Multiple RPD & Multiple Presentation service instance on single BI Server

The objective of the thread is to understand the process of configuring multiple RPD and Presentation service in same BI server instance .Once that will be understood it can be further extended in scalable solution to integrate the approach on multiple server based instance as per business demands .The OBIEE suite documentation mentioned this functionality could be achieved but never mentioned the detail steps how to achieve this .

The initial bit could be found at below URL of Mark Rittman though not in detail :

http://www.rittmanmead.com/2007/09/11/managing-multiple-presentation-services-on-the-same-unix-box/

My goal in this thread is to clearly define the entire process however multiple Presentation Services instances on a machine is “NOT SUPPORTED BY ORACLE” .

The effective use of this approach will support multiple RPD editing online and also modifying multiple BI catalog online through two different instance .Also this would facilitate the running of failover instance in real life production environment .Apart from that customer could also ask for hosting two different (dev and test) instance(environments) in single host . 

Now lets assume that the two RPD i.e deba.rpd & test.rpd and there respective two catalogs both working properly while loaded individually and working independently .

Configuring the NQSCONFIG

Lets configure the NQSCONFIG.ini file as below :

[ REPOSITORY ]
RPD1  =       deba.rpd , DEFAULT;
RPD2    =     test.rpd ;

Configuring the DSN

Create 2 Oracle BI Server System DSN i.e DSN1 to point to default repository deba.rpd and DSN2 to point to test.rpd . Since we are configuring two RPD in parallel to single BI server instance hence  for both DSN we point to server Local with default Port 9703 . The 9703 port is ODBC communication port between BI Server and Presentation Services .

N.B : whatever repository will be put under change Default repository section will be override by the DEFAULT settings in NQSCONFIG.ini .You can tick “Connect to Oracle BI Server to obtain default settings” ,so that RPD connection will be established as per the definition in .ini file after BI server restart .

Configuring the Catalog and instanceconfig.xml

For both deba.rpd and test.rpd we have catalog file under ../$OracleBIDataHome/web/catalog/” as “deba” and “test” having different sets of reports in each of them to distinguish properly.So lets make catalog “deba” online after making the below changes in instanceconfig.xml .

<WebConfig>
<ServerInstance>
   <DSN>DSN1</DSN>
   <CatalogPath>D:/OracleBIData/web/catalog/deba</CatalogPath>

Restart the services and log into catalog for “deba” and you can verify that the query running on deba.rpd and your dashboard display the reports relevant for catalog “deba” .Verify that from NQServer.log file .

Edit the xml and make the similar type of change to point to DSN2 and catalog “test” .It should work as well pointing to repo “test” .

Now till this point single BI server hosted two repository and you since the two repo available online hence you can easily make the online modification just by selecting the DSN from Admintool in online mode .

Deploying a new Presentation Service instance

As we know that there must be something different to distinguish two Web server instance . The typical URL is : http://localhost:9704/analytics where “analytics” is the context root and deployable J2EE module .My aim to create another context root by deploying a new instance of the analytics application which can be done by the Enterprise Manager as (http://localhost:9704/em). Typical default userid is “oc4jadmin” .

Lets follow the steps below to deploy the module “analytics.ear” from ..\$OracleBIHome\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\applications .

 

Duplicating instanceconfig.xml for Presentation services

The second presentation service should use its own catalog i.e “test” and connect to the repo “test.rpd” while first presentation service would use “deba” .Hence there must be two separate xml web config file to point to different catalog .Duplicate the instanceconfig.xml file and create two xml as instanceconfig_deba.xml , instanceconfig_test.xml .

instanceconfig_test.xml

<WebConfig>  
<ServerInstance>
<Listener port=”9712″/>
<DSN>DSN2</DSN>
<CatalogPath>../$ORACLEBIDATAHOME/web/catalog/test</CatalogPath> 

instanceconfig_deba.xml

<WebConfig>  
<ServerInstance>
<DSN>DSN1</DSN>
<CatalogPath>../$ORACLEBIDATAHOME/web/catalog/deba</CatalogPath> 

Replace $ORACLEBIDATAHOME as per your env settings .

Configuring Presentation service communication channel for OC4J

Context root “analytics” can be communicated by OC4J using the default settings as per web.xml under “..\OracleBIHOME\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\applications\analytics\analytics\WEB-INF” via default port 9710  .

But to communicate with context root “analytics_deba” I need to change the web.xml file under “..\OracleBIHOME\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\applications\analytics_deba\analytics\WEB-INF” via default port 9712  .

Search for oracle.bi.presentation.sawserver.port and change the param-value into 9712.

After creating the new configuration files we have to re-start the BI Server , BI Presentation services. Please restart the OC4J instance also .

Running two presentation service parallelly

To start the new presentation services I create two batch file with below target shortcuts .

sawserver.exe -c $ORACLEBIDATAHOME\web\config\instanceconfig_test.xml

sawserver.exe -c $ORACLEBIDATAHOME\web\config\instanceconfig_deba.xml

First stop all service and then start BI and OC4J service and after that invoke the above two scripts .So the presentation services will be started and you can login and type the following URL  in your web browser:
http://server_name:9704/analytics
http://server_name:9704/analytics_deba

So presentation service application/context-root  ”analytics” will refer to one repository file “deba.rpd”  and “analytics_deba” will refer to “test.rpd” but you now have the ability to create different reports, dashboards etc via different presentation services using single BI server env/resource .

N.B : You can define multiple catalog path in one instanceconfig.xml but only one will be active at a time and that will be the one which defined first .Hence the idea is to create multiple instanceconfig to access multiple catalog .

Online editing of Multiple RPD from Hetergeneous/Cross platform

One of our current assignment was to do the online development using one RPD from one platform say Windows and also need to do the testing of the different RPD hosted into different IBM AIX platform. Since AIX doesn’t support the GUI kind of stuff hence we have configured both the RPD in Windows env via multiple DSN configuration  . It’s pretty simple , easy and straightforward though need to cautious about some syntax .

As we know OBIEE installation do a default configuration of “AnalyticsWeb” System DSN (i.e Oracle BI Server Driver NQSODBC.dll)  which appeared in a box while developer try to open the RPD in *Online Mode* .

     

 However developer can simultaneously work with multiple RPD online where RPD’s even hosted under heterogenous platform .Only thing you need to know is that the IP address or Host name and the Port by which a SQL ODBC connection done between BI Presentation server and BI server(usually the default port is 9703 until customized and configured ) . So lets create a new System DSN .

Click Add on System DSN tab from Microsoft ODBC Datasource Administrator window . Select the driver as “Oracle BI Server” .Click Finish .

Then go  through the below steps . Here I have created a DSN called “Sample Scott” and let the other settings unchanged apart from Server “AIX_Server” .Before that make sure you able to ping that server from your local machine by running “ping AIX_Server” from command prompt .Otherwise you can put the AIX host IP address .Sometime you might need to map the hostname and IP address in “..\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts” file .

If explicit login ID and password required to access Oracle BI Server from other environment (apart from  OS authentucation) enter the Login ID and password for the same and change the port if necessary .Since  I am not physically loading multiple RPD from my own BI server(physically 2 separate BI server running instance load that RPD into their memory) hence keep uncheck Default repository Catalog” .

    

Make sure the AIX server reachable and SAW  service working fine there once running the SAWPING utility from $ORACLEBIHOME\web\bin .

 >> sawping –v –s AIX_Server

It should return the response as : “Server alive and well” . This utility try to access Oracle BI Presentation Server services to lookup whether this could communicate with Oracle BI Server via 9703 port .

So now when I trying to open the RPD into Online mode it will give me two option as below .The “AnalyticsWeb” DSN instance will open the RPD from my local machine but “Sample_Scott” open RPD from “AIX_Server” .(Note that DSN name “Sample Scott” changed to “Sample_Scott” here )

Trying to access “Sample_Scott” with proper password will throw the below error though my BI server instance running on AIX machine .

 

Can you identify what is the problem behind this ? The problem is BI server try to find a DSN called “Sample_Scott” whereas the actual DSN name is “Sample Scott” . Now lets change the DSN name to “Sample_Scott” and here you go ! there is no more problem . So in brief BI server doesn’t support the DSN having space between them . This is al about the syntactical caution we need to consider .

RPD(Repoitory Directory) and Catalog File Name Syntax – nQSError

I was suddenly experimenting with the RPD file name syntax and came to know that some special character in .rpd file name will not be recognized by BI Server service and hence putting character like “$,#,%,<space>,-” inside the filename will throw below error in NQServer.log file and you will get below error message after Windows service startup . 

[47012] Syntax error in NQSConfig.ini file.

2009-10-02 17:01:26

     [nQSError: 26009] File D:\OracleBI\server\Config\NQSConfig.INI Near Line 33, Near <”>: new line in string.

However we can give special character in BI catalog file name and it loads by the Presentation server cool . So its somehow contradictory that certain syntax allowed in Catalog but not in Repository .See this :