Upgrade RPD to Latest Oracle BI 11g Version via OBIEERPDMIGRATEUTIL CLI

We have a nice section in the appendix of the Oracle BI 11g book that highlights the command-line interfaces (CLI) that are including with the Oracle BI server and client tools.  One of my favorite has to be the obieerpdmigrateutil.sh|cmd CLI that ships with both the server and client installs.

The perfect example for using this CLI comes by way of the big “oops” that the Oracle BI development team made by releasing an Oracle BI 10g (okay could be version 11.1.1.3 or .5, I didn’t care to check; I just know its not 11.1.1.6) of the UsageTracking RPD (and web catalog) with the 11.1.1.6 installation binaries.

Most people may choose to use the Upgrade Assistant(UA) (i.e. ua.bat|sh) but there is a much easier way.  The way I’m showing you below does not require the RPD to be automatically deployed to a running Oracle Bi 11g instance either which is the default result when using the UA GUI.  In other words, don’t use the Upgrade Assistant to upgrade just an RPD; just keep it around for Web catalog , BIP, and Scheduler Schema initial upgrades. Of course, the UA can be run by command-line as well but more on that in a future post.

As you should know by now, for the Oracle BI server installation all core server command files reside the under <BI_HOME>/server/bin folder.  For the client tools install this path is <CLIENT_HOME>/server/bin/.

Just open a terminal window or a command prompt, cd to that directory path and if you list the items in the directory you’ll see a lot of files, one of them is obieerpdmigrateutil.

The important thing that I noticed here is that the client tool only installation is the best software option to use for this operation.  The reason why is that the client tool provides an option to launch a BI Command Prompt.  This option doesn’t come with the server installation.  So from the Client Tools windows program option, select BI Command Prompt.  This automatically loads all Oracle BI 11g environment paths and prepares the command prompt now opened for you to just type in any of the Oracle BI CLI commands.

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So, what does it look like to migrate the Usage Tracking RPD that comes with 11.1.1.6?  Just move that RPD to a temporary folder like C:tmp.  Then enter the syntax as follows.

[sourcecode lang=”bash”]
obieerpdmigrateutil -I C:TmpUsageTracking.rpd -O C:TmpUsageTracking11116.rpd -U Administrator -L C:TmpOBI_RPD_UserGroups.LDIF
[/sourcecode]
If you don’t use the client tools option then you’ll probably get prompted with a CLI error stating something about setting the ORACLE_INSTANCE.  The easiest thing here would be to copy the logic from the client tools launch of the BI command Prompt and incorporate that into your Oracle BI server installation location.

We give an over view of the switches used in the CLI in the book (most are common sense as you can see by their values) but one cool thing to look at quickly is the -L switch.  This provides an output file called a LDAP Integration Format (LDIF) file.  For those familiar with LDAP administration this provides a universal file that contains information about users, groups, and their attributes.  In other words you could take the resulting LDIF file and import it into any compliant LDAP directory such as Apache DS, Active Directory, or you guessed it WebLogic Embedded LDAP.

Have fun with circumventing the Upgrade Assistant and using your new powers.