OBIEE - is this column used anywhere and where?

There are times, I have a vivid image of myself in the role of Salvatore (The name of the rose). Banging on my head and shouting "Stupido, Stupido!" Unlike him, I really mean it.

Last week I was asked by a customer "How do I know where a column I want to modify is used? Maybe nobody uses and I can delete it?" Instead of giving him the answer immediately, I started mumbling... So this note is a mostly for myself (as most of this blog) and for that customer.

In OBIEE there is a tool named Catalog Manager.

It's easy to find (Start->All Programs...) on Windows installation and requires Graphical Display on  Linux/Unix (MWHOME\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1\catalogmanager\runcat.cmd). To the best of my knowledge, it comes with Admin installation, starting 11.1.1.6 as well.

You can open the catalog you want to research (preferably offline) and enter the column name. Select Search and Advanced Search. Remember to mark the XML option. 

In my example I created a new analysis with CHANNEL_CLASS column. Saved it and searched for CHANNEL_CLASS. I found my Analysis.

Now I deleted the analysis. And the new search returned empty.

 

What happens with Dashboards? Prompts? KPIs?

 To have a bigger test I created 4 object that contains the CHANNEL_CLASS column:

Dashboard, Prompt, Analysis and saved Selection Steps.

To find the first 3 you need to turn on the XML search option, but it doesn't find selection steps. For that you will need to turn on the Property Value option in the Advanced Search.

You can also search by specific Type and by dates...

They few other interesting tools in the Catalog Manager such as XML Search and replace, Report and new Multi-Tenancy option... all of that some other time.