Comparing OBIEE Administration Tool Options – 10g vs 11g

The Oracle BI Repository Options have change in the OBIEE 11g release to 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 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.

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!

Cache Manager

The Cache Manager options have increased with a few new options that make sense in delineating Fact Table source, Repository, and Logical Request.

Multiuser

Boring!  Until this goes away for a better option I don’t see much that will change here.

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 default diagram zoom. Where is it now?

Because the OBIEE Administration Tool now leverages the graphing layout technology provided by Tom Sawyer Software, 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.

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.

The only different option between the two versions here is the System Logging 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 and setting Logging Level Variable in an Analysis 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.