Sep 15, 2009
Sep 15, 2009

OBIEE cluster controller failover in action

Production cluster is 2x BI Server and 2x Presentation Services, with a BIG-IP F5 load balancer on the front. Symptoms Users started reporting slow login times to BI. Our monitoring tool (Openview) reported that “BIServer01 may be down. Failed to contact it using ping.”. BIServer01 cannot be reached by ping or ssh from Windows network. Diagnostics nqsserver and nqsclustercontroller on BIServer01 was logging these repeated errors: [nQSError: 12002] Socket communication error at call=send: (Number=9) Bad file number
Sep 10, 2009
Sep 10, 2009

OBIEE on Opera 10 / IE 7 / FF 3.5 / Chrome 4

A new version of the web browser Opera was released recently. Several years ago I used Opera and may even have paid for it IIRC. Then Firefox came along, and the “it’s not IE” excuse was lost for Opera. Not that I mind IE too much nowadays but at the time it was atrocious. Since then I’ve revisited Opera each time a new release has come out, but nothing has impressed me enough to ditch Firefox (and nowadays Google Chrome).
Sep 8, 2009
Sep 8, 2009

AdminTool.exe /command

There’s an undocumented feature in AdminTool.exe that you can use the /command switch with a text file containing scripted commands to make changes to an RPD file (or create a new one). It’s undocumented and UNSUPPORTED so be careful using it. Some good details in these blog posts, especially Erik’s which has a good list of syntax. Venkat Erik Eckhardt (translated from Czech, original here) @lex Kumar Kambam I’m intrigued to know how the original posters figured out the commands available, if it’s undocumented… :)
Sep 3, 2009
Sep 3, 2009

CAF troubles

Following the Oracle CAF tutorial here, I got to Cloning Answers Requests section and then got stuck. I’d set up my environment exactly the same as in the tutorial, down to the same paths etc. After firing up the CAF to clone requests from the SampleSales catalog: I clicked on Next and got the error “Exception occurred when while initializing repository!!!” By playing around with the passwords and path names I determined that both RPD files existed and that CAF could load them enough to validate the passwords.
Sep 2, 2009
Sep 2, 2009

Metalink 3 RIP

This weekend just gone Metalink3 went to the digital dustbin. In principle this is a Good Thing, as multiple support websites for a single company is confusing and frustrating. Metalink is now “My Oracle Support” and is a flash-based whizz-bang affair. Everyone has different tastes, but there’s a lot to be said for plain HTML for ease and speed of access. But then people probably grumbled to the Wright Brothers that there was nothing wrong with land-transport at the time…
Aug 25, 2009
Aug 25, 2009

Multiple RPDs on one server - Part 1 - the BI Server

Introduction In this article I plan to get samplesales and paint repositories hosted on a single server, using one BI Server instance and two Presentation Services instances. This is on both Unix (OEL 4) and Windows, and both OC4J (OBIEE’s “basic installation” option) and OAS (“Advanced Installation”). Both samplesales and paint are shipped with 10.1.3.4 of OBIEE, you’ll find them in $OracleBI/OracleBI/server/Sample. This article assumes you’ve got the RPD of each into $OracleBI/OracleBI/server/Repository and unpacked the web cats for each into $OracleBIdata/web/catalog.
Aug 25, 2009
Aug 25, 2009

Multiple RPDs on one server - Part 2 - Presentation Services

Introduction In this article I plan to get sample and paint repositories hosted on a single server, using one BI Server instance and two Presentation Services instances. This is on both Unix (OEL 4) and Windows, and both OC4J (OBIEE’s “basic installation” option) and OAS (“Advanced Installation”). Make sure you’ve read and followed part 1 - BI Server first. Remember that multiple Presentation Services instances on a machine is UNSUPPORTED BY ORACLE!