BI Pubisher 11g with Gmail

About the title:
I know, actually the title should have been something like: "Configuring Gmail as Delivery Channel Mail Server for BI Publisher 11g".

Available in 11g but could be backport to 10g:
It is about a new feature in BI Publisher only available in 11g unless you request a back port to 10g - Which I understand is also possible but has to be requested as Enhancement Request through Oracle
 Support and then Shinji's team will make it possible.

Benefit:
Well, now having this available in BI Publisher 11g it is possible to configure our Gmail email account to send or deliver BI Publisher reports. This is useful for some companies which rely in such email providers and prior to BIP11g this was not possible. Also, it is useful for developers to test email delivery channel with no need to use a local company's Email Server.
Actually, this is also supposed to work for TLS (Transport Layer Security) configuration. Suffixes for me to explain here that this is the successor of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and thus improves the network communications and reduces the risk of eavesdropping and tampering. More on TLS here.
But unfortunately, at the time of this note this feature does not seem to be working. If you get it to work I would be pleased to hear about it.

Use: To take advantage of this new feature simply enter the following values:
Port : 465
Encryption: SSL

BI Publisher 10g on Weblogic 10.3.4 : Common Error

If you are trying to use BI Publisher 10g on Weblogic Server 10.3.4 it is very likely you have missed one important step in your installation.

In the Release Notes (search for "BI Publisher Deployments to WebLogic 10.3 Require Additional Setting at Startup")
It clearly explains that we have to update the Weblogic Startup script to make WLS aware of the toplink libraries (which in the case of OC4J it is already included) for the scheduler to work:

Locate the startup script as follows:

/weblogic_home/user_projects/domains/base_domain/bin/startWebLogic.sh

Add the following setting:

-Dtoplink.xml.platform=oracle.toplink.platform.xml.jaxp.JAXPPlatform 

As in the picture

This setting is required to enable BI Publisher to find the TopLink JAR files to create the Scheduler tables.

BI Publisher 11g - Webservices

If you are looking BI Publisher Webservices then you can simply find them under the following location:
http://servername:9704/xmlpserver/services
You will get a list for these services :

• v2/ScheduleService (http://servername:9704/xmlpserver/services/v2/ScheduleService?wsdl)
• v2/ReportService (http://servername:9704/xmlpserver/services/v2/ReportService?wsdl)
• PublicReportService ( http://servername:9704/xmlpserver/services/PublicReportService?wsdl )
• ReportService ( http://servername:9704/xmlpserver/services/ReportService?wsdl )
• v2/SecurityService (http://servername:9704/xmlpserver/services/v2/SecurityService?wsdl)
• ServiceGateway ( http://servername:9704/xmlpserver/services/ServiceGateway?wsdl )
• XMLPService ( http://servername:9704/xmlpserver/services/XMLPService?wsdl )
• v2/CatalogService (http://servername:9704/xmlpserver/services/v2/CatalogService?wsdl)

Some of them are new in this release and therefore may not be compatible with Webservices for BIP10g.
In future posts I will write on some of these new webservices.
That's it for now. Got to go back to my daily duties for my current customer :)

Enabling LOG messages in BI Publisher 10g

Enabling BI Publisher 10g to DEBUG mode is pretty simple. I will show you how to do it in OC4J.

1. Stop OC4J
2. Make a backup of this file:
C:\OracleBI\xmlp\XMLP\Admin\Configuration\xmlp-server-config.xml
3. Modify the file xmlp-server-config.xml and set this value:
   <property name="DEBUG_LEVEL" value="debug"/>
4. Save the file
5. Restart OC4J

It should be now in Debug mode

Upgrade BI Publisher to 11g

Now that more and more customers are starting to use the newest BIEE 11g release a commom question asked is : How do I upgrade my BI Publisher 10g to 11g?.


Sometime ago we made a presentation on BI Publisher 11g and touched this matter. Here we revisit this interesting topic again and present you a summary of the upgrade process.


The upgrade of BI Publisher 10g to 11g is essentially a three step process:

1. Install BIEE 11g

2. Run Upgrade Assistant (to upgrade BI Publisher 10g Repository)

3. Run Upgrade Assistant (to upgrade BI Publisher 10g Scheduler metadata)

In Windows to start the Upgrade Assistant using the GUI change directory to the ORACLE_HOME/Oracle_BI1/bin directory of the Oracle Fusion Middleware installation: ua.bat

Assumptions: Certain considerations should be taken during the process as for example.

1. BI Publisher 10g Repository is file based. If it is XMLDB based then move the directory to a file system before migration. As of release 11.1.0 there is no support for XMLDB repository type (Future will use MDS as repository).


2. The upgrade assistant assumes the BI Publisher 10g repository is accessible in a shared drive.


3. Before upgrade, make sure BI Publisher 11g is set to repository File Type (by default it is BIEE Catalog) because the UA only upgrades to file type repository.


4. After upgrade, BIEE 11g and BI Publisher 11g integration works if security is "Fusion Middleware" and BI Publisher Repository is BIEE Catalog. So use the utility in BI Publisher 11g Administration --> Server Configuration --> Select Catalog Type: BIEE --> set the BIP Repository path -->Upload to BI PS Catalog

For more further detailed process, follow my friend's site:

http://bipconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/07/10g-users-lets-upgrade-to-bi-publisher.html

or

http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/fmw/bi/bi11115/upgrade/upgrade_to_11g.htm#t9

References:
1. Oracle BI Publisher 11g Documentation

Oracle BI Publisher 10g - New patch released (March 2011)

A quick note to just let know our followers that there is a new BI Publisher 10g patch released just today through the Oracle Support site: http://metalink.oracle.com

Patch 11846804: UPDATE FOR BI PUBLISHER ENTERPRISE 10.1.3.4.1 MARCH 2011

We will look into it and see if there are useful things which were corrected.

Stay tuned BI Publisher 10.1.3.4.2 is coming soon!

Oracle Data Miner 11gR2 available for download

It has been awhile since my last posting and decided to catch up by posting a couple of things I have been working on lately.

One of them is a topic which I am passionate about: Data Mining. A few weeks ago while at Boston I had the opportunity to visit an old friend of mine Charlie Berger (Senior Director PM Oracle Data Mining) in the Oracle office at Burlington.

 We had a short but nice conversation on the new release of ODM 11gR2. At the time of our conversation Oracle was getting ready to release it in OTN and it just made it last Tuesday Feb 22.
ODM 11gR2 is now part of SQLDeveloper ( currently in SQLDevelopers Early Adopters 3)

 and as such you need to download SQLDevelopers EA3 from this link:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/index-rel3-ea-202703.html
Well the new good feature is that it now provides a graphical workflow to easily define the data flow and processes until final results for analysis are obtained. Here a screenshot of my first exercise with this tool.

It is really fantastic. This new GUI has long been waited for the Oracle Data Mining community.
We will post soon how Oracle Data Miner can be integrated with OBIEE to produce actionable analytical results. Stay tuned!