In OBIEE 12c data-model-cmd is a wrapper for some java code which ultimately calls an internal RESTful web service in OBIEE 12c, bi-lcm. We saw in the previous post how these internal web services can be opened up slightly, and we’re going to do the same again here. Which means, time for the same caveat:

None of these Web Services are documented, and they should therefore be assumed to be completely unsupported by Oracle. This article is purely for geek interest. Using undocumented APIs leaves you at risk of the API changing at any time.

exportServiceInstance will export the RPD, Presentation Catalog, and Security model (application roles & policies etc – but not WLS LDAP) into a single .bar file, from which they can be imported to another environment, or restored to the same one at a later date (e.g. for backup/restore).

To run exportServiceInstance you need to launch WLST first. The following demonstrates how to call it, and embeds the current timestamp & machine details in the backup (useful info, and also makes the backup name unique each time).

So this had me scratching my head for a good hour today. Comparing SampleApp v511 against a vanilla OBIEE 12c install I’d done, one had “Add Data Source” as an option in Answers, the other didn’t. The strange thing was that the option wasn’t there in SampleApp – and usually that has all the bells and whistles enabled.

After checking and re-checking the Manage Privileges option, and even the Application Policy grants, and the manual, I hit MoS - and turned up Doc ID 2093886.1.

Architecturally, OBIEE 12c is - on the surface - pretty similar to OBIEE 11g. Sure, we’ve lost OPMN in favour of Node Manager, but all the old favourites are there - WebLogic Servers, BI Server (nqsserver / OBIS), Presentation Services (sawserver / OBIPS), and so on.

But, scratch beneath the surface, or have a gander at slide decks such as this one from BIWA this year, and you realise that change is afoot. Whilst the OBIEE core is still built around proprietary ‘black box’ protocols (SAW from analytics to sawserver on port 9710, NQS ODBC from sawserver to nqsserver, cluster management on 9706 to nqsclustercontroller), there are now REST-based web services springing up (in addition to the existing SOAP services that have been there since at least 10g). Whilst the REST services are there under the covers, they are not documented nor user-servicable, but they are there. But let me re-iterate:

Running the OBIEE 12c startup on Windows:

C:\app\oracle\fmw\user_projects\domains\bi\bitools\bin\start.cmd

Just hangs at:

Starting AdminServer ...

No CPU being consumed, very odd. But then … looking at DOMAIN_HOME\servers\AdminServer\logs\AdminServer.out shows the last log entry was:

Enter username to boot WebLogic server:

And that’s bad news, cos that’s an interactive prompt, but not echo’d to the console output of the startup command, and there’s no way to interact with it.

The start.cmd was being called by adding it to the Startup folder (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp), and I guess it was something about this that stopped the prompt coming back to the console, because when I ran it manually from the command prompt, I got this:

Another quick note on OBIEE 12c, this time on the importServiceInstance command. If you run it with a BAR file that doesn’t exist, it’ll fail (obviously), but the error at the end of the stack trace is slightly confusing:

oracle.bi.bar.exceptions.UnSupportedBarException: 
The Bar file provided as input is not supported in this BI Platfrom release.

Scrolling back up the stack trace does show the error message:

SEVERE: Failed in reading bar file. [...]
java.io.FileNotFoundException: [...] 
(The system cannot find the file specified)

So … RTEM (Read the Fantastic Error Message) in full, don’t just skim to the end…

Interesting quirk in running Baseline Validation Tool for OBIEE here. If you invoke obibvt from the bin folder, it errors with Parameter ‘directory’ is not a directory

PS C:\OracleBI-BVT> cd bin
PS C:\OracleBI-BVT\bin> .\obibvt -config C:\OracleBI-BVT\bin\bvt-config.xml -deployment current
 INFO: Result folder: Results\current
Throwable: Parameter 'directory' is not a directory
Thread[main,5,main]
SEVERE: Unhandled Exception
SEVERE: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Parameter 'directory' is not a directory
       at org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils.validateListFilesParameters(FileUtils.java:545)
       at org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils.listFiles(FileUtils.java:521)
       at org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils.listFiles(FileUtils.java:691)
       at com.oracle.biee.bvt.UpgradeTool.loadPlugins(UpgradeTool.java:537)
       at com.oracle.biee.bvt.UpgradeTool.runPluginTests(UpgradeTool.java:644)
       at com.oracle.biee.bvt.UpgradeTool.run(UpgradeTool.java:812)
       at com.oracle.biee.bvt.UpgradeTool.main(UpgradeTool.java:999)

PS C:\OracleBI-BVT\bin>

Solution? Run the exact same command, but from the folder above:

Two vulns for OBIEE in the latest critical patch update (CPU): http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/security-advisory/cpuapr2016v3-2985753.html?elq_mid=45463&sh=91225181314122121267715271910&cmid=WWMK10067711MPP001C140

Patches is bundle patch .160419:

• 12.2.1: https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/ui/patch/PatchDetail.jspx?parent=DOCUMENT&sourceId=2102148.1&patchId=22734181
• 11.1.1.9: https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/ui/patch/PatchDetail.jspx?parent=DOCUMENT&sourceId=2102148.1&patchId=22393988
• 11.1.1.7: https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/ui/patch/PatchDetail.jspx?parent=DOCUMENT&sourceId=2102148.1&patchId=22225110

Note that April 2016 is the last regular patchset for 11.1.1.7, ref: https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2102148.1#mozTocId410847. If you’re still on it, or earlier, time to upgrade!

(Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@jenlittlebirdie)

OBIEE supports JDBC as a connection protocol, using the driver available on all installations of OBIEE, bijdbc.jar. This makes connecting to OBIEE from custom or third-party applications very easy. Once connected, you issue “Logical SQL” against the “tables” of the Presentation Layer. An example of logical SQL is:

SELECT "Time"."T05 Per Name Year" saw_0 FROM "A - Sample Sales"

To find more Logical SQL simply inspect your nqquery.log (obis-query.log in 12c), or Usage Tracking.

I got this lovely failure during a fresh install of OBIEE 11.1.1.9. I emphasise that it was during the install because there’s other causes for this error on an existing system to do with corrupted credential stores etc – not the case here.

The install had copied in the binaries and was in the process of building the domain. During the early stages of this where it starts configuring and restarting the AdminServer it failed, with the AdminServer.log showing the following: (I’ve extracted the salient errors from the log)

It struck me today when I was writing my most recent blog over at Rittman Mead that I’ve been playing with visualising OBIEE metrics for years now.

• Back in 2009 I wrote about using something called JManage to pull metrics out of OBIEE 10g via JMX:

  

• Still with OBIEE 10g in 2011, I was using rrdtool and some horrible-looking tcl hacking to get the metrics out through jmx :

  

• 2014 brought with it DMS and my first forays with Graphite for storing & visualising data:

I will now be blogging mostly over at the venerable blog of my employer, Rittman Mead.

You can see my first posting here: Web Services in BI Publisher 11g.

Don’t entirely exclude this rnm1978 blog from your feeds, as I may still post more esoteric and random tidbits here.

This article has been superseded by a newer version: Instrumenting OBIEE Database Connections For Improved Performance Diagnostics

(Previously on this blog: 1, 2, 3…)

Summary

Instrument your code. Stop guessing. Make your DBA happy. Make your life as a BI Admin easier.

The Problem

OBIEE will typically connect to the database using a generic application account. (Hopefully, you’ll have isolated it to an account used only for this purpose - if you haven’t, you should.)

• If you only read one blog post this month, read James Morle’s eloquent attack on the term “Best Practice”.
• I’m very excited to be joining RittmanMead next month! I’m looking forward to working with some of the industry’s most respected experts.

Blogging from Oracle itself about OBIEE has always been a bit sparse, certainly in comparison to that which there is for core RDBMS.

It’s good to see a new blog emerge in the last couple of months from OBI Product Assurance, including some nice ’n spicy detailed config/tuning info.

Find it here: http://blogs.oracle.com/pa/.

There’s a couple more OBI blogs from Oracle, but both are fairly stale:

• Implementing Oracle BI & EPM Solutions - Rob Reynolds
• OBIEE Ramblings
• Oracle BI Foundation (thanks Daan for pointing this one out)

OK, a bit tired on a Monday morning, and so a bit sarcastic.

I’ve not really fallen off my chair, but I am shocked. I honestly didn’t think it would happen.

Oracle have finally released OBI 11g for HP-UX Itanium:

In other news, patchset 10.1.3.4.2 for OBI 10g was released today, I wonder if/when we’ll get an HP-UX Itanium version? The download page has it conspicuous by its absence even from “Coming Soon”:

Have you defined CLIENT_ID in your OBIEE RPD yet? You really ought to.

As well as helping track down users of troublesome queries, it also tags dump files with the OBIEE user of an offending query should the worst occur:

For details, see:

• Identify your OBIEE users by setting Client ID in Oracle connection
• Instrumenting OBIEE for tracing Oracle DB calls

A new version of OBI 10g (remember that?) has just been released, the Oracle twitter machine announced:

Along with presumably a bunch of bugfixes, the release notes list new functionality in catalog manager:

Download 10.1.3.4.2 from here

July’s Critical Patch Update from Oracle includes CVE-2011-2241, which affects OBIEE versions 10.1.3.4.1 and 11.1.1.3. No details of the exploit other than it “allows remote attackers to affect availability via unknown vectors related to Analytics Server.”

It is categorised with a CVSS score of 5 (on a scale of 10), with no impact on Authentication, Confidentiality, or Integrity, and “Partial+” impact on Availability. So to a security-unqualified layman (me), it sounds like someone could remotely crash your NQSServer process, but not do any more damage than that.

I noticed on Nico’s wiki (which is amazing by the way, it has so much information in it) a bunch of additional parameters for nqcmd other than those which are displayed in the default helptext (nqcmd -h).

These are the additional ones: [sourcecode] -b -w<# wait seconds> -c<# cancel interval seconds> -n<# number of loops> -r<# number of requests per shared session> -t<# number of threads> -T (a flag to turn on time statistics) -SmartDiff (a flag to enable SmartDiff tags in output) -P -impersonate -runas [/sourcecode]