 : Nicholas Hurt & Michael Rainey : Real-time Data Warehouse Upgrade – Success Stories
- 11.30 – 12.30 : Matt Bedin & Adam Bloom : Analytics and the Cloud
- 12.30 – 13.30 : Lunch13.30 – 14.30 : Gianni Ceresa : Essbase within/without OBIEE – not just an aggregation engine
- 14.30 – 14.45 : TED : Marco Klaasen : “Speed up RPD Development”
- 14.45 – 15:00 : TED : Christian Berg : “Neo’s Voyage in OBIEE:”
- 15.00 – 15.30 : Afternoon Tea/Coffee/Beers
- 15.30 – 16.30 : Alistair Burgess : “Tuning TimesTen with Aggregate Persistence”
- 16.30 – 16.45 : Closing Remarks (Mark Rittman)
Atlanta BI Forum 2014, Renaissance Mid-Town Hotel, Atlanta
Wednesday 14th May 2014 – Optional 1-Day Masterclass, and and Opening Drinks, Keynote and Dinner
- 9.00-10.00 – Registration
- 10.00 – 11.00 : Lars George Hadoop Masterclass Part 1
- 11.00 – 11.15 : Morning Coffee
- 11.15 – 12.15 : Lars George Hadoop Masterclass Part 2
- 12.15 – 13.15 : Lunch
- 13.15 – 14.15 : Lars George Hadoop Masterclass Part 3
- 14.15 – 14.30 : Afternoon Tea/Coffee/Beers
- 14.30 – 15.30 : Lars George Hadoop Masterclass Part 4
- 16.00 – 18.00 : Registration and Drinks Reception
- 18.00 – 19.00 : Oracle Keynote & Dinner
Thursday 15th May 2014
- 08.45 – 09.00 : Opening Remarks Mark Rittman, Rittman Mead
- 09.00 – 10.00 : Kevin McGinley : Adding 3rd Party Visualization to OBIEE
- 10.00 – 10.30 : Morning Coffee
- 10.30 – 11.30 : Chris Linskey : Endeca Information Discovery for Self-Service and Big Data
- 11.30 – 12.30 : Omri Traub : Endeca and Big Data: A Vision for the Future
- 12.30 – 13.30 : Lunch
- 13.30 – 14.30 : Dan Vlamis : Capitalizing on Analytics in the Oracle Database in BI Applications
- 14.30 – 15.30 : Susan Cheung : TimesTen In-Memory Database for Analytics – Best Practices and Use Cases
- 15.30 – 15.45 : Afternoon Tea/Coffee/Beers
- 15.45 – 16.45 : Christian Screen : Oracle BI Got MAD and You Should Be Happy
- 18.00 – 19.00 : Special Guest Keynote : Maria Colgan : An introduction to the new Oracle Database In-Memory option
- 19.00 – leave for dinner
Friday 16th May 2014
- 09.00 – 10.00 : Patrick Rafferty : More Than Mashups – Advanced Visualizations and Data Discovery
- 10.00 – 10.30 : Morning Coffee
- 10.30 – 11.30 : Matt Bedin : Analytics and the Cloud
- 11.30 – 12.30 : Jack Berkowitz : Analytic Applications and the Cloud
- 12.30 – 13.30 : Lunch
- 13.30 – 14.30 : Philippe Lions : What’s new on 2014 HY1 OBIEE SampleApp
- 14.30 – 15.30 : Stewart Bryson : ExtremeBI: Agile, Real-Time BI with Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate
- 15.30 – 16.00 : Afternoon Tea/Coffee/Beers
- 16.00 – 17.00 : Wayne Van Sluys : Everything You Know about Oracle Essbase Tuning is Wrong or Outdated!
- 17.00 – 17.15 : Closing Remarks (Mark Rittman)
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