Tag Archives: Conferences
All You Ever Wanted to Know About OBIEE Performance…but were too afraid to ask
At the Polish Oracle Users Group (POUG) conference this week I'm presenting one of my favourite talks, [Still] No Silver Bullets - OBIEE Performance in the Real World. This presentation is based on the shared experiences of myself and my Rittman Mead colleagues helping our clients diagnose and - most importantly! - fix their OBIEE performance problems. Performance is something that's interested me for a long time, and my very first conference presentation back in 2010 was on how to test OBIEE performance. Since then I've written and collected a lot of material on the subject, which I thought would be useful to present here as a handy one-stop reference.
OBIEE Performance - testing and optimisation
This series of blog posts goes into great detail on the specifics of testing, and diagnosing, OBIEE performance. Topics such as how to define an "OBIEE report" are covered in depth, along with a discussion of the tools available to carry out performance testing of OBIEE and monitor the results. There's also a whole post on optimisation (frequently called 'tuning') and a hefty rant against some of the common anti-patterns that we see adopted when it comes to troubleshooting poor performance.
Caching
If you ever encounter the unqualified advice "To fix your OBIEE performance problems, enable BI Server caching", then run!
BI Server caching can be brilliant for providing the "icing on the cake" of a well-built system, giving that extra little performance boost. Where BI Server caching is a bad idea is when it is used to "paper over the cracks" of a fundamentally poorly-built OBIEE system. If the foundations are rotten, gold-plating the building on top is not going to do anything to improve things in the long run. If your OBIEE performance is bad, you need to get to the bottom of why and then rectify it. Using caching to mask it only "brushes the problem under the carpet", storing up the same problem or worse for the future as your system usage increases.
With that caveat made, here are two articles that explain how to best use BI Server caching:
You can also watch a "Two-Minute Tech Tip" that I recorded on the subject: Oracle Business Intelligence Server Caching 2MTT
[Still] No Silver Bullets - OBIEE Performance in the Real World
As presented previously at OOW, OUGF, UKOUG, OUG Scotland, and POUG. Newly updated for OBIEE 12c.
OBIEE Performance Analytics: Analysing the Impact of Suboptimal Report Design
This article has been published on Oracle Technical Network (OTN), and examines in detail what happens when there's sub-optimal design in the implementation of an OBIEE system. Disks fill up, IO bandwidth is exhausted, the server is overworked - and performance suffers.
Performance Analytics Service
The Rittman Mead Performance Analytics Service is the result of our deep understanding of the OBIEE stack, performance optimisation theory, and numerous client engagements. We understand why performance is so crucial to the success of an OBIEE project. We know how OBIEE works, how to diagnose performance issues -- and how to fix them!
Our Performance Analytics Service offers a free baseline Performance Analytics Report for your current OBIEE system, using data to demonstrate where your performance issues lie and prioritising the areas in which to focus investigation. Building on this baseline report, we also offer a detailed Performance Analytics Report. This is prepared by one of our expert OBIEE performance consultants based on deep analysis and understanding of your specific OBIEE implementation and performance pain-points. Not only do we diagnose the specific issues, but we demonstrate the relative effort involved to rectify each one and the expected performance benefit that each will yield.
To provide powerful monitoring and diagnostics for the performance of your system we built the OBIEE Performance Analytics Dashboards. These give a full-stack view of the metrics that can impact performance of your OBIEE reports. This gives you the information needed to accurately diagnose issues when they arise, as well as perform historical analysis. Have a look at these videos to see exactly how the dashboards can help, and get in touch with us to request a demo!
(if Youtube is blocked, you can also download them here : 1, 2, 3)
Product Documentation
The documentation for OBIEE includes very useful sections on OBIEE performance that are worth reading:
- OBIEE 11.1.1.9 : Managing Performance Tuning and Query Caching
- OBIEE 12.2.1 : Managing Performance Tuning and Query Caching
Tuning Guide
Oracle has published white papers available through My Oracle Support that detail further options available within the OBIEE stack for tuning performance. In a blog article I do somewhat grumble about these papers and how they can be misused ("oooh here's a knob that I can fiddle with") if taken without proper context and diagnostics. In the right hands, however, they are useful reference for some of the more advanced configuration settings and their impact on performance.
- OBIEE 11g Infrastructure Performance Tuning Guide
- OBIEE12c: Best Practices Guide for Infrastructure Tuning
See also page 13 of this document for good advice on working with exports to Excel from OBIEE: Doc ID 1558070.1
General Performance Resources
OBIEE Performance is nothing particularly fancy. The problems are the same as any other stack; just different components. The standard principles apply, and that is why I'd strongly recommend reading these articles as they give a fantastic background to the world of performance diagnostics and optimisation.
- Cary Millsap - Thinking Clearly About Performance
- Brendan Gregg - The USE method
- Brendan Gregg - Linux Performance Tools (also great discussion of performance troubleshooting methodology)
- Greg Rahn - The Core Performance Fundamentals Of Oracle Data Warehousing – Balanced Hardware Configuration
- Oracle documentation - Oracle® Database 2 Day + Data Warehousing Guide - Balanced Hardware Configuration
Rittman Mead at Oracle OpenWorld 2016
The big show is upon us and once again Rittman Mead will be actively participating at Oracle OpenWorld 2016. Oracle's premier conference runs September 18–22 at the Moscone Center in beautiful San Francisco, California. I'm looking forward to another great conference, as well as attending my first ACE Director briefing, where Oracle ACE Directors get to hear future plans on the direction of Oracle products and can provide feedback to product teams (and even ask questions of Thomas Kurian), on the Thursday/Friday prior to the event.
I'm fortunate enough to have been selected by the ODTUG to present a user group forum session on Sunday, September 18th, the first official day of Oracle OpenWorld 2016. I'll be sharing an updated version of my GoldenGate and Kafka integration talk, Oracle GoldenGate and Apache Kafka: A Deep Dive into Real-Time Data Streaming (Session UGF6161), previously presented at Collaborate and KScope16. The focus will be on how to use the new Oracle GoldenGate for Big Data release 12.2 to replicate database transactions to Apache Kafka. The topic of this session, real-time data streaming, provides a great solution for the challenging task of ingesting data from multiple different sources, and different structures, and making that data readily available for others in the organization to use. By combining GoldenGate, Oracle’s premier data replication technology, and Apache Kafka, the latest open-source streaming and messaging system for big data, we can implement a fast, durable, and scalable solution. Stop by Moscone South 301 on Sunday at 10:30 a.m. to check it out!
On Tuesday morning, Mark Rittman will join Oracle Data Integrator Product Manager Julien Testut and Oracle A-Team Director Christophe Dupupet to discuss Oracle Data Integration and Big Data in their session titled Oracle Data Integration Platform: A Cornerstone for Big Data (Session CON6624). They'll take a look at how the Oracle Data Integration suite of products (Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Metadata Management, and Oracle Big Data Preparation Cloud Service) can help to avoid the complexity often found in big data initiatives and harness the power of the big data technologies. Join them in Moscone West 2022 on Tuesday, September 20th, at 11 a.m. to learn more!
With many successful Oracle Data Integration and Big Data engagements completed throughout the world, the experts at Rittman Mead continue to lead in the Oracle Big Data space. If you'd like to get together to discuss any of the above topics we're presenting, or anything big data, data integration or BI related, feel free to reach out via email (info@rittmanmead.com), Twitter (@mRainey) or drop a note in the comments below. Hope to see you there!
Rittman Mead at KScope16
June is the perfect month: summer begins, major football (and futbol) tournaments are in full swing, and of course, KScope16 is on! Rittman Mead have participated in many of the past KScope conferences and will continue that tradition this year with a wide range of presentation and training topics across the Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Big Data, and Advanced Analytics subject areas. This year the event is held in Chicago at the Sheraton Grand Chicago, a great location right on the river and a short distance from sights such as the Navy Pier and Magnificent Mile. And, as always, there will be some great networking opportunities throughout the week.
This year, we’re pleased to congratulate our own Becky Wagner (of Becky’s BI Apps Corner) on her graduation from the ODTUG Leadership Program. This is the third class to complete the program, which aims to build leadership skills, confidence, and work/life balance skills, amongst many other things, throughout the 9 month class duration. Well done, Becky! You’ll be able to find her and the rest of the 2016 Leadership class at the Career Community/Leadership Program Information Breakfast – Monday, June 27th 7:30AM at the Sheraton hotel main dining area. They will be kicking off the application season for the 2017 Leadership Program and providing further information about the new ODTUG career program as well.
The rest of the Rittman Mead attendees will be presenting one or more sessions during the week.
The week kicks off with my talk Monday on GoldenGate and Kafka integration using the new Oracle GoldenGate for Big Data release 12.2. The topic of this session, real-time data streaming, provides a great solution for the challenging task of ingesting data from multiple different sources, and different structures, and making that data readily available for others in the organization to use. By combining GoldenGate, Oracle’s premier data replication technology, and Apache Kafka, the latest open-source streaming and messaging system for big data, we can implement a fast, durable, and scalable solution.
Tuesday morning, Charles Elliott, Managing Director of Rittman Mead in the US, will begin the first of his two-part hands on lab sessions on Free Form Data Visualizations. This hands-on introduction to all things visual in OBIEE’s new Visual Analyzer (VA) will allow attendees to see the top reporting features within the current release while also understanding the core differences between OBIEE’s previous reporting platform and what’s available now. In addition to creating some of the most eye-catching visualizations the new tool has to offer, this session will highlight new OBIEE 12c features such as mapping, advanced analytics, and an overview of the brand-new web catalog. Whether you are just interested in what’s new in free-form Oracle BI visualizations or preparing for an upgrade, this session is for you!
During the lunch and learn sessions you can find me moderating the BI and Data Warehousing panel and Mark Rittman will be moderating the Big Data and Advanced Analytics crew. Grab a lunch and join us!
The remainder of Rittman Mead sessions fall on Wednesday, with some interesting topics around Big Data Discovery, OBIEE branding and Essbase integration, and the Kimball ETL Subsystems. Also, the second day of the Free Form Data Visualizations HOL will be held on Wednesday afternoon.
It all starts with Mark Rittman presenting “OBIEE 12c: What’s New for Integration and Reporting Against EPM Sources”. He’ll dig into interesting new features around OBIEE 12c and Essbase integration, including improvements around using Essbase as a query acceleration layer and general improvements around usability and RPD/Outline integration. Come to this session to see what they are, how they affect OBIEE/Essbase integration, and where this initiative may be going over time.
Following Mark and his dive into OBIEE and Essbase on Wednesday will be my session, “A Walk Through the Kimball ETL Subsystems with Oracle Data Integration”, with a focus on how to implement the ETL Subsystems using Oracle Data Integration solutions. As you may know, Ralph Kimball, dimensional modeling and data warehousing expert and founder of The Kimball Group, spent much of his career working to build an enterprise data warehouse methodology that can meet analytical reporting needs. His book, “The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit,” is a guide for many ETL developers. This session will walk you through his ETL Subsystem categories, describing how the Oracle Data Integration products (Oracle Data Integrator, GoldenGate, & Enterprise Data Quality) are perfectly suited for the Kimball approach.
After lunch, Andy Rocha and Pete Tamisin will dive into “How to Brand and Own Your OBIEE Interface: Past, Present, and Future”. In this presentation, they will explore the different techniques in branding and customizing your OBIEE environment in different versions: 11.1.1.7, 11.1.1.9, and 12c. What that really means is they will talk about how to brand the interface in a thoughtful way… not just throwing the company’s colors on the screen, but thinking about what will actually make the application more attractive and useful for the user community.
Closing out the Rittman Mead Wednesday sessions is Mark Rittman with his unique look at machine learning and advanced visualizations using Oracle Big Data Discovery (BDD). Mark will use the BDD Shell, pySpark, and Jupyter to ingest, process and run machine learning routines on IoT and smart home data, which he has been collecting over the past year. Oracle Big Data Discovery provides a graphical environment for cataloging, searching, and displaying data from Hadoop and other sources along with some basic data wrangling features and display options. In this session, he’ll look at how BDD can be extended using the aforementioned APIs to cover more advanced predictive modeling, machine learning, and data science tasks, and how the graphics API can be used to add custom D3 advanced visualizations for your datasets and analyses. I’m definitely looking forward to this one!
We’re all looking forward to attending the event in Chicago this year and can’t wait for next week! If you’d like to get together to discuss any of the above topics we’re presenting, or anything data integration or BI related, feel free to reach out via email (info@rittmanmead.com), twitter (@mRainey) or drop a note in the comments below. Hope to see you there!
The post Rittman Mead at KScope16 appeared first on Rittman Mead Consulting.
Rittman Mead at KScope16
June is the perfect month: summer begins, major football (and futbol) tournaments are in full swing, and of course, KScope16 is on! Rittman Mead have participated in many of the past KScope conferences and will continue that tradition this year with a wide range of presentation and training topics across the Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Big Data, and Advanced Analytics subject areas. This year the event is held in Chicago at the Sheraton Grand Chicago, a great location right on the river and a short distance from sights such as the Navy Pier and Magnificent Mile. And, as always, there will be some great networking opportunities throughout the week.
This year, we're pleased to congratulate our own Becky Wagner (of Becky's BI Apps Corner) on her graduation from the ODTUG Leadership Program. This is the third class to complete the program, which aims to build leadership skills, confidence, and work/life balance skills, amongst many other things, throughout the 9 month class duration. Well done, Becky! You'll be able to find her and the rest of the 2016 Leadership class at the Career Community/Leadership Program Information Breakfast - Monday, June 27th 7:30AM at the Sheraton hotel main dining area. They will be kicking off the application season for the 2017 Leadership Program and providing further information about the new ODTUG career program as well.
The rest of the Rittman Mead attendees will be presenting one or more sessions during the week.
The week kicks off with my talk Monday on GoldenGate and Kafka integration using the new Oracle GoldenGate for Big Data release 12.2. The topic of this session, real-time data streaming, provides a great solution for the challenging task of ingesting data from multiple different sources, and different structures, and making that data readily available for others in the organization to use. By combining GoldenGate, Oracle’s premier data replication technology, and Apache Kafka, the latest open-source streaming and messaging system for big data, we can implement a fast, durable, and scalable solution.
Tuesday morning, Charles Elliott, Managing Director of Rittman Mead in the US, will begin the first of his two-part hands on lab sessions on Free Form Data Visualizations. This hands-on introduction to all things visual in OBIEE’s new Visual Analyzer (VA) will allow attendees to see the top reporting features within the current release while also understanding the core differences between OBIEE’s previous reporting platform and what’s available now. In addition to creating some of the most eye-catching visualizations the new tool has to offer, this session will highlight new OBIEE 12c features such as mapping, advanced analytics, and an overview of the brand-new web catalog. Whether you are just interested in what’s new in free-form Oracle BI visualizations or preparing for an upgrade, this session is for you!
During the lunch and learn sessions you can find me moderating the BI and Data Warehousing panel and Mark Rittman will be moderating the Big Data and Advanced Analytics crew. Grab a lunch and join us!
The remainder of Rittman Mead sessions fall on Wednesday, with some interesting topics around Big Data Discovery, OBIEE branding and Essbase integration, and the Kimball ETL Subsystems. Also, the second day of the Free Form Data Visualizations HOL will be held on Wednesday afternoon.
It all starts with Mark Rittman presenting "OBIEE 12c: What's New for Integration and Reporting Against EPM Sources". He'll dig into interesting new features around OBIEE 12c and Essbase integration, including improvements around using Essbase as a query acceleration layer and general improvements around usability and RPD/Outline integration. Come to this session to see what they are, how they affect OBIEE/Essbase integration, and where this initiative may be going over time.
Following Mark and his dive into OBIEE and Essbase on Wednesday will be my session, “A Walk Through the Kimball ETL Subsystems with Oracle Data Integration", with a focus on how to implement the ETL Subsystems using Oracle Data Integration solutions. As you may know, Ralph Kimball, dimensional modeling and data warehousing expert and founder of The Kimball Group, spent much of his career working to build an enterprise data warehouse methodology that can meet analytical reporting needs. His book, “The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit,” is a guide for many ETL developers. This session will walk you through his ETL Subsystem categories, describing how the Oracle Data Integration products (Oracle Data Integrator, GoldenGate, & Enterprise Data Quality) are perfectly suited for the Kimball approach.
After lunch, Andy Rocha and Pete Tamisin will dive into "How to Brand and Own Your OBIEE Interface: Past, Present, and Future". In this presentation, they will explore the different techniques in branding and customizing your OBIEE environment in different versions: 11.1.1.7, 11.1.1.9, and 12c. What that really means is they will talk about how to brand the interface in a thoughtful way… not just throwing the company’s colors on the screen, but thinking about what will actually make the application more attractive and useful for the user community.
Closing out the Rittman Mead Wednesday sessions is Mark Rittman with his unique look at machine learning and advanced visualizations using Oracle Big Data Discovery (BDD). Mark will use the BDD Shell, pySpark, and Jupyter to ingest, process and run machine learning routines on IoT and smart home data, which he has been collecting over the past year. Oracle Big Data Discovery provides a graphical environment for cataloging, searching, and displaying data from Hadoop and other sources along with some basic data wrangling features and display options. In this session, he'll look at how BDD can be extended using the aforementioned APIs to cover more advanced predictive modeling, machine learning, and data science tasks, and how the graphics API can be used to add custom D3 advanced visualizations for your datasets and analyses. I'm definitely looking forward to this one!
We're all looking forward to attending the event in Chicago this year and can't wait for next week! If you'd like to get together to discuss any of the above topics we're presenting, or anything data integration or BI related, feel free to reach out via email (info@rittmanmead.com), twitter (@mRainey) or drop a note in the comments below. Hope to see you there!
Rittman Mead at Collaborate 16: Data Integration Focus
It’s that time of year again when Oracle technologists from around the world gather in Las Vegas, NV to teach, learn, and, of course, network with their peers. The Collaborate conference, running for 10 years now, has been a collaboration, if you will, between the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and Quest International Users Group (Quest), making it one of the largest user group conferences in the world. Rittman Mead will once again be in attendance, with two data integration focused presentations by me over the course of the week.
My first session, “A Walk Through the Kimball ETL Subsystems with Oracle Data Integration”, scheduled for Monday, April 11 at 10:30am, will focus on how we can implement the ETL Subsystems using Oracle Data Integration solutions. As you know, Big Data integration has been the hot topic over the past few years, and it’s an excellent feature in the Oracle Data Integration product suite (Oracle Data Integrator, GoldenGate, & Enterprise Data Quality). But not all analytics require big data technologies, such as labor cost, revenue, or expense reporting. Ralph Kimball, dimensional modeling and data warehousing expert and founder of The Kimball Group, spent much of his career working to build an enterprise data warehouse methodology that can meet these reporting needs. His book, “The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit“, is a guide for many ETL developers. This session will walk you through his ETL Subsystem categories; Extracting, Cleaning & Conforming, Delivering, and Managing, describing how the Oracle Data Integration products are perfectly suited for the Kimball approach.
I go into further detail on one of the ETL Subsystems in an upcoming IOUG Select Journal article, titled “Implement an Error Event Schema with Oracle Data Integrator”. The Select Journal is a technical magazine published quarterly and available exclusively to IOUG members. My recent post Data Integration Tips: ODI 12c Repository Query – Find the Mapping Target Table shows a bit of the detail behind the research performed for the article.
If you’re not familiar with the Kimball approach to data warehousing, I definitely would recommend reading one (or more) of their published books on the subject. I would also recommend attending one of their training courses, but unfortunately for the data warehousing community the Kimball Group has closed shop as of December 2015. But hey, the good news is that two of the former Kimball team members have joined forces at Decision Works, and they offer the exact same training they used to deliver under The Kimball Group name.
On Thursday, April 14 at 11am, I will dive into the recently released Oracle GoldenGate for Big Data 12.2 in a session titled “Oracle GoldenGate and Apache Kafka: A Deep Dive into Real-Time Data Streaming”. The challenge for us as data integration professionals is to combine relational data with other non-structured, high volume and rapidly changing datasets, known in the industry as Big Data, and transform it into something useful. Not just that, but we must also do it in near real-time and using a big data target system such as Hadoop. The topic of this session, real-time data streaming, provides us a great solution for that challenging task. By combining GoldenGate, Oracle’s premier data replication technology, and Apache Kafka, the latest open-source streaming and messaging system for big data, we can implement a fast, durable, and scalable solution.
If you plan to be at Collaborate next week, feel free to drop me a line in the comments, via email at michael.rainey@rittmanmead.com, or on Twitter @mRainey, I’d love to meet up and have a discussion around my presentation topics, data integration, or really anything we’re doing at Rittman Mead. Hope to see you all there!
The post Rittman Mead at Collaborate 16: Data Integration Focus appeared first on Rittman Mead Consulting.
