OBIEE 11 - Configuing Web Services for SOA

As part of OBIEE there are 2 types of web services:

• Session Based Web Services
• Web Services for SOA (new in 11g)

A great reference for the entire subject of Action Famework in OBIEE is the lecture "Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Overview of Action Framework" by Antony Heljula. Reading the OBIEE Integrators Guide might help as well.

Most of what you see here is covered very well by Antony, including the topic of security I didn't cover here. Unfortunately I had some problems with the last part when following Antony (since his configuration is 11.1.1.5 style, and starting 11.1.1.6 it was changed), that is why this post exist.

Lets talk about how we can configure the second option, Web Services for SOA.

The access to web services is done by the URL http://YOURSERVER:PORT/biservices/inspection?wsil. In my case it was http://bdahab-lap:9704/biservices/inspection?wsil.

Assuming no one configured it, you will see the Error 500--Internal Server Error screen.

If you want to use the Web Services for SOA, that means you have to do some configuration.

What needs to be done is setting the credential store and updating the ActionFrameworkConfig.xml.

Configuration steps

Enter the EM (my case http://bdahab-lap:7001/em) and Right Click on WebLogic Domain / bioundation_domain and select Security -> Credentials

Select oracle.bi.enterprise and create a new key: wsil.browsing

fill the user name and password. This is the user that will always be used when running the wsil web services. For better security of this option see slides 46-54 in "Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Overview of Action Framework" by Antony Heljula or OBIEE Integrators Guide

Next we will go to MWHOME\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\config\fmwconfig\biinstances\coreapplication and create the file wss_username_token_policy.xml.
with the following content:
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<oracle-webservice-clients>
<webservice-client>
<port-info>
<policy-references>
<policy-reference uri="oracle/log_policy" category="management"/>
<policy-reference uri="oracle/wss_username_token_client_policy" category="security"/>
</policy-references>
</port-info>
</webservice-client>
</oracle-webservice-clients>

The last part is configuring ActionFrameworkConfig.xml that you will find in the same folder.
(When you back it up, and for some strange reason decided to save the backup in the same folder, don't save it with XML extension.) Here I had some help from Meirav Malka from Oracle ACS.

 My Original file was:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<obi-action-config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="afconfig.xsd">
    <aliases/>
    <registries/>
    <content-types>   
      <content-type>
        <typename>webservices</typename>
        <displayname>Web Services and BPEL Processes</displayname>
        <actionType>WebServiceActionType</actionType>
      </content-type>
      <content-type>
        <typename>misc</typename>
        <displayname>Mixed Services</displayname>
        <actionType>URLActionType</actionType>
      </content-type>
    </content-types>
    <accounts/>
</obi-action-config>



The updated file was:

(Change  bdahab-lap:9704 to whatever is relevant for your system.)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<obi-action-config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="afconfig.xsd">
    <aliases/>
<registries>
 <registry>
            <id>reg1b</id>
            <name>BI EE Web Services for SOA</name>
            <content-type>webservices</content-type>
            <provider-class>oracle.bi.action.registry.wsil.WSILRegistry</provider-class>
            <description></description>
            <location>
                <path>http://bdahab-lap:9704/biservices/inspection?wsil</path>
            </location>
           <service-access>
            <account>wsil.browsing</account>
            <policy>wss_username_token_policy</policy>
            <propagateIdentity>false</propagateIdentity>
           </service-access>
        </registry>
</registries>
    <content-types>   
      <content-type>
        <typename>webservices</typename>
        <displayname>Web Services and BPEL Processes</displayname>
        <actionType>WebServiceActionType</actionType>
      </content-type>
      <content-type>
        <typename>misc</typename>
        <displayname>Mixed Services</displayname>
        <actionType>URLActionType</actionType>
      </content-type>
    </content-types>
<accounts>
        <account>
            <name>wsil.browsing</name>
            <description>Account for BI WS for SOA</description>
            <adminonly>false</adminonly>
            <credentialkey>weblogic</credentialkey>
        </account>
    </accounts>
<policies>
    <policy>
        <name>wss_username_token_policy</name>
        <policyfile>wss_username_token_policy.xml</policyfile>
    </policy>
</policies>
</obi-action-config>


In this very naive (security-wise) set up I created an account definition I named weblogic (you can use any name you want). Naturally in production environment we will use better security.
We need to connect this "weblogic" account to a real user and password.

As described in chapter 5.5 of Integrators Guide, enter EM again.
In bifoundation_domain right click and select Security -> Credentials.

Create Map named oracle.bi.actions

In that map create a Key. The key should fit your account (weblogic in my case) and you should enter the username and password of a real BI user.

Restart BI Presentation Services and Weblogic "bi_server1" (or just the entire OBIEE).

Now try the URL again.

Better, open action menu, Invoke a Web Service. Now you see all the objects in catalog, available as web services.

A good question is: OK, what is it good for?
Using Web Services for SOA we can easily run any object in catalog, including agents. To the best of my knowledge, we will not see the result of the activated object, but it will run in the background.
So to my humble opinion, a clear use case is to activate agents from an analysis or dashboard.

I'll be happy to hear additional use cases.

OBIEE - Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile App Designer

Starting with OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1 (with 2 patches) there is a new mobile (HTML5) option in OBIEE. 

It is named Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile App Designer and is part of OBIEE.

Unlike the Oracle BI HD application (that can be downloaded from Apple App store) or the IOS Mobile Security kit (more or less same IOS code that you can use as part of your own application. Described here and some developers documentation is here). This is something you control.
You can create your own HTML5 Application using embedded wizards and publish it to you users. No need for programers and available for all platforms, since it's pure HTML5.

Some links:

Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile App Designer Page at Oracle.com

Solution Brief pdf

Installation Guide doc.

User Guide doc.

Release Notes doc.

YouTube how-to guide

Oracle Training (step by step guide)

Mark Rittman first look at it

Siebel Essentials post about it

As described in the installation Guide, you need to:

1. Be in OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1 (Installation of patch 11.1.1.7.1 described here)

2. Apply OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1 MLR Patch 17004920 from Oracle Support. (Currently available for 64bit Linux and Windows)

3. Apply Oracle BI Mobile App Designer patch 17220944 from Oracle Support. (Generic).

I'm back from short vacation so I don't have pictures of the Mobile App Designer yet, but I can show you few butterflies:

and some moonlight:

OBIEE - Creating dependent - implicitly declared presentation variable

There are times we want to create a presentation variable that should not be seen by end-users and depends on other variables. We want it declared implicitly and not explicitly as most presentation variable.

What is my case?

In the OBIEE demos there are samples of presentation variable containing a column name. For example "Products"."Product Type" or "Offices"."Department". Next that presentation variable can be used for more general cases than column selectors.

My customers didn't like it and preferred  something like 'P Type' and 'Dept' to be selected.

Lets start with a regular presentation  variable p1, that has 2 static text values:

 Next a second Dashboard Prompt is created with a second presentation variable, depending on the first. The SQL Result of Default Selection is:
SELECT case when '@{p1}{P Type}'='P Type' then '"Products"."Product Type"' else '"Offices"."Department"' end saw_0 FROM "Sample Sales Lite"

The second presentation variable, actually return the value I want, but I don't want the user to see it, or be aware of it. So I'll have to hide it.
There are few options to do it.
1. Place the dashboard prompt in a section with condition set to false.
2. Put it as in the dashboard properties variables. That is what we will do:

Edit the dashboard:

go to dashboard properties:

there in 'Filters and Variables' add the second dashboard prompt:

Now, create a new analysis with a column @{p2} (or any function that uses it).

Unfortunately, this is not sufficient. 
The value of the variable p2 is updated implicitly. There is no action on it. The analysis needs to "know" something was updated. So we have to add variable p1, that our p2 based on, to the analysis, so it will be refreshed when p1 value changes.

We will create a new column in the analysis, for example the formula '@{p1}'.
Of course we should hide it. (Column Properties, hide).

Now when I select 'P Type' in the prompt, I see the "Product Type" values:

And the 'Dept' changes the column to "Department"

OBIEE 11.1.1.7 - Formally supports Microsoft SQL Server 2012

If you check the updated OBIEE 11.1.1.7 Certification Matrix HERE (in the certification page), you will see that MS SQL Server 2012 is now supported as data-source both as relational and Analysis services (but not for RCU at the moment), starting 11.1.1.7.0.

So if you were working on 11.1.1.7 with Microsoft SQL Server 2012, now you are certified.