When you install OBIEE 11g, you get one admin server and one managed server.

You
can create another managed server, either on the same box if it s big (as you use
d to do with multiple OC4J JVMs in 10g), or more usually on additional machines
that are then managed by the original admin server. The admin server console is
generally used to manage WebLogic-level tasks (starting up managed servers, comm
unicating with the node manager etc), whilst the majority of the OBIEE administr
ation is carried out using Fusion Middleware Control (which sometimes gets refer
red to as Enterprise Manager).
So whilst it looks initially a bit confusing and overwhelming, the basics are st
ill the same. The BI Server is still a standalone C++ application, it s just that
it s managed (stopped, started, monitored etc) through Fusion Middleware Control a
nd OPMN. The various J2EE components such as BI Publisher are still J2EE, they a
re just installed in WebLogic now (apparently this will be extended to other J2E
E application servers over time). Some key differences, especially if you re runni
ng on Windows, is that there are no longer and BI Server, BI Presentation Server
etc services, and you also can t go around editing configuration files now as Web
Logic manages them (actually this is only partially true, and I ll get onto that i
n a separate posting). More importantly, all the WebLogic overhead means that yo
u ll need about 4GB of RAM if you re installing OBIEE 11g on your laptop, along with
a database for the repository schemas as source data, which is about twice what
you need for the 10g version, so now s the time to put in for a laptop upgrade.
There are some key Fusion Middleware technologies, terminology and utilities tha
t you ll need to get to know when starting to work with OBIEE 11g.
WebLogic Server (often abbreviated to WLS) : this is the J2EE application server
that Oracle uses across the board for all their 11g BI applications, such as Es
sbase 11.1.2, Discoverer 11g, BI Publisher 11g , Real Time Decisions 11g. It s als
o used for the upcoming Fusion ERP applications, and is the default application
server that you get with JDeveloper 11g. In the past it s role in OBIEE was perfor
med by OC4J and Oracle Application Server (which used OC4J under the covers), an
d both of these in 11g have been replaced by the core WebLogic Server, with JRoc
kit (as opposed to the Sun JVM) generally used as the JVM (thanks Simon H for th
e clarification in the comments).
OPMN (or Oracle Process Manager and Notification Server to give it its full name
) : You may have first come across this in Oracle Application Server 10g, where
it was used to start up the various Application Server components (OC4J_BI_Forms
, OC4J_Portal etc). Its since been adopted across the technology stack to start,
stop and monitor processes across distributed servers, and it s used in OBIEE 11g
to do the same for the system components (BI Server, BI Presentation Server, BI
Scheduler and BI Cluster Controller). You can either access OPMN through the co
mmand line (opmnctl), or Oracle s recommended approach is to use a graphical inter
face within Fusion Middleware Control. OPMN is also used in the 11g stack to con
trol Essbase, Discoverer and other BI components, so it s a tool that s worth learni
ng.
DMS, or Dynamic Monitoring System, works alongside OPMN and provides statistics
on the various components which can be persisted in a database. This will defini
tely be interesting when it comes to performance monitoring and optimization for
11g.
ODL, Oracle Diagnostic Logging, is a centralized framework for logging. Again, i
nteresting for performance, though not all logs (nqquery.log, for example) are c
overed by it.
JPS (Java Platform Security) and CSF (Credential Store Framework) are just two p
arts of security in 11g. Security is a big change in 11g with users no longer st
ored in the RPD (including the Administrator user, which has now gone), and user
s, roles and groups now managed by WebLogic, linking out to LDAP servers as necc
essary.
Two other changes are around patching, and upgrading. Patches are now handled by
OPatch, the standard mechanism for other Oracle products. I m in two minds about

this as previous patches for 10g were dead simple

you just installed the new ver
sion over the old but for 11g, it s a lot more complicated now and I guess OPatch,
with a patch repository and ability to roll back, was inevitable at some point.
There s also an Upgrade Assistant, again something common in the Oracle world, to
migrate installations and metadata from previous releases.
So, one way to understand how
the components start up after
Server admin console to start
BIEE components, and then you
e individual components up.

all the components fit together is to look at how

a reboot. With OBIEE 11g, you use Oracle WebLogic
up the WebLogic Managed Server that contains the O
use Oracle Fusion Middleware Control to start thes

UPDATE 14-Aug-2010 : The official GA release also introduces a Windows Start Men
u entry for starting all OBIEE 11g services. See this posting for full details.
1. Once the WebLogic Server admin server is up and running, your first step is