Tips and Tricks for Oracle

Business Intelligence Application

Implementations
Shyam Varan Nath
OBIEE Architect, IBM
President BIWA SIG
May 2011
 Agenda
•  BI Reporting Landscape
•  OBIEE and BI Applications
•  What is new? Sneak Peak to 7.9.6.3
•  Relational and Multi-Dimensional Reporting
•  OBIA 7.9.6.x – tips and tricks
•  Real life issues
•  Wrap Up
 About Me!
•  A BI/DW professional with IBM GBS (Oracle Practice)
•  OCP since 1998 on 4 different DB versions
•  President/Founder of BIWA SIG – an IOUG SIG for BI,
DW and Advanced Analytics professionals
•  Regular speaker at Oracle Open World (since 03),
Collaborate (since 05), ODTUG-KScope (since 08),
BIWA Summit and RUG s (NY/RM/SF/NO etc.)
•  Bachelor s from IIT-India, MBA and MS from Florida
Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL
 IBM and Oracle

BI Platforms =>
<=BI/EPM Service providers

IBM & ORCL Analytics

Over last 1 yr
Shyam
 OBIA – OTN Forum
Top Expert in the BI Apps Forum
 Why De-Mystify OBIEE?
"Surveyed customers continue
to indicate that OBIEE, for the
developer role, is more difficult
to use, on average, than other
BI platforms –Gartner Magic
Quadrant Jan 2010

Gartner Magic Quadrant Jan 2011

What are the new features in OBIEE 11.1.1.5 !!!

Traditional Circular Join OBIEE Star (Logical/Physical

BI Apps –
Other Extreme
Why the Data Warehouse?
ERP Systems
Data warehouse/OBIEE
leverages ERP data for analysis

Data warehouse also

gathers data from
multiple systems:
Legacy, Demantra, etc.

ERP s like Oracle EBS

are excellent in capturing
business data

Should you point OBIEE to source systems or not?

Ideal Information Architecture
Orchestration Applications Data Marts
Data Warehouse Reporting
CRM Apps

SCM Apps

Operations

Business Intelligence
Websites
DW
Financials

Distribution

ERP Apps

HCM Apps (OLAP)

Essbase
EAI
ETL
OBIEE Positioning
 Some Recent Development
•  OBIEE 11.1.1.5 released for download on
May 6, 2011
•  OBI Apps 7.9.6.3 released same day!
•  First time BI platform and BI apps are in-
sync
•  Last release 7.9.6.2 came after OBIEE
11.1.1.3 but was supported not
certified
•  Focus on Mobile computing and Time-Ten
 …recent
•  BI Apps 7.9.6.3
requires
–  New BI platform
11.1.1.5
–  New Informatica
platform 9.0.1 Campaign Performance
–  New DAC (not 11g yet) Dashboard on iPad
but hot fixed version
10.1.3.4.1
•  Provides iPad/iPhone
support out of box
BI Apps on iPhone
 General Direction – 7.9.6.3
•  In 7.9.6.3 focus was on making the rpd, web cat and
security model 11g ready.
•  Oracle switched to role based security from group based
•  Some fixes in the rpd to satisfy the stricter consistency
checking in 11g
•  Leveraged some new Presentation capabilities in the
reports and dashboards (such as presentation
hierarchies).
•  OBIEE 11g now allows BI apps to unlock a bunch of new
capabilities such as mobile/iPad, better systems
management, scorecards, etc.
•  No real new core functionality, ETL adapters for Oracle
ERP s added (EBS R12.1.3 nominal support)
BI Apps Roadmap
 General Challenges with BI Projects

•  Users often want one

place / tool for
Operational and
Analytical reporting
• Degree of details in
warehouse
• Right time data –
need for intra-day
ETL
• Highly Formatted
reports
• Security model across BI
and Source Systems.
 Case Studies
Family owned, 50 yrs old, $1b+
manufacturing company in
Atlanta
• Several manufacturing plants
using systems like JD Edwards,
Demantra, EPM/Planning and
Legacy/Main frame systems
• ODS/Crystal Reports foorprint
• First formal DW initiative
• OBIEE, ODI and BIP as tech stack
• Need for Manufacturing, Plant
Shop floor analytics, job profitability
and Sales Analytics in first go
• EPM-Workspace Integration
• Highly formatted and complex BI
Publisher reports
Energy Services Company
publicly traded, ~$2b in Houston,
TX
• New EBS R12 implementation in 4
divisions, HFM, Planning, one div
replacing SAP
• First formal DW initiative
• OBIEE and BI Applications
purchased
• Need for HR, SCM/Procurement,
Finance Analytics
• Go-live in Phases such as HR, Fin
and SCM
• Other Energy industry specific
applications in use
• Some SQL Server/Crystal Reports
 Why OBIEE v/s BI Apps?
OBIEE
• Need to integrate JD Edwards
data with legacy mainframe data as
manufacturing plants are in
transition
• In 2009 time frame BI apps for
JDE Edwards have no coverage for
manufacturing, shop floor
production data and job profitability
• Cost allocation engine needed for
job costing and profitability
• OBIEE, ODI and BIP as tech
stack, shop trying to stay as Oracle
tech/apps shop
• Security with EPM-Workspace
needed as Essbase/Planning in
use since V7
• Resulted in 4 subject areas
BI Apps
• New ERP implementation provides
opportunities packaged analytics
for rapid deployment as the starter
DW
• One manufacturing division
replacing SAP, so challenges in
replacing existing SAP - Easy
Access functionality
• EBS Versions sliding from R12.1.1
to R12.1.3
• No coverage for Oracle Process
Manufacturing, HR Advanced
Benefits etc in BI Apps today
• HFM being used for consolidation
and Eliminations
• Resulted in HR, SCM/Ps and Fin
analytics as starters
Custom Data Warehouse / OBIEE
Sales

Data Models
Developed for
Company s Need!

Job Cost PDS

Fiscal Day Dimension

Work Order Dimension

Associate Dimension

Production Data Summary Fact

Operation Reference Dimension Workcenter Dimension

Plant Dimension

Developing the Data Model

Star Schemas, Two Time Dimensions
Internationalization - Multi currency, multi UOM support
Skill Sets – Enterprise Data Modeler
Information Flow from JD Edwards (E1) & Legacy

E1 PD
SQL
files
Programs SQL
load PRS Programs
staging PRS load Dims &
staging Fact Tables
files
ODI

Legacy
Programs
files
load PRS Prod
staging Sales Trans
Dimension
Fact Fact
Tables
Table Table
Security: Shared Services and OBIEE
EPM to OBIEE
How do we set it up?

•  Login in to the OBI Administrator Tool in Online mode.

•  From the Menu tool bar click on Manage > Security.
•  Select Custom Authenticators
•  Right Click on the Custom Authenticator that appears in the
right pane and choose properties
•  Specify the following path
…/OracleBI/web/bin64/libsawobisauthenticatorproxy643r.so
•  Close the Security Window
•  Click on File > Save
•  Click on Yes when prompted to Check in Changes
•  Click on File > Close
•  Restart the EPM environment
•  Restart OBIEE
 Install Process – BI Apps Route

•  End user machines requires

no software, browser based
assess
•  Windows boxes required for
client software and for
transferring some server
software (A and B)
•  Co-location of Informatica
PowerCenter Services and
DAC Server – C
•  Clients can be installed on
multiple Windows boxes
OBIEE v/s Packaged BI Application

Sales Procurement Financials

and Spend
Service and Marketing
Contact Supply Chain
ERP
Center CRM and Order ANALYTICS
Management
ANALYTICS
Projects
Price Human
Loyalty Resources

ORACLE BI ENTERPRISE EDITION (OBIEE)

AND OTHER OPERATIONAL AND ANALYTIC SOURCES

High Level Data Flow

•  Source – eBS (Raw Data)

•  ETL – Extraction Transform and Load (Informatica – PowerCenter or
ODI)
•  OBAW - Business Analytics Warehouse
•  OBIEE Metadata
•  OBIEE Content – Reports and Dashboards
OBIEE – From Surface to Plumbing
What s Below the Surface?
Supporting Infrastructure – Informatica and DAC
 BI Apps Customers to 11g
Two approaches:
•  Upgrade to BI Applications
7.9.6.3
–  Certifies 11.1.1.5, out of the box support
for 11g capabilities
–  Recommended choice for net new
implementations and existing BI Apps
customers needing 11.1.1.5 capabilities
alike

•  Platform-only upgrade for

existing BI Apps deployments
–  Fully supported with OBIEE 11.1.1.5 but
not without challenges
–  Good option for heavily customized
deployments with strong need for
11.1.1.5 features
–  Case Study of 7.9.6.2 customer
 Case Studies - II
Offshore Petroleum Services
Company – TX
• PeopleSoft and BI Apps
• 2011 Q1 go-live with 7.9.6.2 and
OBIEE 11.1.1.3, Platform update
• Challenges resolved manually
• For BI Apps 7.9.6.3 intake OBIEE
needs to be upgraded too
Financial Services Company for
Retirement Planning– NC
• PeopleSoft, BI Apps and Financial
Services Vertical App (OFSAA)
• HR Analytics live on 7.9.6.2
• Fin Analytics to go-live
• OFSAA and related BI uses OBIEE
10g and Essbase
• Complex hierarchies DRM/Essbase
Lessons Learnt 7.9.6.2 with OBIEE 11.1.1.3
•  Categories:
–  RPD and Presentation
–  LDAP and Security
–  Write Back etc.
Summarizing the Pre-11.1.15 Release
for BI Apps Platform Upgrade
Tips and Tricks from the Field
Real World BI/DW Projects
 Custom OBIEE Development
•  Example of ERP systems like Oracle EBS
as source of data
•  Knowledge of different Schemas –
domain/functional knowledge
•  Naming conventions – source side
•  Security of Objects
 EBS Object Names
Object Name Function of the object E.g.
_ALL Underlying table with all the values PO_DISTRIBUTIONS_ALL

_B Base of underlying table, same as _ALL RA_TERMS_B

_TL Language translation table with translation of

descriptive fields in different languages

_VL View based on translation table OKE_K_Deliverables_VL

_BASIC_V View on top of the Basic table

_DFV Descriptive Flex Field related view, it will
have the defined values as Column names
instead of generic attribute 1, ..2

_KFV Key Flex Field views contain the

concatenated fields as it would be
displayed to the user. For e.g. A field may
consist of Division, Department and
Account fields and the KFV will have the
concatenated values.
 EBS Naming Conventions
•  All objects accessed by EBS application have synonym in APPS
schema, e.g.OKE.OKE_K_LINES has synonym
APPS.OKE_K_LINES

•  EBS Forms fetch data from a “user friendly” view with name ending is
_V or _VL (e.g. OKE_K_Deliverables_VL).

•  Views have descriptive value as opposed to the numeric id’s fields

stored in the base table making it “human-readable” for reports.

•  Views also implement security and restrictions to the data in various

forms such as restrict values by language, org_id etc

•  These variables are set by EBS (session context) when the user
accesses data via the EBS application.
 Some EBS Schema Names
AP - Oracle Payables
AR - Oracle Receivables
GL - Oracle General Ledger
INV - Oracle Inventory
MRP - Oracle Master Scheduling/MRP
PA - Oracle Projects
PAY - Oracle Payroll
PER - Oracle Human Resources
PJM - Oracle Project Manufacturing
WIP - Oracle Work in Process
WMS - Oracle Warehouse Management System
WSH - Oracle Shipping
WSM - Shop Floor Management
 Some EBS Related Tips
•  Take help from EBS users
–  Help >Record History (table, views)
–  Help > Examine (column)
–  Involve the users to develop MD50, MD70
•  Sometimes users can point to an Oracle
Report that has similar data source
–  The SQL from Oracle Report can help to
jumpstart
–  Create views that OBIEE can use
 JD Edwards
Tables
•  The JD Edwards table
names are quite cryptic
•  This shows that that for
building custom OBIEE
solutions, deep ERP
knowledge is required
•  Need for data modeler,
ETL/OBIEE architect
and developers
 Naming Standards!
•  Shyam BI Apps Naming Std

•  Shally
•  Sanya
•  Sanat
Case Study of Media Company
•  Complex hierarchies for GL, Cost Center
etc
•  Hierarchies maintained in Essbase outline
– not in Oracle EBS
•  EBS 11.5.10 and OBIA – Fin in use
•  Hyperion Strategic Finance in use
 Solution Overview – Planning and Reporting
New Functionality

Planning & Reporting Overview

User
Source Systems Financial Data Consolidation Applications Process
Information
Bloomberg Drill back to GL and sub-ledgers detail
Market

Actuals; GL / Marketing Historical Data Reporting

Internet Dashboard
Process
External Market Data Manual Data Push
Other
View Routine
Finance Reporting Standard Analysis &
AR / Ad Sales Data Manual Data Push
Ad Sales Platform Reports Strategic

Infomatica
K-Gen

Analysis
Operations Essbase
Ledger & Sub-ledger, HR Data

Processes
Drill Down
AR External Reporting
Mgmt Reporting
View Custom

Forecast & Plan Snapshot Data

GL Standard Reports

Automated Data Push/Pull

Reports
AP ETL
Data Repository
EBS FA (Warehouse)
PR
OBIA
HRMS
Financial Reporting Monthly
Driver
Outlook
Models
Forecasting & Process
Modeling Tool
LRP Budget
Historical
Process
Reporting Data HSF Modeling
To Be Retired Business
Planning
Process

44
 DATA FLOW
Data

EBS

Load Data

Extract data DIM

Actual Cube
Essbase
OBAW/DW Schema
Drill through table
Franchise cost center map Generate franchise Map
 PeopleSoft - BI Apps
•  Unlike Oracle EBS, Siebel and JD Edwards, all
of PeopleSoft is not in same database
•  HCM and Finance (FSCM) are in two different
PeopleSoft Instances, hence two different OLTP
DB s
•  Additionally, complete HR Analytics requires
some financial fact tables, HR related Financial
metrics
•  How do you create the Execution Plan for
same?
 Execution Plan – HCM + FSCM
•  Create a custom container
called PeopleSoft 9.0 HCM
from the existing container
PeopleSoft 9.0 . From DAC
menu, use File à New
Source System Container .
•  Similarly, create another new
custom container called
PeopleSoft 9.0 FSCM from
the existing container
PeopleSoft 9.0 .
 …
•  In PeopleSoft 9.0 FSCM, inactivate the 3 tasks
–  SDE_PSFT_GEOCountryDimension
–  SIL_DayDimension_GenerateSeed
–  SIL_DayDimension_CleanSeed
 …
•  Now create a new Execution plan called
Human Resources with GL – PeopleSoft 9.0 .
Choose subject areas as follows:
 …
•  On the Parameters tab in the bottom pane,
generate one copy of parameters (for each
container). Then set the values of the
parameters as follows:
 …
•  Build this Execution Plan.
•  In the Set up à Physical Data Sources
tab, configure the connections for the
physical data sources
DataWarehouse , PSFT_9_0_HCM ,
PSFT_9_0_ELM (if you used
Learning) and PSFT_9_0_FINSCM .
•  Execute the newly created EP Human
Resources with GL – PeopleSoft 9.0 .
 …Other Case Studies - Tips
•  A very large Retailer – BI Apps on
Exadata V2
•  BI Apps on Teradata and Netezza??
(Terdata is supported for both OBIEE/OBIA,
Netezza is supported for OBIEE and not
for OBIA)
 Teradata (TD) Considerations
•  NULL_VALUES_SORT_FIRST should be set to ON for
TD
•  Leverage function shipping
•  Set the Nullable flag appropriately
for join columns
 BI Apps with Exadata
•  The Full Table Scan is no longer your enemy! FTS is
very quick in Exadata but not in the regular 11g
databases
•  Hence, the performance configurations like indexes
might not be required in the Exadata boxes in
certain situations
•  Drop the distinct key indexes and change stats method
change in customsql.xml
•  In certain situations we saw the performance
bottleneck at the source system database as it was not
able to feed the Exadata box at it's import capacity –
consider flat file extracts from sources
 BI Apps on Exadata
•  On larger tables like - AP_AE_LINES_ALL, avoid PARALLEL
query option, the difference in
time observed was from 4 hours to 2 minutes.

•  Disable or drop all indexes with distinct_keys = 1 (b-tree and

bitmaps) reason being such indexes are ineffective, with one
unique value. So it's highly unlikely that Optimizer would ever
consider them in building any execution plans.

•  Avoid query transformation into a union-all query and

scanning all the big tables twice. Here we will need to find a
workaround to avoid the union-all to scan the tables once or
find a way to reduce full scanning of the tables (partitioning/
index etc). e.g table W_GL_ACCOUNT_D 8 mil rows getting
scanned without any valid filtering

•  Partitioned tables must have stats at both table and partition

level
 …Query Predicate
•  Lets consider the example of full scan on
W_GL_LINKAGE_INFORMATION_G if it's a huge table;
it takes nearly five minutes. The predicate used in the
report is filter
("T146781"."JOURNAL_LINE_INTEGRATION_ID"='169
8893~69290')
in /shared/Financials/Payables/Invoice Details Query
executes for 6 minutes.

•  Suggestion: recreate index

W_GL_LINKAGEINFORMATION_G_M1
(JOURNAL_LINE_INTEGRATION_ID,
DATASOURCE_NUM_ID). This index is registered in
DAC as ETL index hence it is normally dropped after
ETL; we need to make it permanent. This index should
help to lower this table scan time down to a few seconds.
BI Apps 7.9.6.3 – Sneak Peak
 Oracle BI Applications 7.9.6.3
11g Features
• Master Detail Linking
• Chart Sliders & Zooming
• Hierarchical Columns
• View prompts
• Cascading Prompts
Procurement and Spend
Analytics

Chart zooming
Supply Chain and Order Management Analytics
Supply Chain and Order Management Analytics

Playback option
Graph Sliders
Supply Chain and Order Management Analytics

Master Detail
Linking

Graph Sliders
Supply Chain and Order Management Analytics
Select 2009 Q4

Detail graph shows

Trend by Month for the
selected quarter
Project Analytics
In-place Drill using
presentation hierarchies
Financial Analytics
Cascading Prompts
Select Fiscal Year = 2008

Fiscal Quarter
shows only 2008
values

In-place Drill using

presentation
hierarchies
Financial Analytics

Graph Sliders Enhanced

Visualizations

Playback option
Human Resources Analytics
 Oracle Mobile for BI Apps
•  Native mobile apps with full Dashboard
functionality and all BI content types
–  Dashboard Drill/Navigate
–  Catalog navigation
–  Favorites
–  Alerts
–  Search
–  Actions
•  Dashboards dynamically adjust to
exploit the form-factor of the device
•  Device support
–  iOS iPhone and iPad in 11.1.1.5
–  Android next
–  Blackberry awaited??
Oracle BI Applications on Apple ipad
Example: Marketing Analytics
 BI Apps Customers to 11g
Two approaches:
•  Upgrade to BI Applications
7.9.6.3
–  Certifies 11.1.1.5, out of the box support
for 11g capabilities
–  Recommended choice for net new
implementations and existing BI Apps
customers needing 11.1.1.5 capabilities
alike

•  Platform-only upgrade for

existing BI Apps deployments
–  Fully supported with OBIEE 11.1.1.5 but
not without challenges
–  Good option for heavily customized
deployments with strong need for
11.1.1.5 features
–  Case Study of 7.9.6.2 customer
 Summary / Questions
n  Recap OBIEE
n  Recap BI Applications
n  Technical Details
n  Questions

n  Contact Information:

ShyamVaran@Gmail.com
Shyam.Nath@US.IBM.com