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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 12c is packed full of features and has a fresh approach to information presentation, system management, and security. OBIEE can help any organization to understand its data, to make useful information from data, and to ensure decision-making is supported by facts. OBIEE can focus on information that needs action, alerting users when conditions are met. OBIEE can be used for data analysis, form production, dashoarding, and workflow processes.
We will introduce you to OBIEE features and provide a step-by-step guide to build a complete system from scratch. With this guide, you will be equipped with a good basic understanding of what the product contains, how to install and configure it, and how to create effective Business Intelligence.
This book contains the necessary information for a beginner to create a high-performance OBIEE 12c system.
This book is also a guide that explains how to use an existing OBIEE 12c system, and shows end users how to create.
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Table of Contents
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 12c - second Edition
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 12c - second Edition
Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing
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Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: July 2012
Second edition: April 2017
Production reference: 1140417
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Credits
Authors
Adrian Ward
Christian Screen
Haroun Khan
Copy Editor
Safis Editing
Reviewer
Bill Anderson
Project Coordinator
Shweta H Birwatkar
Commissioning Editor
Veena Pagare
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor
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Indexer
Aishwarya Gangawane
Content Development Editor
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Graphics
Tania Dutta
Technical Editor
Akash Patel
Nilesh Sawakhande
Production Coordinator
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About the Authors
Adrian Ward is an Oracle ACE Associate who started working in Siebel Analytics back in 2001 and quickly realized the potential in the technology. He formed the UK's first independent consultancy focusing purely on OBIEE (nee Siebel Analytics) and Oracle BI Applications. He has led many large successful OBIEE implementations in a wide range of business sectors, from investment banking to military operations. His deep technical OBIEE and BI Applications knowledge has been applied on dozens of projects throughout the globe, including HR, Sales, Service, Pharma, and Custom Analytics, which is enabling hundreds of thousands of users in their day-to-day roles.
He was also one of the first bloggers on Oracle BIEE at http://www.obiee.info and today runs the Addidici OBIEE consultancy, which has operations in the UK, Europe, and South Africa. Adrian runs one of the largest Oracle BI networking groups on LinkedIn -- Oracle Business Intelligence, is an active tweeter (@Addidici), is a speaker at Oracle conferences, and helps others learn.
In his spare time, he loves sailing at Hayling Island, skiing, enjoying life with his family, and learning new technologies.
I would like to dedicate this book to my wife Sarah, and wonderful children, Hugh and Harriet who are the coolest dudes in the world.
Many thanks to Christian and Haroun for their patience in writing the second book, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Christian Screen (@christianscreen) is an Oracle ACE, technologist, and Business Intelligence evangelist with over 20 years of experience in technology ranging from low-level programming, e-commerce, Data Warehousing, Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management, product management, IoT, and of course, analytics. Founder of Art of BI Software and Consulting Group, one of Oracle’s top Oracle Analytics partners in North America, his company was acquired by Datavail (@datavail) Corporation in 2016.
In his spare time, he enjoys writing technical articles, learning new technologies, inventing new products, writing software, spending time with his family, trying to change the world, and running his blog and podcast which are read and heard all across the globe.
I would like to thank my co-authors on this book, in particular Adrian Ward, with extreme gratitude for completing many of the chores related to the care, watering, and feeding required to push the writing and publishing of this book along - ultimately over the finish line.
Indeed, I thank my wife and children for putting up with my late night writing sessions and booked-up weekends working on this book and the mental blockage that rides along with such a task. I thank my mother, brothers, and sister for their support in my endeavors, which in life attributes to the person I’ve been able to become, giving me the ability to contribute in such challenging enterprises.
Without the support of the user group communities such as ODTUG, IOUG, and UKOUG and great conferences such as Collaborate, KScope, and Oracle Open World, our message of great business intelligence wouldn’t be as strong. Thank you all those who: purchased this book, support your local user group communities, follow us on social media, read our blogs, and attend our presentation sessions at conferences; you make efforts such as writing this book possible.
Haroun Khan is one of Europe's leading OBIEE consultants. A computer science graduate of Imperial College, London, he has been involved with OBIEE from its early days as an acquisition from nQuire by Siebel, and subsequently as part of the Oracle family. Haroun worked as a consultant on projects worldwide for Siebel and as a Principal Consultant for Oracle over a period of 10 years. He has specialized in BI and data warehousing over a longer period including time working at MicroStrategy.
Haroun is also an entrepreneur, successfully founding and currently running the online travel site https://www.jrpass.com/. His experience in e-commerce has given him new insight into how analytics is vital to the running of any business nowadays. He engages with cohort analysis, clickstream analytics, and conversion tracking.
He still freelances in leading and designing projects in the traditional BI and data warehousing space. In his downtime, Haroun likes to climb, is an avid squash player, and can sometimes be found prone, deep in despair, as he tries his hands at writing a novel.
About the Reviewer
Bill Anderson is a business analytics consultant with extensive experience in data visualization, Oracle BI, Oracle BI applications, BI cloud services, and Hyperion Essbase. He has a proven ability to integrate disparate heterogeneous data sources using Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Hyperion, and several relational database management systems. Bill has led multiple projects developing moderate-to-complex Oracle Business Intelligence solutions, working side-by-side with his clients in many industries. He is also a course instructor for a number of business analytics training courses. Outside of work, Bill dabbles in competition bar-b-que.
I would like to thank my family and friends for supporting me throughout my career and the authors for giving me the opportunity to work with them on this great book.
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Preface
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 12c is packed full of features and has a fresh approach to information presentation, system management, and security. You will be introduced to these features, through a step-by-step guide to building a complete system from scratch. With this guide, you will be equipped with a basic understanding of what the product contains, how to install and configure it, and how to create effective business intelligence. This book contains the necessary information for a beginner to create a high performance OBIEE 12c system with effective presentation of information.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Oracle BI 12C Architecture, reviews the key areas of the Oracle BI system and its Fusion Middleware architecture, with WebLogic at the core of the system.
Chapter 2, Installing the Prerequisite Software, covers the steps to install the software needed before we can install the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) software.
Chapter 3, Installing on Windows Server 2012, provides step-by-step instructions for installing Oracle BI 12c on Windows Server 2012.
Chapter 4, Reviewing the Features of the Reporting Repository, introduces the new interface of the catalog and the tools that are integrated into the presentation services. It also explores the various aspects of the catalog administration.
Chapter 5, Installing and Configuring Client Tools, focuses on installing the client software, configuring a connection to the OBIEE server and the database, creating shortcuts, and testing the client software.
Chapter 6, Understanding the Systems Management Tools, goes into greater detail about the system management tools that tie everything together. We'll explain what these components are, what they do, and how they work together. We delve into the navigation of these tools so that you become more familiar with the interfaces and learn what components are specific to Oracle BI 12c. We will also explore which key controls are used to maintain the Oracle BI 12c environment.
Chapter 7, Developing the BI Server Repository, covers the development of a simple RPD, from importing tables in a database through to how these objects are presented to us when we move on to creating an actual request.
Chapter 8, Creating Dashboards and Analyses, shows us how to create analyses, and how to present them on Dashboards. We demonstrate the various ways of representing and formatting data that are available, along with advice on best practices gained from implementation experience.
Chapter 9, Agents and Action Framework, looks at a few functions that Oracle BI provides in an attempt to help organizations succeed at moving a user from a transactional reporting mindset to an analytical one.
Chapter 10, Developing Reports Using BI Publisher, covers the main features of BI Publisher in order to get you up to speed in using the tool. We also mention some of the new features of 12c.
Chapter 11, Usage Tracking, describes how to activate the usage tracking feature and create useful reports from it. We also learn how to fine-tune and improve the usage tracking feature.
Chapter 12, Improving Performance, looks at some common techniques to reduce common bottlenecks that can exist in the process of delivering dashboards and reports to the users. We look across the whole system, defining poor performance, and, where required, show the steps to improve performance.
Chapter 13: Using the BI Admin Change Management Utilities,describes some of the other utilities in the Administration tool that can aid and simplify the development process.
Chapter 14: Ancillary Installation Options, highlights some of the most common post-configuration installation options and discusses many of the real-world implementations that we've experienced.
Chapter 15: Reporting Databases,covers a brief introduction to the theory and guidelines for creating a warehouse, and an example of creating a warehouse.
Chapter 16: Customizing the Style of Dashboards,shows how to change a style and how to create and implement a new style.
Chapter 17: Upgrading to 12c, covers how to utilize the Upgrade Assistant in order to migrate some of the core components to 12c.
What you need for this book
To work through the steps in this book, you will need access to a Windows machine, preferably running Windows Server (but Windows 10 can cope), and a copy of SQL Server 2016. If you don’t have one, Microsoft has now released the SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition as a free download, and it will work just fine for working through the recipes.
You can download the developer edition from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-editions-developers or use the shortcut http://bit.ly/sql2016dev.
To mirror our setup, you also need the AdventureWorks 2014 multi-dimensional database. You can find the samples database at https://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/125550.
You will also need to register an account on Oracle.com – don’t worry, its free!
If you would like to practice the install on Linux, then we recommend that you download the Oracle VirtualBox software and load an Oracle Linux virtual machine.
Who this book is for
A wide variety of users will find this book valuable. If you are an IT professional, business analyst, project manager, and/or newcomer to Business Intelligence who wish to learn from self-paced professional guidance and actual implementation experience, this book is for you. Ultimately, this book is for anyone who needs a solid grounding in the subject of Oracle Business Intelligence.
Approach: this book will take you from one feature to another in a step-by-step manner and will teach how to create effective business intelligence using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. You will be taught how to create BI solutions and dashboards from scratch. There will be multiple modules in the book, each module spread in chapters, each of which will cover each aspect of business intelligence in a systematic manner.
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Chapter 1. Oracle BI 12c Architecture
Fans of the Oracle BI suite of products will find Oracle Business Intelligence (Oracle BI) 12c a refreshing software version, both from its visual advancements and its technical foundation changes. This version of Oracle BI brings Oracle's flagship analytics system to the next level while maintaining its core enterprise-architecture concepts. The updated architecture allows for easier scalability of the solution across multiple servers, brings departmental BI and data visualization concepts into the mix, and strengthens its deployment processes with its new lifecycle-management tools. This chapter focuses on an overview of the Oracle BI 12c architecture, with occasional references to its predecessor to give some perspective as to how far the Oracle BI 12 release has come in terms of a more straightforward implementation process and increased functionality.
Let's look at the big picture
Going right for the guts of the platform, it is best to understand how the Oracle BI 12c system is laid out by looking at the logical interoperability of the architectural components. Oracle BI 12c is a combination of several core technologies, which reside as common software components within the Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW) stack inside the Oracle software eco-system.
The following illustration shows some of Oracle BI 12c's logical architecture components. Users of Oracle BI 11g will find some of this topology familiar, yet clearly different in many ways:
Similar to the Oracle BI 11g environment, once the software has been installed, all of the components in the architecture topology shown will exist. These components are transparent to the end users (that is, users in the organization who will view dashboards, reports, receive alerts, and so on). However, for the Oracle BI 12c administrators, and those that need to work with the technical aspect of the system, each of these areas of the Oracle BI 12c architecture is very important.
Terminology differences from Oracle BI 11g
There are a few noticeable changes in architecture terminology when comparing Oracle BI 11g to Oracle BI 12c. Let's call out a few of these key differences, as they are relevant to the language used throughout the book.
The first is that Fusion Middleware Home, as it relates to the installation of Oracle BI and the location of files in the file system, is now called ORACLE HOME. In Oracle BI 11g, Fusion Middleware Home was the base install folder for your Oracle BI 11g installation. The same concept is used in Oracle BI 12c; it is now rather more appropriately called the ORACLE HOME. This makes sense as traditionally, in an n-tier server architecture, the Oracle BI system is installed on its own application server. Therefore, it would be the only core Oracle technology application on a machine, not conflicting with any other Oracle home install locations from other applications.
The second is that the Oracle Process Management and Notification Server (OPMN) is no longer used to manage the Oracle BI System Components. This has been replaced by a more integrated process, which still allows start, stop, and status of Oracle BI to be controlled by the command line or through Enterprise Manager. These components, previously managed by the OPMN, are still referred to as the BI System Components (that is, BI Server, BI Presentation Server, and so on). This also means that the idea of instances is now replaced by Service Instances.
What is Oracle Fusion Middleware?
Oracle Fusion Middleware is taking on the enterprise challenge of bringing together the Oracle database and Oracle applications stacks. It is the middle-tier between them. Fusion Middleware is Oracle's go-forward foundation for the fusion of products between the database and application stack. Oracle has acquired many companies over the last decade for their technology or market share. This has taken it to a position of having excellent software. To achieve interoperability, a common layer had to be formed to fuse together the existing technologies, create efficiencies, and provide consistent delivery of software applications. The following figure illustrates the main categories of products making up the current Oracle product stack:
The Middleware product category contains Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW), which forms the core of Oracle's Application Integration Architecture (AIA). It is the foundation for Oracle's fusion applications and software suites, such as Oracle BI, Oracle Hyperion Oracle Web Center, and so on.
Why is there a database repository for OBIEE?
Similar to the previous Oracle BI version, Oracle BI 12c requires a relational database repository schema to hold metadata concerning the installation, report scheduling, usage tracking, auditing, and other aspects of the environment. As an initial set of steps in the installation process, these very necessary repositories are created using the Repository Creation Utility (RCU) against the selected database server. Chapter 2, Installing the Pre-requisite Software, goes into greater detail about this crucial repository structure. In Oracle BI 11g, two database schemas were installed with the RCU-Metadata Services (MDS) and BIPLATFORM. However, in Oracle BI 12c there can be up to nine database repository schemas for Oracle BI 12c that can be installed via the Oracle BI 12c RCU. There are now even more repository schemas that must be installed for Oracle BI 12c to be correctly installed and configured. The additional required schemas will have the suffixes WLS, WLS_RUNTIME, STB, and OPSS. Other schemas available are for auditing purposes, if optionally chosen for the implementation.
Note
Another interesting fact is that the Oracle BI Metadata Repository (RPD) is still a file, typically prefixed as RPD (that is, .rpd extension) and even in the latest version of Oracle BI the metadata is not stored in any database repository.
The Oracle BI Metadata Repository is the metadata storage mechanism in which Oracle BI developers model and map physical data sources to logical business representations in order for the resulting analytics to be easily consumed by end users.
The term Oracle BI Domain, as noted previously and shown in the illustration, is used as a way to group all Oracle BI 12c components within the Fusion Middleware (that is, WebLogic Server) architecture. This should not be confused with the WebLogic Application Server Domain, which is given the default name bi when following the default Oracle BI 12c installation options. The latter is a WebLogic Java Application Server term. The former is a Fusion Middleware term. Since Fusion Middleware is so closely related to the WebLogic Application Server, this is good to keep in mind from a technical perspective.
Note
When learning about the overall component composition, a very important detail to keep in mind is the manner in which the components are managed. Since WebLogic Server is a Java application server, it manages all of the Oracle BI components developed in the Java programming language. The Oracle BI System Components are now managed by the WebLogic Management Framework (WMF) which is the same system that manages the WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) functionality.
Overall components
There are many components that comprise Oracle BI 12c. Oracle BI 12c can categorize these components by the class of programming languages in which they were developed. This is mainly either Java or C++. In comparison to previous versions of Oracle BI, where it seemed to be a somewhat compact environment, Oracle BI 12c is much more integrated into the larger platform of Fusion Middleware, which adds both value and complexity. Some of the same legacy component names persist; however, it should not be taken lightly that most legacy components have been renamed, removed, or placed under new management processes.
The following figure provides a high-level overview of the main components that comprise the Oracle BI 11g architecture. The components are clearly segmented by the processes in which they are managed, each of which ultimately comprise the Oracle BI Domain:
Java components
In relation to Oracle BI 12c, the Java components are those which have been developed in the Java programming language. These components are similar to Oracle BI 11g, with a few differences. The main Java for Oracle BI 12c components, in no particular order of importance, are described in the following sections.
Action Service
Primarily used by the Action Framework, it executes actions on behalf of Presentation Services and Oracle BI Scheduler. Actions may be invocations of third-party web services, or invocations of user-supplied Java code executed as EJBs.
Visual Analyzer
New to Oracle BI 12c, this JEE deployment provides the Visual Analyzer (VA) analytical graphics system, which allows for data visualizations.
Administrative Components
Java Management Extensions Managed Beans (JMX MBeans) allow dynamic API functionality for managing, configuring, and administering Oracle BI 12c.
SOA Web Service
SOA Web Service provides a web service interface to the contents of the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog. The tree of objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog is exposed as a tree of web services, defined by a WSIL tree with WSDL leaves. An organization could use these services for Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) integration.
Oracle BI Office
Oracle BI Office provides integration between Microsoft Office and Oracle BI 12c.
Oracle Real-Time Decisions (RTD)
Oracle Real-Time Decisions (RTD) provides a decision-making rules engine that enables real-time business intelligence predictions and outcome analysis.
Oracle BI Presentation Service plugin
Presentation Services runs as a deployed JEE process, not as a web server, and does not communicate using any web server plug-in API. The Oracle BI Presentation Services Plug-in forwards HTTP requests to Oracle BI Presentation Services System Component to handle requests from HTTP traffic, such as browser-based user interfaces or SOAP requests.
Oracle BI Publisher
The enterprise reporting solution for authoring and delivering highly formatted documents.
Security Services
Security Services provides standards-based authentication and population services. It enables Oracle BI Server to integrate with the Fusion Middleware security platform, which includes the Credential Store Framework and the Identity Store.
System Components
There are many components that comprise Oracle BI 12c. These mainly need to be all in a running state in order for Oracle BI 12c to be considered in running condition - the only exception being the Essbase component. The Oracle BI System Components are those which are developed in a non-Java programming language. Most have been developed in the C++ programming language, as mentioned previously. The following sections cover a list of those components.
BI Server
This is a C++ process that does the data access and aggregates data from data sources. You can configure multiple BI Server processes, which share the load. No session replication takes place between the BI Server processes. This is the core of OBIEE, and provides the services for accessing and managing the RPD.
The BI Server does not maintain user session state. For high-availability deployments, query results are cached in the global cache.
BI Presentation Server
This is a C++ process that generates the user interface pages and renders result sets on behalf of the Oracle BI Scheduler. You can configure multiple Presentation Services processes, which share the load. No session replication takes place between the Presentation Services processes.
Presentation Services is almost stateless. The only significant state is the client authentication. If Oracle Business Intelligence is configured to use single sign on for authentication purposes, then users do not have to re-authenticate after a failover. For all other authentication schemes, when failover occurs, clients will have to re-authenticate. The client sees an interruption of service and is redirected to a login page.
BI Scheduler
This is a C++ process that runs jobs according to a configurable frequency. Jobs may be agents created in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog, or jobs created by the job manager. This scheduler differs from the Quartz scheduler that BI Publisher leverages. When scaled, only a maximum of two instances (one active, one passive) can be configured.
BI JavaHost
This is a Java process that includes resource-intensive graph and PDF rendering. It also allows BI Presentation Services to support BI Publisher and Java tasks within BI Scheduler. You can configure multiple JavaHost processes, which share the load. No session replication takes place between the JavaHost processes. The JavaHost is a stateless process. In Oracle BI 12c, JavaHost enables query access between Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) and Hyperion planning data sources integrated in the OBIEE RPD.
BI Server Cluster Controller
This is a C++ process that manages the population of BI Servers and Oracle BI Schedulers. It also distributes requests to the BI Server and ensures that requests are evenly load-balanced across scaled-out BI Servers in the domain. When scaled, only a maximum of two instances (one active, one passive) can be configured.
Essbase
This is the Essbase server, which provides Oracle/Hyperion Essbase capabilities for the Oracle BI implementation.
It is important to understand how all of the components interact within the Oracle BI environment. Understanding such general concepts as which port numbers are defined to communicate within the default Oracle BI architecture, or how the Oracle BI Administration Tool communicates with the Oracle BI repository, will be quite helpful in your journey to becoming an Oracle BI professional. The following figure shows each of the components comprising the core Oracle BI architecture, the communication ports, and the communication direction:
WebLogic Server
Let's talk a little more in detail about the enterprise application server that is at the core of Oracle Fusion Middleware, WebLogic. Oracle WebLogic Server is a scalable, enterprise-ready Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) application server. Its infrastructure supports the deployment of many types of distributed applications. It is also an ideal foundation for building service-oriented architecture (SOA). You can already see why BEA was a perfect acquisition for Oracle years ago. Or, more to the point, a perfect core for Fusion Middleware.
The WebLogic Server is a robust application in itself. In Oracle BI 12c, the WebLogic Server is crucial to the overall implementation, not just from installation but throughout the Oracle BI 12c lifecycle, which now takes advantage of the WebLogic Management Framework. Learning the management components of WebLogic Server that ultimately control the Oracle BI components is critical to the success of an implementation. These management areas within the WebLogic Server are referred to as the WebLogic Administration Server, WebLogic Manager Server(s), and the WebLogic Node Manager.
A few WebLogic Server nuances
Before we move on to a description for each of those areas within WebLogic, it is also important to understand that the WebLogic Server software that is used for the installation of the Oracle BI product suite carries a limited license. Although the software itself is the full enterprise version and carries full functionality, the license that ships with Oracle BI 12c is not a full enterprise license for WebLogic Server for your organization to spin off other siloed JEE deployments on other non-OBIEE servers. This book is hardly a guide to software licensing, but following are a few of those differences one should keep in mind when beginning or continuing an Oracle BI 12c implementation:
These items are simply a few nuances of the product suite in relation to Oracle BI 12c. Most software products contain a short list such as this one. However, once you understand the nuances, the easier it will be to ensure that you have a more successful implementation. It also allows your team to be as prepared in advance as possible. Be sure to consult your Oracle sales representative to assist with licensing concerns.
Despite these nuances, we highly recommend that in order to learn more about the installation features, configuration options, administration, and maintenance of WebLogic, you not only research it in relation to Oracle BI, but also in relation to its standalone form. That is to say that there is much more information (books, blogs, and so on) at large on the topic of WebLogic Server itself than WebLogic Server as it relates to Oracle BI. Understanding this approach to self-educating or web searching should provide you with more efficient results.
WebLogic Domain
The highest unit of management for controlling the WebLogic Server installation is called a domain. A domain is a logically related group of WebLogic Server resources that you manage as a unit. A domain always includes, and is centrally managed by, one Administration Server. Additional WebLogic Server instances, which are controlled by the Administration Server for the domain, are called Managed Servers. The configuration for all the servers in the domain is stored in the configuration repository, the config.xml file, which resides on the machine hosting the Administration Server.
Upon installing and configuring Oracle BI 12c, the domain bi is established within the WebLogic Server. This domain is the recommended name for each Oracle BI 12c implementation and should not be modified.
The domain path for the bi domain may appear as ORACLE_HOME/user_projects/domains/bi .
This directory for the bi domain is also referred to as the DOMAIN_HOME or BI_DOMAIN folder.
WebLogic Administration Server
The WebLogic Server is an enterprise software suite that manages a myriad of application server components, mainly focusing on Java technology. It is also comprised of many ancillary components, which enable the software to scale well, and also make it a good choice for distributed environments and high-availability. Clearly, it is good enough to be at the core of Oracle Fusion Middleware. One of the most crucial components of WebLogic Server is WebLogic Administration Server. When installing the WebLogic Server software, the Administration Server is automatically installed with it. It is the Administration Server that not only controls all subsequent WebLogic Server instances, called Managed Servers, but also controls such aspects as authentication-provider security (for example, LDAP) and other application-server-related configurations.
WebLogic Server installs on the operating system and ultimately runs as a service on that machine. The WebLogic Server can be managed in several ways. The two main methods are via the Graphical User Interface (GUI) web application called WebLogic Administration Console, or via a command line using the WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST). You access the Administration Console from any networked machine using a web-based client (that is, a web browser) that can communicate with the Administration Server through the network and/or firewall.
The WebLogic Administration Server and the WebLogic Server are basically synonymous. If the WebLogic Server is not running, the WebLogic Administration Console will be unavailable as well.
WebLogic Managed Server
Web applications, Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), and other resources are deployed onto one or more Managed Servers in a WebLogic Server Domain. A managed server is an instance of a WebLogic Server in a WebLogic Server Domain. Each WebLogic Server Domain has at least one instance, which acts as the Administration Server just discussed. One administration server per domain must exist, but one or more managed servers may exist in the WebLogic Server Domain.
In a production deployment, Oracle BI is deployed into its own managed server. The Oracle BI installer installs two WebLogic server instances, the Admin Server and a managed server, bi_server1. Oracle BI is deployed into the managed server bi_server1, and is configured by default to resolve to port 9502; the Admin Server resolves to port 9500. Historically, this has been port 9704 for the Oracle BI managed server, and port 7001 for the Admin Server.
When administering the WebLogic Server via the Administration Console, the WebLogic Administration Server instance appears in the same list of servers, which also includes any managed servers. As a best practice, the WebLogic Administration Server should be used for configuration and management of the WebLogic Server only, and not contain any additionally deployed applications, EJBs, and so on.
Note
One thing to note is that the Enterprise Manager Fusion Control is actually a JEE application deployed to the Administration Server instance, which is why its web client is accessible under the same port as the Admin Server. It is not necessarily a native application deployment to the core WebLogic Server, but gets deployed and configured during the Oracle BI installation and configuration process automatically. In the deployments page within the Administration Console, you will find a deployment namedem.
WebLogic Node Manager
The general idea behind Node Manager is that it takes on somewhat of a middle-man role. That is to say, the Node Manager provides a communication tunnel between the WebLogic Administration Server and any Managed Servers configured within the WebLogic Domain. When the WebLogic Server environment is contained on a single physical server, it may be difficult to recognize the need for a Node Manager. It is very necessary and, as part of any of your ultimate start-up and shutdown scripts for Oracle BI, the Node Manager lifecycle management will have to be a part of that process. Node Manager's real power comes into play when Oracle BI is scaled out horizontally on one or more physical servers. Each scaled-out deployment of WebLogic Server will contain a Node Manager.
If the Node Manager is not running on the server on which the Managed Server is deployed, then the core Administration Server will not be able to issue start or stop commands to that server. As such, if the Node Manager is down, communication with the overall cluster will be affected. The following figure shows how machines A, B, and C are physically separated, each containing a Node Manager. You can see that the Administration Server communicates to the Node Manager, and not the Managed Server, directly:
System tools controlled by WebLogic
We briefly discussed the WebLogic Administration Console, which controls the administrative configuration of the WebLogic Server Domain. This includes the components managed within it, such as security, deployed applications, and so on. The other management tool that provides control of the deployed Oracle BI application ancillary deployments, libraries, and several other configurations, is called the Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control.
Tip
This seems to be a long name for a single web-based tool. As such, the name is often shortened to Fusion Control or Enterprise Manager. Reference to either abbreviated title in the context of Oracle BI should ensure fellow Oracle BI teammates understand what you mean.
To discuss the vast amount of individual configuration points contained within the WebLogic Administration Console and Fusion Control warrants an entire book devoted to the subject. For further reading, we recommend the Packt Publishing Advanced WebLogic Cookbook.
Security
It would be difficult to discuss the overall architecture of Oracle BI without at least giving some mention to how the basics of security, authentication, and authorization are applied. By default, installing Oracle WebLogic Server provides a default Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server, referred to as the WebLogic Server Embedded LDAP server. This is a standards-compliant LDAP system, which acts as the default authentication method for out-of-the-box Oracle BI. Integration of secondary LDAP providers, such as Oracle Internet Directory (OID) or Microsoft Active Directory (MSAD), is crucial to leveraging most organizations' identity-management systems. The combination of multiple authentication providers is possible; in fact, it is commonplace. For example, a configuration may wish to have users that exist in both the Embedded LDAP server and MSAD to authenticate and have access to Oracle BI. Potentially, users may want another set of users to be stored in a relational database repository, or have a set of relational database tables control the authorization that users have in relation to the Oracle BI system. WebLogic Server provides configuration opportunities for each of these scenarios.
Oracle BI security incorporates the Fusion Middleware Security model, Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS). This has a positive influence over managing all aspects of Oracle BI, as it provides a very granular level of authorization and a large number of authentication and authorization-integration mechanisms. OPSS also introduces to Oracle BI the concept of managing privileges by application role instead of directly by user or group. It abides by open standards to integrate with security mechanisms that are growing in popularity, such as the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0. Other well-known single-sign-on mechanisms such as SiteMinder and Oracle Access Manager already have pre-configured integration points within Oracle BI Fusion Control. A later chapter will go into an exercise for creating new users and groups, and assigning application roles, but for now, here are a few key concepts to know about security:
The following sections discuss these few key concepts at a high level. Understanding these concepts is not critical at this moment for you to continue on with the remainder of the book; however, once you complete the book and are ready to engage in more advanced discovery, you will want to research and understand these items to be more versed in managing Oracle BI security.
Managing by Application Roles
In Oracle BI 11g, the default security model is the Oracle Fusion Middleware security model, which has a very broad scope. A universal information technology security-administration best practice is to set permissions or privileges to a specific point of access on a group, and not individual users. The same idea applies here, except there is another enterprise-level of user, and even group, aggregation, called an Application Role. Application Roles can contain other application roles, groups, or individual users. Access privileges to a certain object, such as a folder, web page, or column, should always be assigned to an application role. Application roles for Oracle BI can be managed in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control interface. They can also be scripted using the WLST command-line interface.
Security providers
Fusion Middleware security can seem complex at first, but knowing the correct terminology and understanding how the most important components communicate with each other and the application at large is extremely important as it relates to security management. Oracle BI uses three main repositories for accessing authentication and authorization information, all of which are explained in the following sections.
Identity Store
Identity Store is the authentication provider, which may also provide authorization metadata. A simple mnemonic here is that this store tells Oracle BI how to identify any users attempting to access the system. An example of creating an Identity Store would be to configure an LDAP system such as Oracle Internet Directory or Microsoft Active Directory to reference users within an organization. These LDAP configurations are referred to as Authentication Providers.
Credential Store
The Credential Store is ultimately for advanced Oracle configurations. You may touch upon this when establishing an enterprise Oracle BI deployment, but not much thereafter, unless integrating the Oracle BI Action Framework or something equally as complex. Ultimately, the Credential Store does exactly what its name implies - it stores credentials. Specifically, it is used to store credentials of other applications, which the core application (that is, Oracle BI) may access at a later time without having to re-enter said credentials. An example of this would be integrating Oracle BI with the Oracle Enterprise Management (EPM) suite. In this example, let's pretend there is an internal requirement at Company XYZ for users to access an Oracle BI dashboard. Upon viewing said dashboard, if a report with discrepancies is viewed, the user requires the ability to click on a link which opens an Oracle EPM Financial Report containing more details about the concern. If not all users accessing the Oracle BI dashboard have credentials to access to the Oracle EPM environment directly, how could they open and view the report without being prompted for credentials? The answer is that the Credential Store is configured with the credentials of a central user having access to the Oracle EPM environment. This central user's credentials (encrypted, of course) are passed along with the dashboard viewer's request and presto, access!
Policy Store
The Policy Store is quite unique to Fusion Middleware security and leverages a security standard referred to as XACML, which ultimately provides granular access and privilege control for an enterprise application. This is one of the reasons why managing by Application Roles becomes so important. It is the individual Application Roles that are assigned policies defining access to information within Oracle BI. Stated another way, the application privileges, such as the ability to administer the Oracle BI RPD, are assigned to a particular application role, and these associations are defined in the Policy Store. The following figure shows how each area of security management is controlled:
These three types of security providers within Oracle Fusion Middleware are integral to Oracle BI architecture. A chapter or more could be written on each provider, but that is beyond the scope of this book. Further recommended research on this topic would be to look at Oracle Fusion Middleware Security, OPSS, and the Application Development Framework (ADF).
System requirements
The first thing to recognize with infrastructure requirements prior to deploying Oracle BI 12c is that its memory and processor requirements have increased since previous versions. The Java Application server WebLogic Server installs with the full version of its software (though under a limited/restricted license, as already discussed). A multitude of additional Java libraries and applications are also deployed. Be prepared for a recommended minimum 8 to 16 GB Read Access Memory (RAM) requirement for an Enterprise deployment, and a 6 to 8 GB RAM minimum requirement for a workstation deployment.
