Introduction
OBIEE is a business intelligence tool to analyze the business performance from different reports, dashboards that have detailed information based on the data which is stored inside database server or in data warehouse. Hence the main thing is your machine should be connected with network where database/data warehouse as well as Oracle BI Server is located.
But what will happen when your machine is not available on network and still you want to see reports, dashboards, want to create new ad hoc request etc. On many occasions, the user (sales person or an executive, or CEO) works at different sites because of business trips or some other reasons. Oracle has provided a feature in OBIEE i.e. Disconnected Analytics which solves our problem.
Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics allows you to view analytics data, Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards, and queries when your machine is not connected to the network to access theOracle Business Intelligence.
To implement disconnected analytics you have to follow some steps, those are given below:
1] On Server:
A] Create application folder under {OBI Installation Drive}\OracleBIData\disconnected
Let’s consider application name is “second”
You will find the application directory will be available under
{OBI Installation Drive}\OracleBIData\disconnected\second
B] Create two subfolder app and data in the application folder second.
C] A subfolder named as app will store:
1] Copy of the Repository (rpd) file
2] Archived file of the web catalog
3] SQL files which contains DDL statement to create the source tables on disconnected machine’s database (SQL Anywhere).
D] Create second.xml file, which is a configuration file. This xml file has sets of instructions on how to parse the application during synchronization.
Refer below image file:
E] Ensure that connection pool in rpd will point to SQL Anywhere database, because disconnected machine has SQL Anywhere database. For this to happen, open the repository in offline mode, this is stored in app folder.
Refer below image files:
F] You have to make some changes in instanceconfig.xml file which are given below:
Give web catalog path in <CatalogPath> </CatalogPath> tag.
<CatalogPath> {OBI Installation Drive}/OracleBIData/web/catalog/second</CatalogPath>
By default <Disconnected> </Disconnected> tag is in comment tag <! -- --> you have to remove this comment tag. And give disconnected directory path.
<Disconnected><ArchiveIbots>false</ArchiveIbots><DisconnectedDir>
{OBI Installation Drive}/OracleBIData/disconnected</DisconnectedDir></Disconnected>
Also there are some other changes but for normal application only these two changes are sufficient to implement.
2] On Client:
A] On client machine, the first thing that we have to do is to install the disconnected analytics client. (This is an option available during OBIEE installation steps). Once the installation is done we need to first connect the machine on to the network for synchronization.
Synchronization is the mechanism that downloads data from the Oracle BI Server to the disconnected machine for each user. The first time synchronization occurs; all historical data will be downloaded. After the first synchronization, the incremental synchronization feature allows incremental data downloads.
On client machine you have to make some optional changes in syncconfig.xml file which are given below:
B] Mention your current application name in <CurrentApplication> tag. This will identify the name of the current active application. The disconnected machine can have more than one applications downloaded. This setting is maintained by the synchronization process to track the currently active application to ensure that the correct data and catalog updates occur. NeitherOracle BI Administrator nor normal users should edit this setting.
Example: <CurrentApplication>Second Application </CurrentApplication>
C] You can set up Oracle Business Intelligence to use single sign on feature from the Web server. When this feature is set, users do not have to log in when they need to synchronize disconnected applications. To enable single sign on for Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics, make the appropriate setting in the syncconfig.xml file.
To implement single sign on, change the setting from the default value False to True in <SSOEnabled> tag.
D] To view the progress dialog box during synchronization, keep the setting <ShowlogWhenDone> to YES, then the dialog is displayed. If this setting is No (default), then the user receives no notification that the synchronization is in progress and must check the log file to determine whether the synchronization succeeded.
E] Set <TimeOutValueSecs> value (by default value is 300 in sec), indicates number of seconds to wait before timing out the connection from the disconnected client to the Oracle BIServer. You can increase this value if the network is heavy and Oracle BI Server is slow to respond.
Refer below image file:
G] Then navigate to the Server machine using OBIEE URL
(172.31.142.25 its IP address of server machine) from client machine and click on more product->Disconnected Analytics.
This will show the list of all applications that have been set up on Server machine. If we click on Update Data, it will automatically open up a Save/open window asking us to save/open a DAD file.
This DAD file basically provides the necessary configuration settings for the disconnected application manager to work. Just click on open, it will automatically open up the Application Manager.
Click on Synchronization tab, then synchronization process will start.
As you see, the synchronization process will first fire all the logical SQL corresponding to our sourcing reports on the server machine. The results of these reports are then stored as compressed CSV’s and are then moved over to the client machine. Synchronization will automatically update the NQSConfig.ini to new repository, etc.
Click on OK button, then on OBI Disconnected Application Manager click on Start button. Now your disconnected application will be available on client machine and remove client machine from the network, still you can access same reports, dashboards on client machine.
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