FlexDeploy - Oracle Business Intelligence Plugin Guide

Owned by Karl Henselin
Aug 26, 2024
4 min read

The Oracle Business Intelligence plugin provides operations to manage the Web Catalog objects and RPD repository files within Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) or Oracle Analytics Server (OAS).

Supported Versions

  • 11.1.1+ on Linux

  • 12c on Linux

Key Features

  • Supports both OBIEE and Oracle Analytics Server (OAS)

  • Source RPD and WebCatalog from SCM or Development environment.

  • Supports FlexDeploy Full as well as Package-Based Deployments for WebCatalog objects.

    • Package-Based deployment option allows users to select various objects for deployment. Change detection and reporting is done for each individual object.

  • Property replacement via configuration files for RPD and Datamodel.

  • Operations to support synching WebCatalog objects to a source code repository.

Oracle BI Project Types

This plugin supports two models of management for Web Catalog objects, derived by the selected project type.

Oracle BI

This project type is equivalent to the pre-5.5.0.1 model and was previously named Oracle Business Intelligence.  The web catalog project files are populated into various object types, making it easier to filter by those types.

Oracle BI 2.0

This project type matches the model introduced by the Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) support in 5.5.0.0.  The web catalog project files are populated into a single object type, called WebCatalog, making it easier to locate a set of files matching a file path or naming convention.  To identify the type of each file, the object name is artificially decorated with an extension matching the OBIEE object type.  For example, /shared/Sample Lite.Folder or /shared/Sample Lite/DailyReview.Report.

Both models are supported, with the only caveat being that you cannot change the project type of an existing project once the project files have been populated. Instead, you must create a new project.  While nothing will prevent you from changing the type on the project you will encounter unexpected behavior, and this is not a supported function.   

Plugin Operations 

Package-Based Deployments

Oracle BI plugin supports full as well as package-based deployment projects. Package-based deployment project can be created of Oracle BI type to manage object types defined in next section. RPD deployment is only supported as full deployment project, which should be a separate project.

  • Project can either source WebCatalog files from development environment (Oracle BI server) or SCM (any supported SCM type).

  • Select SCM Type as None, if you want to perform development environment to other environments migration. Keep in mind that artifacts are still captured at build time in FlexDeploy repository to allow for reproducible deployments.

  • Folder deployment in Package-Based mode, only deploys Folder without any of its children objects. You can select individual children objects as necessary in package for deployment.

  • Objects in files list cannot be sequenced for this project type. If necessary, user can control sequencing when building package.

  • If necessary, you can move objects from one type to other.

  • See Source Control for the RPD and WebCatalog Objects for more details on how you can source files from SCM.

Supported Object Types

Supported WebCatalog object types for Oracle BI (Oracle Business intelligence for pre-5.5.0.1) project type include:

  1. Folder

  2. Analysis

  3. Dashboard

  4. Dashboard Prompt

  5. DataModel

  6. Filter

  7. KPI

  8. Metadata

  9. Report

  10. Style Template

  11. Other

All files for the Oracle BI 2.0 project type are categorized into a single type:

  1. WebCatalog

Special Considerations

Working with Scorecard and Dashboard Sub-items

  • By default, we won't discover sub-items for Dashboard and Scorecard Object types.but conditionally we can discover sub-item only for OBIEE V2 Model projects only.

  • It is always recommended to build parent-level files for both dashboard and Scorecard Object types because these objects can contain dependent files that are in hidden mode. and they are necessary.

    • We have identified two types of hidden files within the Scorecard folder/Dashboard folder:

      • Some of them represent versions of the actual files (e.g., _Perspectives). these files are auto-generated when the scorecard is created.

      • Some of them are random numbers (e.g., 9817c0100ba6100085670ae4eb540000). Actually, these are SHORTCUT files created by the system when we use particular files in the scorecard.

      • These 2 file types are essential. Without them, archiving and unarchiving processes will succeed, but when you attempt to open the file, it will result in an error. And sometimes unarchive also fails.

      • in Dashboard we can see hidden files with name dashboard layout and these files are necessary.

  • if you want to work with sub-items for these two types of Objects, use the project property(FDOBIEE_DISCOVER_SUB_ITEMS) to Discover sub-items. which enables the sub-items for the scorecard and Dashboard based on the selection and we can see them in the File catalog.

  • while working with sub-items for the Scorecard and dashboard make sure to build a file along with dependent files

  • When you create a package with Scorecard or Dashboard, keep the parent file (root file) sequence as one, as shown below. When you are creating it for the first time in another environment, it is mandatory to create the parent folder first, followed by the sub-items; therefore, a sequence is needed.

     

     

  • when you build files without a timestamp and deploy them we only see the Last Accessed Attribute only gets updated. If the Object has write permission then only the Last modified attribute gets updated. permission will play crucial role please check the following document

The following macros are not currently supported in the footer:
  • style