Art of BI: Comparing OBIEE Administration Tool Options – 10g vs 11g

reflect some of the new functionality it now provides. ALthough most of

the RPD is the structure is the same when compared to its predecessor

there are enough options and configuration points as well as the nicer GUI

that set it apart.

In this post I am simply highlighting the differences between the

Administration Tool’s “Options…”.  When Oracle BI 11g first arrived on

the scene I wrote a similar post providing a side-by-side comparison of

OBIEE RPD icons

(http://www.biconsultinggroup.com/oraclebiblog/2011/7/21/new-oracle-bi-11g

-administration-tool-icons-a-comparison.html) between the versions. I’m

glad I waited for the 11.1.1.6 release to conduct this “Options…”

comparison as we now how the MDS XML tab as you’ll see below.

The Side-By-Side
In the following screenshots the left side represents OBIEE 11g (11.1.1.6)

Options while the right-side represents OBIEE 10g (10.1.3.4).  Both of the

screenshots are taken from the Client Tools Only installation of the

Administration Tool.

The first few screenshots are taken with a repository opened in offline

mode for the OBIEE 11g client and no RPD open in the OBIEE 10g client.

General
The options tab as seen in the screenshot below has several extra five (5)

options in the OBIEE 11g version.  However, it contains the same eleven

(11) options seen found in legacy OBIEE 10g.  Luckily the development team

kept the legacy options in the same order and just tacked on the new five.
I have highlighted the “Allow first Connection Pool for Init Blocks”

option as I have a quick post on that topic coming up.

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Sort Options
The Sort Options tab contains many additional options in OBIEE 11g when

compared to the legacy tool.  The order is also interrupted although

several of the same types exist. As you can see in the screenshot, several

new sort types for specific technologies now exist, for example Oracle

OLAP.

As you know all options in this tab are selected by default. By selecting

an item you are telling the repository that you want that object to appear

in alphabetical order. This is fairly straightforward stuff!

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Cache Manager
The Cache Manager options have increased with a few new options that make

sense in deliniating Fact Table source, Repository, and Logical Request.

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Multiuser
Boring!  Until this goes away for a better option I don’t see much that

will change here.

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More
This is the only tab where there has been a reduction of configuration.

The OBIEE 11g More tab no longer has the option for the defaul diagram

zoom. Where is it now?

[simage=612,400,y,center]

Because the OBIEE Administration Tool now leverages the graphing layout

technology provided by Tom Sawyer Software

(http://www.tomsawyer.com/home/index.php), at least that is what I was

told at Oracle HQ around the 11g launch, the control is much better and

can be handled elsewhere.

Source Control
It should go with need for saying that this tab is new to OBIEE 11g. More

specifically it is new to OBIEE 11.1.1.6 version. I have an upcoming

article on OTN about leveraging the new Source Control functionality which

I’ll keep you posted on when its released.

[simage=616,400,y,center]

Repository
The last tab to examine is the Repository tab.  From this screenshot I’ve

open an RPD on the OBIEE 10g client so that we can see this tab. Remember,

the Repository tab is only available in the Options… prompt when you

actually have an RPD repository opened in the Administration Tool.

[simage=614,400,y,center]

The only different option between the two versions here is the System

Loggin Level option.  There was no need for this option in OBIEE 10g

because this System Logging Level has to do only with the BISystemUser

interaction with the RPD.  As stated by the documentation, “This option

determines the default query logging level for the internal BISystem user.

The BISystem user owns the Oracle BI Server system processes and is not

exposed in any user interface.” Setting the value to 0 means no logging

while setting the log level higher is similar to setting the Query Log

Level for an individual user like the Logging Level (LOGLEVEL) Session

variable. I wrote a few posts Logging Level Options

(http://www.artofbi.com/index.php/2009/07/obiee-logging-security-restricti

ons-and-levels/) and setting Logging Level Variable in an Analysis

(http://www.artofbi.com/index.php/2011/04/modify-and-set-variables-in-anal

ysis-advanced-tab/) a while back.

Conclusion
Well the above is fairly straightforward stuff. I just took a few minutes

to document and annotate for reference.  If you have any comments on the

subject you know what to do.