Category Archives: John Minkjan
OBIEE VALUELISTOF(NQ_SESSION.VAR_NAME)
On of the lesser known (and documented) features is the use of VALUELISTOF(NQ_SESSION.VAR_NAME) in the RPD.
As far as I know it’s only available in a session init block.
Let’s assume we have a row wise initiate variable called GeoArea:
This one is populated from our authorisation database and tells the system which areas a user is allowed to see.
Since we can only use single row session variables in the rest of the OBIEE system we have to transform it to a single string.
For this we can use the oracle LISTAGG function (see: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14072_01/server.112/e10592/functions087.htm)
We make a new init block with:
SELECT LISTAGG ( COUNTRY_NAME, '; ') WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY AREA)
from (select distinct AREA , COUNTRY_NAME from SAMP_ADDRESSES_D ) T
WHERE AREA IN (VALUELISTOF(NQ_SESSION.GeoArea))
If we take a peek in the log we see that BI-server is translating this to:
SELECT LISTAGG ( COUNTRY_NAME, '; ') WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY AREA) from (select distinct AREA , COUNTRY_NAME from SAMP_ADDRESSES_D ) T
WHERE AREA IN ('West','North','Central','South','South America','Northern','Middle East','East','North Africa','North America','Africa','Europe','Eastern')
The result we put in a session variable called GEO_COUNTRY_LIST.
Be sure to set the order in which the session variables should be loaded:
This variable we can use for a data restriction on the Logical Table Source of our address table.
Till Next Time
OBIEE Killing the firewall on linux
I was trying to connect to the new SampleApp rpd on a remote machine and got this error nqserror 12008 unable to connect to port 9703. The error says it all, port 9703 is blocked. First I killed the firewall on the linux VM (yep, the security guy will beat me up tonight 
)
Open a terminal, make yourself root > SU
next kill the firewall:
- Stop the ipchains service. > # service ipchains stop
- Stop the iptables service. > # service iptables stop
- Stop the ipchains service from starting when you restart the server. > # chkconfig ipchains off
- Stop the iptables service from starting when you restart the server. > # chkconfig iptables off
See: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19140-01/821-0908/p52.html
On all router in between I checked that port 9703 was open.
Now I could make a ODBC for my windows 7 machine to the sample app.
Till Next Time
OBIEE developing for the iPad
When developing OBIEE content for the iPad there some extra considerations:
- Check if your licence covers the use of mobile devices!
- Screen size: 1024 * 768 (Width * height) {Horizontal} when holding the iPad like this:
- Screen size: 768 * 1024 (width * height) {vertical} when holding the iPad like this:
- Although scrolling is a nice feature it kind of distracts from the message….
- Graphs are rendered as static pic and have no drill functionally, add a (pivot) table for drilling.
- background colour: most users prefer black or ‘broken’ white.
- Don’t “crowd” the screen a maximum of 4 elements (tables / graph) seems to be a good rule of thumb.
- A section size of 1010 * 650 seems to fit a horizontal screen
- A section of 978 * 1165 seems to fit a vertical screen
- Don’t set the background colour in the section, you will loose it a drill down.
- Tell your user how to lock the orientation:
- scorecards are rendered as separate KPI’s and look completely different from a normal browser.
Till Next Time
OBIEE WLST Useful scripts
Some OBIEE11g / WLST scripts I recently put on http://wlst101.blogspot.com:
Connecting Online:
connect('weblogic','Admin123','t3://192.168.56.101:7001',adminServerName='AdminServer')
Place Lock:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-place-lock-on-system.html
Upload RPD:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-upload-rpd.html
Commit Changes:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-commit-system.html
Change WebCatLocation:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-change-webcat-location.html
Bounce Presentation Server:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-bounce-presentation-server.html
Bounce BI Server:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-bounce-bi-server.html
Till Next Time
OBIEE WLST Useful scripts
Some OBIEE11g / WLST scripts I recently put on http://wlst101.blogspot.com:
Connecting Online:
connect('weblogic','Admin123','t3://192.168.56.101:7001',adminServerName='AdminServer')
Place Lock:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-place-lock-on-system.html
Upload RPD:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-upload-rpd.html
Commit Changes:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-commit-system.html
Change WebCatLocation:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-change-webcat-location.html
Bounce Presentation Server:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-bounce-presentation-server.html
Bounce BI Server:
http://wlst101.blogspot.com/2011/08/wlst-obiee-bounce-bi-server.html
Till Next Time
