This follows on from my first blog and looks at the technical aspect of the ELMAH to Gemini process.

Over this little series I have introduced ELMAH (Error Logging Modules and Handlers), Exchange web services and Gemini. This blog is going to discuss how they all link together.

By linking the whole process simply when an application throws an error it will get recorded inside Gemini.

An overview of the process

• ELMAH is set up and created within an application
• The application errors and an exception is thrown this causes an email to be sent
• Email received in mailbox ready to be processed
• An automated task is ran to check the inbox for new messages
• If there is a new message, subject is passed to get Gemini project Id
• Error tag looked for in body of email, check error against current issue
• If issue exists leave message, if not create issue in Gemini, pass in body and subject
• Email sent to project team with details of new issue

ELMAH - Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET

What is it?

ELMAH is a tool developed that plugs into an ASP.Net website and logs errors within the application, without the need to re-deploy the application. 

For more information on ELAMH look at the Google project page http://code.google.com/p/elmah/.

Microsoft Exchange Server Web Service

What is Microsoft Exchange Server Web Service?

Exchange web service is an API into the exchange server; it allows you to carry out many of the tasks you are able to do within Outlook but through a programmable interface.

How to get going

Exchange has its API open already; the only thing that is needed is to make sure you have an Exchange user that you can use for the development work. Within Microsoft Visual Studio the first task is to create a web reference to the Exchange interface; once this is done it will open up the API for the developer to use.

There are some basic rules for the Exchange server. Once you connect, it return a web reference object and you must use this object all the way through the process.

Connecting to Microsoft Exchange Server

To connect you need to request a “ExchangeServiceBinding” object from the Exchange web service, once you have this object you can pass it around the application and use it where needed.

You can connect to the inbox and get all the messages, once you get a list of messages you can then go through each one. When you get the list of messages back there are some properties associated with it such as sender, but other properties such as subject and the body of the message are stored within another method. For each message you will need to get back the whole message using “MessageType”. This allows the whole message to be received and then from this object you can get all the properties of the message. These properties can then be pasted into the Gemini API.

Gemini Web Service API

What is Gemini?

Gemini is a web based issue tracking system developed by Countersoft (http://www.countersoft.com/products/gemini/Control.aspx).

Why do Altius use it?

Altius has service level agreements (SLA) with clients and the Gemini system is an interface between Altius and a client.

Gemini is used to track project issues and change requests from creation through to resolution. The main advantages of using an issue tracking system are:

• It provides easy logging of issues without needing to worry about who to contact
• Allows all interested parties to:
  • View all issues
  • View the current status of a given issue
  • Keep track of the issues and who is assigned to each issue
  • View a complete history of the issue
• Provides a knowledgebase so that other Altius team members can understand the previous action taken when similar issues are raised.

About Gemini

Countersoft has developed Gemini since 2003. It is written using the Microsoft .Net Framework. Over 5000 companies are using Gemini, with many different sizes from small to enterprise companies. In the latest release of Gemini (3.6) there is a REST API that supports XML and JSON.

Gemini has a .Net API which is accessible through three DLL’s and this API provides access to most of the Gemini functionality.

Pros and Cons of using Gemini Manually

• Pros
  • It provides easy logging of issues without needing to worry about who to contact
  • Allows all interested parties to:
    • View all issues
    • View the current status of a given issue
    • Keep track of the issues and who is assigned to each issue
    • View a complete history of the issue
  • Provides a knowledgebase so that other Altius team members can understand the previous action taken when similar issues are raised.
  • Everyone who is linked to a project is notified of any issues
• Cons
  • Raising an issue manually can be laborious
  • People ignore the error and don’t raise an issue
  • Mistakes can be made

The Gemini API

Within Visual Studio I created a Window Console application, and added the three DLL’s as a reference. These libraries provide simple access to the Gemini API via web services within your application

1. CounterSoft.Gemini.Commons.dll
2. CounterSoft.Gemini.WebServices.dll
3. Newtonsoft.Json.dll

The "Commons" assembly contains Gemini entities such as IssueEN, ProjectEN, ComponentEN, etc.

The "WebServices" assembly provides easy communication to Gemini REST Web Services -- it provides the ServiceManager class.

Once you import these references into your project the whole Gemini API is available to you. For more information about the Gemini API documentation visit: http://api.countersoft.com/Default.aspx. This webpage has an index of the API and details all the methods that are open to a developer.

Creating an issue in Gemini is simple - the key is preparation. Before you start on an application you must set up the project, add users to the project and select the default settings.

Setting Up Gemini

Within each projects is a project administrator who is a user who has the appropriate rights to administer the project. Once the project has been set up, the appropriate permissions have been set and the users who will be working on the project have been added, the administrator can set the default values.

For the next set to work in creating a partial issue there are several fields that must be set:

• Affected Versions
• Component
• Risk Level

I would personally set other properties such as, priority, visibility (everyone) severity, resolution (unresolved) and status (unassigned). Dates and work can be left blank and type (bug in example) is passed in through the issue as an issue type.

I found that creating a Automated Gemini User was best way as this could be used throughout all the different projects held within Gemini, but you must remember to add the user to all the projects that will use automated issue creation. If you do not, then the process will return an error as the user does not have the correct access.

The project also needs to be set up correctly with project users having the correct email notifications otherwise a issue will be created and nobody will be notified.

The Coding

Now you can go ahead and code, open Visual Studio and add the reference to the solution. Now you are ready.

The code below shows what you need to create a partial issue within Gemini.

   1:  private static bool RunGemini(string summary, string description, int projectId)

   2:  {

   3:      bool success = false;

   4:      //log into the SLA system

   5:      string txtURL = @"Gemini URL";

   6:      string txtUserName = "username";

   7:      string txtPassword = "password";

   8:   

   9:      try

  10:      {

  11:          //log into the SLA system

  12:          ServiceManager serviceMrg = new ServiceManager(txtURL, txtUserName, txtPassword, "", false);

  13:   

  14:          //get the users details

  15:          UserEN user = serviceMrg.UsersService.WhoAmI();

  16:   

  17:          //create instance of the issue class

  18:          IssueEN _issue = new IssueEN();

  19:   

  20:          //------------------- create the issue ------------------------------------

  21:          //get the project id "168" = Test Project

  22:          _issue.ProjectID = projectId;

  23:          //issue title

  24:          _issue.IssueSummary = summary;

  25:          //issue description

  26:          _issue.IssueLongDesc = description;

  27:          //user whole logged the project

  28:          _issue.ReportedBy = user.UserID;

  29:          //isseue type -> 11 = "bug"

  30:          _issue.IssueType = 11;

  31:   

  32:          //send the issue to the SLA system

  33:          IssueEN iss = serviceMrg.IssuesService.CreatePartialIssue(_issue);

  34:   

  35:          //successfully logged project to the SLA system

  36:          Console.WriteLine("Issue has been logged");

  37:   

  38:          //set the return value

  39:          success = true;

  40:      }

  41:      catch (Exception ex)

  42:      {

  43:          //throw exception if it has failed

  44:          Console.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.ToString());

  45:   

  46:          //set the return value

  47:          success = true;

  48:      }

  49:      //returns the result

  50:      return success;

  51:  }

You still need to set the correct URL, username and password for your instance of Gemini. You then pass in the issue summary, issue description and project id. This has now created an issue by taking information passed in and the information taken from the issue defaults.

Then run the code with some parameters

RunGemini("Test Issue For Blog", "This is a test issue for my blog", 168);

If you open up Gemini, login and navigate to the project you still now see the project details and the issue just created.

Image below shows the project summary:

Image below shows the issue:

From the image above you can see that the issue has been created and the correct issue summary and description have been passed in. The blue box on the left shows the default settings that have been set for this project to allow the issue to be created.

At Altius Consulting we use an issue tracking system to help our clients report any problems quickly and easily (once they have signed a Service Level Agreement (SLA)). The system we use to track these issues is Gemini - an application developed by Countersoft (www.countersoft.com).

For some of our clients, we have developed ASP.NET front ends providing them with easy access to reporting, etc. A Google tool ELMAH (Error Logging Modules and Handlers), can then be linked into the ASP.Net website, detecting and reporting any errors that occur within the application.

Within ELMAH all the unhandled errors are sent back to a mailbox. Developers can then access and investigate any reported errors within the mailbox. Unfortunately there is no way of flagging and tracking these issues once they land in the mailbox and it takes extra project management time to assign and sort these issues.

Gemini obviously has the ability to provide this tracking facility, but does not naturally link in with the ELMAH mailbox. So, how do we get emails from the mailbox into Gemini? One solution would be to use the Gemini Scheduler; however, this would require a new mailbox for each project, and the need to change the EMLAH configuration for each application, which doesn’t really solve the problem.

To solve the problem, we have developed a small windows application that reads the exchange mailbox inbox regularly, creating an issue within Gemini using the Gemini API whenever a new email is detected. All the details are copied from the email into the newly created issue and the originating email deleted. Duplicate detection has also been set up, so that any issue generated within Gemini with the same name as another issue will not be created.

This has several benefits:

1. People do not need to keep checking the mailbox.
2. The issue can be tracked so that people can see how the fix is progressing.
3. It reduces wasted time for project managers, who no longer need to read multiple emails.
4. It allows Altius to use and manage one mailbox for all ELMAH issues and these get assigned to the correct project.

A technical blog will be following soon.

A couple of weeks ago Microsoft released the latest version of Silverlight (version 4).  This release has lots of new features and capabilities,  Scott Guthrie has a great Silverlight 4 Release Blog.  One of the recommended installs is the Silverlight Toolkit, this toolkit has a collection of controls, components and utilities made outside the normal release.

When looking through this page I noticed a new section which has some Silverlight 4 samples.  The application can be viewed in the browser from http://www.silverlight.net/content/samples/sl3/toolkitcontrolsamples/run/default.html and it supports out of browser. 

This application shows many Silverlight tools and gives you the XMAL and code behind files to allow you to use them within your own application, very useful if you are new to Silverlight or looking for a tool with a specific need.

As Silverlight is being integrated into SharePoint 2010 it will be fantastic for data visualisation.  The toolkit can be downloaded from here and you will also need to have Visual Studio 2010 and the Silverlight 4 Tools and SDK installed.  Once everything is installed the toolkit will allow you to drag on the extra controls to your canvas.

For those interested there was a new PowerPivot component architecture blog that was just posted on the official PowerPivot Team blog, see http://blogs.msdn.com/powerpivot/archive/2010/03/22/powerpivot-component-architecture.aspx. This is an excerpt of an upcoming SQL Server technical white paper called “Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot Planning and Deployment”)

Some key highlights:

Executive Summary:

Microsoft® SQL Server® PowerPivot is an innovative data analysis technology that redefines how organizations of all kinds deliver and succeed with business intelligence (BI). The focus shifts from IT delivering corporate BI solutions to a managed BI collaboration environment that gives users the power to get timely and reliable information to make more relevant decisions. PowerPivot does not replace corporate BI, but complements it with managed, self-service solutions.

PowerPivot in Excel

Now, PowerPivot for Excel 2010 takes the self-service BI capabilities of Excel to an unprecedented level. As a separate add-in, PowerPivot exploits the familiarity of Excel while adding an in-memory BI engine and new compression algorithms to load even the biggest data sets into memory. Users can process enormous quantities of data with incredible speed. Processing millions of rows takes about the same time as processing thousands, and by using Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) in addition to standard Excel features, power users can easily create advanced workbook applications that rely on data relationships between tables as in a database, include calculated columns and measures, and aggregate over billions of rows. In many cases, PowerPivot for Excel 2010 can establish the table relationships automatically. Workbooks become more powerful and more mission-critical than ever.

PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010

While PowerPivot for Excel 2010 extends the capabilities of Excel on the desktop, PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 complements the capabilities of Excel Services in a SharePoint farm. Excel Services provides the foundation to share workbooks as interactive, Web-based reporting tools. Excel Services also supports integration with other BI features and technologies, such as SharePoint Report Center, SQL Server Reporting Services, and Microsoft PerformancePoint® Services 2010. PowerPivot also adds its own front-end Web service so that PowerPivot for Excel 2010 and other client applications can access PowerPivot data in SharePoint directly.

Creating a self-service BI environment with PowerPivot and SharePoint

Establishing a managed, self-service BI environment entails deploying the PowerPivot for Excel 2010 add-in on workstations running Microsoft Office 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 on SharePoint application servers. These deployments can be performed independently. The PowerPivot for Excel 2010 add-in does not require a SharePoint environment and the SharePoint environment does not require PowerPivot for Excel 2010 on all workstations. The Excel add-in is a requirement only for those creating and publishing workbook applications. Other users can access published workbook applications in SharePoint via a Web browser, with the same performance and most of the features as the Excel client. However, planning and coordination are required to determine the best deployment sequence and configuration options, provision adequate storage capacities and system resources, and optimize the managed BI collaboration environment for high availability and performance.

PowerPivot Benefits and Advantages

Board is a BI and Performance Management toolkit which allows you build solutions quickly and easily. It contains it’s own OLAP engine and allows dashboard type screens to be built to give end users insight into the data in a short space of time. This blog will show how quickly it’s possible to build a report from data residing in a database.

I have some sales data held in a fact table in a star schema with three dimension tables to provide descriptive info (Product, Customer, Store). The schema looks like this:

First in Board I create some entities to hold the data from the entities tab:

I now populate these with data from the cube using the data reader functionality. First I define what data will be loaded to the entities from the Database. It’s just drag and drop and the SQL is automatically created:

I create three dimensional data readers and run them to populate the entities in Board. This data is stored within Boards own OLAP DB engine:

I create a cube (Sales) which I want to load. To do this I configure a new cube with Day, ProductName, StoreName, CustomerName entities from the cube tab.

I then create a fact load data reader and run it to populate the cube:

Now the cube has been populated with data I can create a screen and configure data viewers to show the data. To do this:

• create a new screen
• drag a data viewer onto the screen
• right click to configure it
• double click to add a new data block
• select data cube to see (Sales cube) click OK
• select the axes tab and drag on storename and productName to rows and month to columns, click ok

Screenshots shown below (select dataview, right click, select block, select cube, ok):

Then set up the axes for how you want to cut the data just like a pivot table (storename and productname or rows, and Month on columns in this case):

This produces the following report. This makes use of the default hierarchy in the time dimension (Day> Month > Year) to aggregate date data:

The report can be improved by adding charts, filters etc to create the beginnings of a rich interactive dashboard for the end users:

Extracting value from unstructured data files has always been a tricky task with no obvious solution.  Any attempts to design a custom solution would undoubtedly take more time than it was practical or worthwhile to do and involve a large amount of hard coding.  Any implemented solution would have to be flexible and cope with frequently changing source files and be quick to implement, enter Informatica PowerCenter and the Unstructured Data Option.

The Challenge
Our oil & gas client received dozens of drilling reports each month in multiple formats and were manually extracting the key data they required manually by hand.  The data stored within the data files was used for three main purposes:

• Monitoring operating performance;
• Accurately determining when new wells came online and started producing; and;
• Tracking and controlling spend.

Despite the plethora of information available in the reports only a small subset was being recorded because to the high overhead associated with capturing the data.  In mid-2009, due to an acquisition, the volume of drilling reports received monthly by our client increased dramatically to many thousands per month.  Clearly it was not practical to continue capturing the data by hand and an alternative approach was required.

The Solution
After examining the available options, of which there were few, we advised our client to invest in Informatica PowerCenter with the Unstructured Data Option.  This product gave us the ability to seamlessly access, discover, and integrate data from virtually any business system, in any format, including data locked in documents and industry-specific data formats. The ability to access and process any data format increased the teams productivity and saved costs by eliminating the need for manual intervention and improved business responsiveness and agility in their competitive market.

In our solution we implemented the following process to import the data for reporting and further analysis:

1. Various multi-format PDF documents are received into a Windows file system folder
   (As an alternative to the Windows folder it is possible to extract file straight from an Exchange Mailbox)
2. The folder regularly parsed for new files, processes each file and extracts the data into a SQL Server database
3. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is used to provide various on-demand reports

This solution solved the immediate needs of the business and from here many further improvements can be made.  The key point is that once the data is in database it can be used in many different ways to provide value to the business.

For more information on the Informatica PowerCenter Unstructured Data Option review this datasheet:
http://www.informatica.com/INFA_Resources/ds_unstructured_data_6668.pdf

Issue: To Create a Pivot table styled SSRS report and show and hide columns based on user options.

Initial issue was to move rows of data into columns.

Original approach was to use SQL command 'Pivot'. But the issue faced was the fixed column names that the Pivot command expects. Too many columns made the query ugly and unreadable.

Second approach was to modify the SQL query to return all the rows into columns. Temporary tables used to parse the original dataset and build a final dataset with all the required columns.

Issue with this was the SQL query is repetitive and affects the performance.

With the above 2 approaches, simple table can be used to layout the SSRS report. Also using the adding report parameters for various view options, table columns visibility can be modified.

To improve the SQL query readability and performance, we could use a different tool in the report rather than a table. That would be Matrix tool.

By using the Matrix in the layout, it takes care of the pivoting of the dataset.

Fig. Matrix tool in SSRS Report Layout

With the pivoting of data taken care by the matrix, next is to modify the visibility of the columns.

When the visibility of the matrix column is set to false, the data is not displayed but the position or the width of the column is not modified. When column 3 out of the 4 columns is hidden, then the width of the matrix remains the same with a blank column 3.

Fig. Matrix tool Visibility issue in SSRS Report Layout

Solution:

This visibility is a known issue in 2005 version. One way to overcome is to make multiple copies of the same matrix and remove the various columns in each of the matrix copies.

Next step is to hide and show these matrices based on the option picked by the user.

At a given time there should be only one matrix visible and others hidden.

This approach works great until the number of copied matrices increase. In my case I had to create 7 copies of the original matrix.

There is a major performance issue with this multiple matrices solution. Each time the report is generated all the 8 matrices must have data loaded. There is no way to populate matrix on the fly.

Changing the visibility of the matrix could be faster, but the initial load time is not efficient.

Improving the above approach is to make each of the copied matrices into a separate report. All these reports can be added to the main report as 'SubReport'.

Each of these sub reports have the same stored procedure, but also takes in a special parameter. This parameter is responsible for determining which sub report to populate. Only for one instance the dataset comes back with values. For other instances the dataset comes back empty. This makes only one of the subreports to display.

Advantage with the sub reports is that it avoids data being loaded more than needed, which improves the performance.

This issue, collapsing the hidden column, looks like has been solved in the later versions of SQL Server, in 2008 version. Tablix is a new tool in the 2008 version which solves all the above mentioned issues. It’s a combination of table and matrix. For more details http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb934258.aspx

Microsoft continues to innovate in the mapping space by integrating many different data sources, from Flickr, World Wide Telescope and more, and accurately compositing them into a fluidly integrated 3D world which truly moves us beyond “just Street View”.

How long before the datasets that are limited to dashboards or reports become visual overlays over live video footage embedded in a front end like this? Why are my sales figures for this store down 20% this month – that’s because of the building work on the doorstep I can now see. As a tool for making data more discoverable, the technology now available is empowering whole new levels of user experience.

From: http://blog.ted.com/2010/02/augmentedrealit.php

My colleagues Matt Feltham and Ian Marritt were presenting at the SQLBits V Conference last year, and the videos from the sessions are now available online. Titles link to the SQLBits site, Screencaps link to the videos directly in Windows Media format. Note that although the video templates indicate this is “SQLBits III in September 2008”, this was in fact that last SQLBits conference in 2009!

Matt Feltham – Data Visualisation with Bing Maps for Enterprise

Ian Marritt – An Introduction to Master Data Services

The rest of the sessions from SQLBits are available here: http://www.sqlbits.com/News.aspx?Title=SQLBits%20Videos%20available%20now%20available

Day one of my SharePoint 2010 adventure and I'd like to share a workaround that I've found quite helpful as I've run across some minor difficulties in deploying my solution.

After making changes to one or more web parts in my solution I'll occasionally receive the following error while trying to redeploy:
"Error occurred in deployment step 'Retract Solution': the language-neutral solution package was not found"

I have yet to discover the underlying cause of this error, but I've found the simplest solution to be to temporarily adjust the active deployment configuration of the project.  Here's what I did:

 * Right-click on the SharePoint project and choose "Properties"
 * Select the "SharePoint" tab
 * Create a new active deployment configuration selecting all of the available deployment steps except "Retract Solution" (no need to worry about the retraction steps obviously)
 * Click "OK" to return to the SharePoint properties
 * Select your new active deployment configuration from the drop-down list and save your changes.
 * Redeploy your solution
 * Don't forget to change your active deployment configuration back to the proper selection (most likely "Default")

Hopefully this will take care of your deployment error as easily as it did for me.

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.

Something I remembered after my last blog was that whilst using OBIEE on a WebLogic platform I realized that there would be differences in the deploying of custom css classes. The usual rules regarding the custom.css file found in

OracleBI\web\app\res\s_oracle10\b_mozilla_4\custom.css

and copied to OracleBIData\web\res don’t appear to apply, and obviously the location in the oc4j_bi folder isn’t going to apply either.

After much fiddling about it turns out the only way that appears to work is to copy the s_oracle10 folder and save a custom version to your systems equivalent of this location: C:\bea\user_projects\domains\WL_OBIEE\servers\OBIEE\tmp\_WL_user\OBIEE\u23xcw\war\res. It appears that this is the only location it needs to be copied to.

Create your custom class.

Apply your class to an appropriate report element, and save the changes.

Clear your browser cache and refresh the view.

To alter the class just edit the file.

Clear the browser cache and refresh the view, couldn’t be simpler.

N.B These colours were chosen just to make the demo obvious!

Having recently installed OBIEE in a multi server environment using WebLogic for the presentation services, I thought the following might be useful especially to those unfamiliar with WebLogic. As you are probably aware WebLogic has replaced Oracle Application Server as the go forward AS product, but at the moment there isn’t an integrated installation option for OBIEE, presumably this is being saved for OBIEE v11. When you install, opt for the ‘Basic’ option and follow the steps as if intending to use OC4J.

Once you have installed OBIEE, it’s best to create a dedicated WebLogic domain and server, all this really means is creating a new instance of web logic which will run in it’s own JVM, and can therefore have it’s own memory allocation etc.

Create a WebLogic domain.

The Weblogic configuration wizard is so simple to follow I haven’t bothered with screen shots for each step.

Launch the WebLogic Configuration Wizard.

Select the option to 'Create a new WebLogic domain'.

Generate a domain configured automatically to support the following products: (default selection only)

Enter username and password.

Accept the default SUN SDK.

Select ‘YES’ to alter the default Environment and Services settings.

Do not alter the RDBMS settings, click next.

Change the Listen Port for the Admin server to 7002 or as appropriate to your system.

Do not configure any managed servers.

Configure the machine setting appropriate to the machine your are installing on.

Assign the Admin Server to the machine.

Review the domain, click ‘Next’.

Enter an appropriate domain name and accept the default location.

Click the ‘Create’ button.

Check the ‘Start Admin Server’ box and click ‘Done’.

Your new domain will appear under ‘User Projects’ (assuming you accepted the default location). Start the Admin Server, wait for the process to complete (cmd window) then launch the admin server console.

Once logged in, this is what you see.

.

The next step is to create a new server instance.

Name your server and set the listen port, these will become important in the OBIEE URL.

Click ‘Next’, then ‘Finish’, you will now see two servers listed, click the OBIEE server to open the properties.

On the ‘General’ tab the settings should be as you entered earlier, select the Machine name from the drop down list.

Click ‘Server Start’.

In this screen you need to set the following, plus anything appropriate to your environment:

Java Home:

C:\bea\jdk150_12

Java Vendor:

Sun

BEA Home:

C:\bea

Root Dir:

C:\bea\user_projects\domains\WL_OBIEE_domain

Classpath:

C:\bea\jdk160_05\lib\tools.jar;C:\bea\wlserver_10.3\server\lib\weblogic-spring.jar;C:\bea\wlserver_10.3\server\lib\weblogic.jar;

C:\bea\wlserver_10.3\server\lib\webservices.jar;

Click ‘Save’, then on the Domain Structure navigator panel click servers to return to the Summary of Servers, click the Control tab and check the box next to OBIEE and click Start.

The next step is to actually deploy the OBIEE presentation services on the WebLogic platform.

Create a new folder with a clearly descriptive name, such as OBIEE_Deployment, and copy into it the Analytics.war file from the OracleBI\web folder, now open a command prompt.

At the command prompt type the following command to unpack the analytics.war archive.

You will see a scrolling list of messages beginning ‘inflated: ‘ as the file is unpacked.

Once this process has completed, the exploded archive can be deployed. Return to the WebLogic admin console and follow these steps:

In the navigator, click ‘Deployments’.

Click ‘Install’.

Select your deployment folder, and click next.

On the next screen select ‘Install this deployment as an application’, and click 'Next'.

Select OBIEE as the deployment target, and click 'Next'.

Name your deployment, and select the appropriate security model.

Ensure the deployment folder path is correct and select as shown below.

Click 'Next', and on the next screen click Finish.

Under the current setup the URL for OBIEE would be something like

http://Address/OBIEE_Deployment/saw.dll?Dashboard, to eliminate the _Deployment element of this, drill into the OBIEE properties and click the configuration tab, scroll down the screen and enter an appropriate name.

Your URL will now be a bit tidier,

http://Address/OBIEE/saw.dll?Dashboard

Apologies for the length of this post, but I hadn’t seen all this information together in one place before.