One thing I’m really looking forward to in 2010 is the release of OBIEE version 11g, sadly we have been looking forward to this for a while, but it seems the wait is nearly over. I thought I would list some of the new features I am most looking forward to, based on the demos and presentations I have seen over the last year and various notes I have scribbled.

1. New start page for the UI – This doesn’t seems to have changed much from one demo to another over the last twelve months, which is a good sign, it looks more up to date and similar to other vendors offerings. There is a familiarity to graphical browsing by folders that most people should feel comfortable with.

2. OLAP support – As the core of Altius’ Oracle business are Essbase and Hyperion planning, I see better Essbase support as critical to successful deployment of OBIEE as the reporting platform for such applications, whilst the support in version 10 is ok, and Oracle have worked to iron out many of the bugs, there is still a lot that could be done, things like switching between member names and aliases, and full support for attribute dimensions.

3. Pivot tables – ok this is a bit cheeky as it could be included above, but it is such an important item. Although there is a lot one can do with the current pivot tables once one knows the tricks, the new pivot tables with member based drill in place will be a massive improvement.

4. Improved charting and visualization – I must admit to not having seen a lot of these much vaunted improvements, but the mock ups looked good. In truth these probably represent OBIEE catching up with some of the competition, but they are sure to be eye catchers welcomed by the sales team and things like range or time line sliders do also add value through improved usability.

5. Mapping and spatial integration – Although possible in the current version of OBIEE, it isn’t that straight forward and users have high expectations thanks to the likes of Google maps .

6. Scorecards, KPI’s and cause and effect maps – Not every ones cup of tea, and not suited to all deployments, but these have been BI staples for a long time and appear in a number of other vendors offerings.

7. Action framework and BPM – As the need to audit and regulate grows, these two things could become increasingly important, especially where a business needs to ensure a particular course of action based on business rules.

ADF and customisation – Last but not least I’m really keen to see how customisation and extension of the OBIEE core can be handled in ADF. ADF already has the widgets to use an OBIEE repository as a data source, it will be interesting to see how the other side of the relationship works.