Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.3/2 – Changing Passwords from Presentation Services

OBI EE is so vast and has so many capabilities that i tend to learn at least one new information on this tool on a daily basis. For example, even though i knew about UDML generation using the nqUDMLexec.exe and nqUDMLgen.exe(i use this on a regular basis), i never realized that copying of objects within a repository actually generates UDML which can indeed be seen if you paste it in say notepad/wordpad. I came to know this from Mark’s blog entry here. Similarly, so far i was under the impression that passwords of users can be changed only from the admin tool. But i was proved wrong by Daan Bakboord who had given a wonderful reply to this forum question here. Let us try to understand this in detail. Generally, there is no option within Dashboards ,Answers (Presentation Services in general) to change the passwords by default. But if at all there is a requirement wherein we would need to have the capability of individual users changing the password, then the solution is to uncomment a commented line in a System XML file. To do this, one would have to follow the steps as below.

1.   Go to {OracleBI}/web/msgdb/messages. Open the controlmessages.xml file in a text editor.

2.   Search for kmsgChangePasswordLink in the file and uncomment the HTML tags. Sample, controlmessages.xml file is given below.

      

3.   Restart Presentation services and the BI Server.

4.   Login to the dashboards. Go to Settings->My Account. You would see a change password link using which you should be able to change the passwords.

      

I am not sure whether this would work for LDAP and database authentications. I dont think it would( a guess here, others can correct me) and thats why i believe it has not been enabled by default.

This entry was posted on October 28, 2007 at 9:50 am and is filed under All Posts, OBI EE Plus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Lik

Strange Presentation Services behavior

While auditing our OBIEE security model We’ve stumbled into behavior that we think is a bug. If it’s not, then I hope it’s a feature that would be removed in the future. Here’s a description of how we get this particular Presentation services behavior:

1. Summary – Our goal is to be able to add new users in RPD in online mode, assign them to their respective repository security groups ( based on data-level and row-level security), and during their first login  have them automatically assigned to one of 2 appopriate Presentation catalog group (that is used for presentation security, such as prohibiting overwriting of shared reports). We use OS authentication model with Impersonator (OBIEE picks up and strips users’ OS username). However, the problem doesn’t seem to be SSO-related or OS-related.

These’re steps to reproduce:

a) create new user “test_user1″ in RPD “Business Intelligence” group (for Presentation group “Business Intelligence”). Check-in RPD and save it.

b)  login with the “test_user1″ first time to OBIEE

c) go to My Account. You can clearly see that “test_user1″ is a member of Presentation group “Business Intelligence” (which is good for us and correct at the same time)

d) log-out. close browser. clean cookies. log-in as an administrator (member of Presentation Services Admin). Go to Settings –> “Oracle BI Presentation Services Administration”–>”Manage Presentation Catalog Groups and Users”
Select Edit for the “Business Intelligence” group

as you can see – “test_user1″ isn’t there

e) If we click on “Add New Member”-> “Show Users and Groups” – there’ll be a red-stop symbol (padlock image)

We’ve filed an SR with Oracle Support, and still waiting for an answer. I personally think that in future OBIEE releases – the Presentation Services should be tied closer with BI server – maybe going as far as consolidating those 2 modules.

And have a nice work week!