Category Archives: Rittman Mead
#IHateYourFace, a BizIntel Love Story
Sometimes love isn't fair
A teenager, just emerging from an awkward growing phase drives a tendency to spew non sensical permutations of varying cringe worthy affections toward their love target. The data points behind the intent are solid. Let’s go Boolean now:
Intent of good = 1 ;
attracted to target = 1;
ability to provide for target = 1;
time available = 1;
prior or current committed relationship = 0.
So here we are with all the solid intentions in the world and the variables all align to an optimal outcome. Except one thing:
love target hates your face = 1;
Exit(0)
Assuming that this is a hierarchical value chain with face hating as the parent, we are at an impasse.
The above is not intended as an affront to teenagers spitting game at their prospective boo. It is though, an analogy to the fantastic time and effort spent in integrating, transforming and presenting Business Intelligence to the enterprise with all of the proper best practices and technology. Only to have the user subtly tell us that the information is “great but… I don’t know what I am looking at and I was looking for it to be in 3D” (AKA, I hate your face). There have been some great books out there about visualization and we have read a LOT of them. Best practices aside, visualization is about taste. The love target above may well have a completely different opinion of facial beauty than Mr. or Ms. hottie-mc-toddy that sits next to you in your advanced Kafka course (seriously, it might happen). Love at Kafka training happens, I swear it does, really and when it does, it involves unicorns and ends of rainbows.
So now I have to figure out my end user’s tastes in visualization?
Yep, accept and move on.
You wouldn’t saddle up with a love interest if you hated their face. Why would an end user sign up for something they don’t want to use. Of course, you being the BI practitioner that you are know your BI stack up and down and are well aware of all of the available visualization options. These end users don’t know what they are talking about…right?
—they don’t have to.
Lots of the big BI players have been losing ground in the industry of viz because new competitors are building attractive viz capabilities. The new guys in BI are going to the end users with something the end users want…pretty and flexible visualizations. Both the viz provider and end user need not worry themselves with data integrity, governance, or how they got the data to start.
Welcome to Enterprise BI 2.0
What if I could use my existing enterprise platform and allow users to integrate more data sources, mash it up and then have an almost story telling approach to BI? You can and the next releases from the big BI vendors are all focused on that. Clearly at Rittman Mead we have an affinity for OBIEE and with 12c, the dream of viz has become a an out of the box reality. Data visualization is core to new functionality with more on the way. So my advice is upgrade to 12c ASAP to get your new face on.
Rittman Mead has less invasive facelift versus replace options with viz for 12c and 11g. Visual Plug in Pack (VPP) extends the native charting in OBI into dynamic attractive hollywood level viz. We also have an User Engagement offering that comes with that visual facelift all the girls at the salon are talking about. Shoot me an email if you are interested in our streamlined OBI 12c upgrade service or VPP. Jason.davis@rittmanmead.com
#IHateYourFace, a BizIntel Love Story
Sometimes love isn’t fair
A teenager, just emerging from an awkward growing phase drives a tendency to spew non sensical permutations of varying cringe worthy affections toward their love target. The data points behind the intent are solid. Let’s go Boolean now:
Intent of good = 1 ;
attracted to target = 1;
ability to provide for target = 1;
time available = 1;
prior or current committed relationship = 0.
So here we are with all the solid intentions in the world and the variables all align to an optimal outcome. Except one thing:
love target hates your face = 1;
Exit(0)
Assuming that this is a hierarchical value chain with face hating as the parent, we are at an impasse.
The above is not intended as an affront to teenagers spitting game at their prospective boo. It is though, an analogy to the fantastic time and effort spent in integrating, transforming and presenting Business Intelligence to the enterprise with all of the proper best practices and technology. Only to have the user subtly tell us that the information is “great but… I don’t know what I am looking at and I was looking for it to be in 3D” (AKA, I hate your face). There have been some great books out there about visualization and we have read a LOT of them. Best practices aside, visualization is about taste. The love target above may well have a completely different opinion of facial beauty than Mr. or Ms. hottie-mc-toddy that sits next to you in your advanced Kafka course (seriously, it might happen). Love at Kafka training happens, I swear it does, really and when it does, it involves unicorns and ends of rainbows.
So now I have to figure out my end user’s tastes in visualization?
Yep, accept and move on.
You wouldn’t saddle up with a love interest if you hated their face. Why would an end user sign up for something they don’t want to use. Of course, you being the BI practitioner that you are know your BI stack up and down and are well aware of all of the available visualization options. These end users don’t know what they are talking about…right?
—they don’t have to.
Lots of the big BI players have been losing ground in the industry of viz because new competitors are building attractive viz capabilities. The new guys in BI are going to the end users with something the end users want…pretty and flexible visualizations. Both the viz provider and end user need not worry themselves with data integrity, governance, or how they got the data to start.
Welcome to Enterprise BI 2.0
What if I could use my existing enterprise platform and allow users to integrate more data sources, mash it up and then have an almost story telling approach to BI? You can and the next releases from the big BI vendors are all focused on that. Clearly at Rittman Mead we have an affinity for OBIEE and with 12c, the dream of viz has become a an out of the box reality. Data visualization is core to new functionality with more on the way. So my advice is upgrade to 12c ASAP to get your new face on.
Rittman Mead has less invasive facelift versus replace options with viz for 12c and 11g. Visual Plug in Pack (VPP) extends the native charting in OBI into dynamic attractive hollywood level viz. We also have an User Engagement offering that comes with that visual facelift all the girls at the salon are talking about. Shoot me an email if you are interested in our streamlined OBI 12c upgrade service or VPP. Jason.davis@rittmanmead.com
The post #IHateYourFace, a BizIntel Love Story appeared first on Rittman Mead Consulting.
#IHateYourFace, a BizIntel Love Story
Sometimes love isn’t fair
A teenager, just emerging from an awkward growing phase drives a tendency to spew non sensical permutations of varying cringe worthy affections toward their love target. The data points behind the intent are solid. Let’s go Boolean now:
Intent of good = 1 ;
attracted to target = 1;
ability to provide for target = 1;
time available = 1;
prior or current committed relationship = 0.
So here we are with all the solid intentions in the world and the variables all align to an optimal outcome. Except one thing:
love target hates your face = 1;
Exit(0)
Assuming that this is a hierarchical value chain with face hating as the parent, we are at an impasse.
The above is not intended as an affront to teenagers spitting game at their prospective boo. It is though, an analogy to the fantastic time and effort spent in integrating, transforming and presenting Business Intelligence to the enterprise with all of the proper best practices and technology. Only to have the user subtly tell us that the information is “great but… I don’t know what I am looking at and I was looking for it to be in 3D” (AKA, I hate your face). There have been some great books out there about visualization and we have read a LOT of them. Best practices aside, visualization is about taste. The love target above may well have a completely different opinion of facial beauty than Mr. or Ms. hottie-mc-toddy that sits next to you in your advanced Kafka course (seriously, it might happen). Love at Kafka training happens, I swear it does, really and when it does, it involves unicorns and ends of rainbows.
So now I have to figure out my end user’s tastes in visualization?
Yep, accept and move on.
You wouldn’t saddle up with a love interest if you hated their face. Why would an end user sign up for something they don’t want to use. Of course, you being the BI practitioner that you are know your BI stack up and down and are well aware of all of the available visualization options. These end users don’t know what they are talking about…right?
—they don’t have to.
Lots of the big BI players have been losing ground in the industry of viz because new competitors are building attractive viz capabilities. The new guys in BI are going to the end users with something the end users want…pretty and flexible visualizations. Both the viz provider and end user need not worry themselves with data integrity, governance, or how they got the data to start.
Welcome to Enterprise BI 2.0
What if I could use my existing enterprise platform and allow users to integrate more data sources, mash it up and then have an almost story telling approach to BI? You can and the next releases from the big BI vendors are all focused on that. Clearly at Rittman Mead we have an affinity for OBIEE and with 12c, the dream of viz has become a an out of the box reality. Data visualization is core to new functionality with more on the way. So my advice is upgrade to 12c ASAP to get your new face on.
Rittman Mead has less invasive facelift versus replace options with viz for 12c and 11g. Visual Plug in Pack (VPP) extends the native charting in OBI into dynamic attractive hollywood level viz. We also have an User Engagement offering that comes with that visual facelift all the girls at the salon are talking about. Shoot me an email if you are interested in our streamlined OBI 12c upgrade service or VPP. Jason.davis@rittmanmead.com
The post #IHateYourFace, a BizIntel Love Story appeared first on Rittman Mead Consulting.
Under the Covers of OBIEE 12c Configuration with sysdig
OBIEE 12c has changed quite a lot in how it manages configuration. In OBIEE 11g configuration was based around system MBeans and the biee-domain.xml as the master copy of settings - and if you updated a configuration directly that was centrally managed, it would get reverted back. Now in OBIEE 12c configuration can be managed directly in text files again - but also through EM still (not to mention WLST). Confused? Yep, I was.
In the configuration files such as NQSConfig.INI there are settings still marked with the ominous comment:
# This Configuration setting is managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control
In 11g this meant - dragons be here; turn back all ye who don't want to have your configuration settings wiped next time the stack boots.
Now in 12c, I can make a configuration change (such as enabling BI Server caching), restart the affected component, and the change will take affect -- and persist through a restart of the whole OBIEE stack. All good.
But ... the fly in the ointment. If I restart just the affected component (for example, BI Server for an NQSConfig.INI change), since I don't want to waste time bouncing the whole stack if I don't need to, then Enterprise Manager will continue to show the old setting:
So even though in fact the cache is enabled (and I can see entries being populated in it), Enterprise Manager suggests that it's not. Confusing.
So ... if we're going to edit configuration files by hand (and personally I prefer to, since it saves firing up a web browser), we need to know how to make sure Enterprise Manager will to reflect the change too. Does EM poll the file whilst running? Or something direct to each component to request the configuration? Or maybe it just reads the file on startup only?
Enter sysdig! What I'm about to use it for is pretty darn trivial (and could probably be done with other standard *nix tools), but is still a useful example. What we want to know is which process reads NQSConfig.INI, and from there isolate the particular component that we need to restart to get it to trigger a re-read of the file and thus correctly show the value in Enterprise Manager.
I ran sysdig with a filter for filename and custom output format to include the process PID:
sudo sysdig -A -p "%evt.num %evt.time %evt.cpu %proc.name (%proc.pid) %evt.dir %evt.info" "fd.filename=NQSConfig.INI and evt.type=open"
Nothing was written (i.e. nothing was polling the file), until I bounced the full OBIEE stack ($DOMAINHOME/bitools/bin/stop.sh && $DOMAINHOME/bitools/bin/start.sh). During the startup of the AdminServer, sysdig showed:
32222110 12:00:49.912132008 3 java (10409) < fd=874(/app/oracle/biee/user_projects/domains/bi/config/fmwconfig/biconfig/OBIS/NQSConfig.INI) name=/app/oracle/biee/user_projects/domains/bi/config/fmwconfig/biconfig/OBIS/NQSConfig.INI flags=1(O_RDONLY) mode=0
So - it's the java process that reads it, PID 10409. Which is that?
$ ps -ef|grep 10409
oracle 10409 10358 99 11:59 ? 00:03:54 /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_51/bin/java -server -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -Dweblogic.Name=AdminServer [...]
It's AdminServer -- which makes sense, because Enterprise Manager is a java deployment hosted in AdminServer.
So, if you want to hack the config files by hand, restart either the whole OBIEE stack, or the affected component plus AdminServer in order for Enterprise Manager to pick up the change.
Under the Covers of OBIEE 12c Configuration with sysdig
OBIEE 12c has changed quite a lot in how it manages configuration. In OBIEE 11g configuration was based around system MBeans and the biee-domain.xml as the master copy of settings – and if you updated a configuration directly that was centrally managed, it would get reverted back. Now in OBIEE 12c configuration can be managed directly in text files again – but also through EM still (not to mention WLST). Confused? Yep, I was.
In the configuration files such as NQSConfig.INI there are settings still marked with the ominous comment:
# This Configuration setting is managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control
In 11g this meant – dragons be here; turn back all ye who don’t want to have your configuration settings wiped next time the stack boots.
Now in 12c, I can make a configuration change (such as enabling BI Server caching), restart the affected component, and the change will take affect — and persist through a restart of the whole OBIEE stack. All good.
But … the fly in the ointment. If I restart just the affected component (for example, BI Server for an NQSConfig.INI change), since I don’t want to waste time bouncing the whole stack if I don’t need to, then Enterprise Manager will continue to show the old setting:
So even though in fact the cache is enabled (and I can see entries being populated in it), Enterprise Manager suggests that it’s not. Confusing.
So … if we’re going to edit configuration files by hand (and personally I prefer to, since it saves firing up a web browser), we need to know how to make sure Enterprise Manager will to reflect the change too. Does EM poll the file whilst running? Or something direct to each component to request the configuration? Or maybe it just reads the file on startup only?
Enter sysdig! What I’m about to use it for is pretty darn trivial (and could probably be done with other standard *nix tools), but is still a useful example. What we want to know is which process reads NQSConfig.INI, and from there isolate the particular component that we need to restart to get it to trigger a re-read of the file and thus correctly show the value in Enterprise Manager.
I ran sysdig with a filter for filename and custom output format to include the process PID:
sudo sysdig -A -p "%evt.num %evt.time %evt.cpu %proc.name (%proc.pid) %evt.dir %evt.info" "fd.filename=NQSConfig.INI and evt.type=open"
Nothing was written (i.e. nothing was polling the file), until I bounced the full OBIEE stack ($DOMAIN_HOME/bitools/bin/stop.sh && $DOMAIN_HOME/bitools/bin/start.sh). During the startup of the AdminServer, sysdig showed:
32222110 12:00:49.912132008 3 java (10409) < fd=874(<f>/app/oracle/biee/user_projects/domains/bi/config/fmwconfig/biconfig/OBIS/NQSConfig.INI) name=/app/oracle/biee/user_projects/domains/bi/config/fmwconfig/biconfig/OBIS/NQSConfig.INI flags=1(O_RDONLY) mode=0
So – it’s the java process that reads it, PID 10409. Which is that?
$ ps -ef|grep 10409 oracle 10409 10358 99 11:59 ? 00:03:54 /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_51/bin/java -server -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -Dweblogic.Name=AdminServer [...]
It’s AdminServer — which makes sense, because Enterprise Manager is a java deployment hosted in AdminServer.
So, if you want to hack the config files by hand, restart either the whole OBIEE stack, or the affected component plus AdminServer in order for Enterprise Manager to pick up the change.
The post Under the Covers of OBIEE 12c Configuration with sysdig appeared first on Rittman Mead Consulting.
