OBIEE Introduction

· OBIEE stands for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. The current version is 11g and
immediate previous version is 10.1.3
· OBIEE is Analytical (Reporting/Publishing ) Software Engine which facilitates data analysis,
mining and publishing capabilities on top of physical data ware house.
· The base product of OBIEE is Siebel Analytics which was a product of Siebel Corporation and
later this was taken over by Oracle Corporation and re-named as OBIEE.
· Prior to Siebel Analytics this product was originally built by a company called nQuire and it used
be referred as nQuire software in older days.
· Siebel is one of the market leaders in CRM application and owning few of domain specific
Applications like CRM, Finance, Retail, etc.
· Siebel Analytical software has got two flavors of products.

1) Siebel Analytics
2) Siebel Application

Siebel Analytics works as a standalone analytical application which provides data analytical
capabilities on any type of physical data base. For this we need to build a standalone repository.
Siebel Applications are prebuilt components/products which build based on real world
functional domain like Sales, Finance, HR,Pharma etc. When a customer buys this application he
will get a set of pre built repositories/reports/dashboards specific to each functional
applications. This will build a data warehouse from existing OLTP application systems using
Informatica pre-built mappings and DAC as a scheduling software.
In 2006/2007 oracle was looking for a best analytical tool for its customers especially for
data warehousing reporting purpose. It worked out a deal to buy entire Siebel Corp, as a result Siebel
analytics has become Oracle product. This product was renamed to OBIEE and released as a full
fledged reporting and other Applications were renamed to BI Apps.
Last version of Siebel analytics was 7.7.
OBIEE Stand alone Analytical Application :
OBIEE Analytic engine provides core Business Intelligence and Analytical capabilities on any DW
application.
This product allows to create a framework / model manually on any type of dataware house.
We can logically convert relational schema to dimensional schema.
Supports Reporting, Dashboard and publishing functionality
BI Application :
Provides all features which analytics perform does including following below..
· Apps for common industry analytical processing snow as service Analytics, Sales Analytics ,
Pharma Analytics, Finance HR etc.
· Prebuilt Dashboard and Reports on business specific application.

OBIEE Architecture
OBIEE Architecture and how it works for easy understanding
For Beginners this would give you a clear idea how OBIEE works
A request is made by the Users through Answers and sent to the Presentation server. The
Presentation Server converts the request into logical SQL and sent to the BI server. The BI server
converts logical SQL into physical SQL and sent it to the database. The result get back to the user
through the same path

OBIEE Components
For Beginners let me give a clear picture how this tool works
OLTP DATABASE ------> ETL --------> OLAP DATABASE -------> OBIEE
In OBIEE
RPD ----------> BI server --------> Presentation Server -------> Reports/Dashboards
Components of OBIEE :
OBIEE can be divided into 3 parts
i. Repository or Administration Tools
ii. Reports/ Dashboards
iii. Ibots/Agents(11g)/Delivers

OBIEE has two types of components

1. Server Component
2. Client Component

1. Server Components :
a. Oracle BI Server (can be considered as heart for OBIEE)
b. Oracle Presentation Server
c. Application Server
d. Scheduler
e. Cluster Controller
Oracle BI Server: It is a core engine acts as a heart of entire OBIEE software which performs
following operations. It controls/coordinates all reporting/repository building operations by
communicating/coordinating with other server components. It takes the logical SQL requests from
Presentation server and generates the optimized queries against the report request. These queries are
send to physical database for execution. It manages cache to redirect queries to cache /purge cache
..etc. It is also responsible for security implementation, online repository building, Multi user
development..etc. following are the other components which BI server controls/coordinates.
Repository: Repository is a meta data of physical data warehouse structures which were converted to
Logical dimensional structures. Presentation Layer of the repository contains the objects which
needed to exposed to users for report generation. This repository stores in a file with extension .rpd.
NQSConfig: This file is key configuration file from where OBIEE server reads the initial
parameters information before it starts. It is by default located at x:\OracleBI\server\Config(for 10g)
and
x\Oracle\Middleware\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIServerComponent\coreapplicatio
n_obis1\repository(for 11g). In 11g you can change the repository using EM
Log files: All the log files are placed by default at x:\OracleBI\server\Log(For 10g) and in 11g you
can directly find them from EM

NQCluster: Logs OBIEE clustering information if it is configured as cluster.

NQQuery: Records all the step by step process of each and every report/query activity in OBIEE.
We can see all physical and logical queries in this log.
Logical query can be understood only by OBIEE server. These queries are generated based on the
reports/answers criteria which executed from OBIEE presentation services.
Example;
SELECT PROD_NAME from PRODUCTS saw_0
FROM "Sales1" ORDER BY saw_0
Physical Query: OBIEE server will convert logical queries to database specific physical queries which
can be executed on DW database. Logical queries are converted to physical queries based on
logical/physical model metadata definitions in repository file.
A repository is a collection of data definitions. Or data about data (Metadata).
Cache: Caching is a process of storing the Info on separate layer after fetching data from physical
warehouse. This helps to reuse the Information which is frequently going queried by users without
hitting the database for every request.

Presentation Server:
Presentation service is a Single application that provides Oracle BI Answers, Dashboards, delivers etc
via web browsers.
· Take the request form the client tools and pars the request to OBIEE server.
· Since presentation services are service components, in order to work on presentation services it
requires a application server.
Application Server:
Application Server is the server which provides the 3-tier Architecture features and helps to work on
web based client components and by default oracle provides oc4j(10g) application server along with
OBIEE s/w. These can be changed in case organization wants to go with diff app. Servers like IIs or
web sphere. OBIEE provides a default application server by name OC4J. In the real production
servers we can replace this by any other
OBIEE 11g uses weblogic server
OBI Scheduler:
Is a server component helps to schedule a job. To install and configure BI Scheduler requires a
relational repository. We need to create a empty user and configure to BI scheduler. While creating
repository OBIEE will create required tables in this user. It stores all schedule related information.
For running iBots this components is mandatory. The jobs which are schedule by BI Scheduler can
be monitored by job manager.
iBots are known as Agents in 11g

2. Client Components :
OBIEE has two types of client components
· Browser (Web )based client
· Non web based client
Non web based client components :
OBIEE Administration tool is used to build a repositories (metadata model) on top of
physical data ware house It contains three layers.
· Physical layer
· Business layer
Presentation This helps to easily navigate unix folder structures via graphical interface.
ODBC Client: allows to connect to a database and execute SQL commands. Mostly BIEE
testers will use this tool to test the repository/reports.
Browser based Clients : These tools will wok only on any internet browser. Following the tool.
1. Interactive Dashboards : Dashboard is a logical container of components developed
by OBIEE like answers, other web pages, other dashboards. This provides additional
features like prompts, guided navigation etc.
2. Answers : Oracle BI Answers also called as reports provides a highly Interactive user
interfaces to generate reports/analytics with complex calculations and multiple views and
filters etc.s
3. Oracle Delivers : Create proactive alerts with the help of a engine called iBots. It also
helps to deliver the contents in various formats to different. Destinations.
4. Disconnected Analytics : Simulated online working environment even though not
connected to data ware housing.
5. MS_Office Plugin : Integrates the OBIEE generated data with all MS_Office product
which can further analyzed on local desktop Office products.
6. BI presentation Service Administration : Client component helps to admin the
activities which are being in progress within presentation services.
7. BI Publisher : OBI publisher which was knows as XML publisher allows to create
reports based on the layouts created in MS word or Excel. The report output can be
published/bursted to various media and various people.
OBIA

OBIA stands for Oracle Business Intelligence Apps. OBIA is a pre-built end to end BI Application. It
consists of pre-built mappings, repository, reports, Dashboards, etc
Current version of OBIA is 7.9.6.3 and is compatible with Informatica 9.x, DAC 10g and OBIEE 11g
OBIA has pre-built adapters for Oracle Apps(EBS), JDEdwards, Siebel and Peoplesoft. In additional
to these pre-built adapters Oracle provides the Universal adapters that enable any other source
system to be a source for the Datawarehouse.