BizTech Blog

Like most software upgrades, generally the newer version would provide some type of backward compatibility. Well, with the recently released Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11g, you will not have the ability to do so. Due to the major enhancements of the OBIEE toolset, there is no way to seamlessly migrate our metadata from 10g to 11g. The road ahead may be a little gloomy for 10g but fear not, there is still some light down the tunnel. Fortunately, bundled with OBIEE 11g is an upgrade utility called “Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Assistant.”

The Upgrade Assistant provides option for RPD and Presentation Catalog upgrades. In Part 1, we will tackle the RPD metadata upgrade. To see how to upgrade your Presentation Catalog metadata, please jump to Part 2 of our OBIEE Metadata Upgrade.

Calculating time series functions in Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) requires development of a time hierarchy. This time hierarchy is necessary because while OBI can calculate the previous period it does not know the context of the period.

Getting started on a Business Intelligence (BI) project can be the most difficult part of the project. There are countless places to start. The common approach is to ask a business user “What reports and dashboards would you like?” This is a recipe for disaster. Most business people will struggle to articulate their requirements and, at best, will provide a set of reports which will likely already meet their needs rather than truly improve their operations.

The best way to begin a BI project is to follow a simple three step process. First, focus on a particular functionally-oriented business problem, objective or strategy. For example, a VP of Procurement who is trying to partner with suppliers to reduce the cost of raw materials, improve quality and on-time delivery.

Business Intelligence (BI) has become a mainstream approach to gain insight into information locked away in corporate operational and financial systems. The drastic reduction in storage costs, consolidation of software tools and availability of skilled practitioners has made BI affordable and cost-justifiable for both large and medium-sized organizations alike. Gone are the days where projects included a seven figure price tag and upwards of a year to complete.