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: