Most repositories have a natural tendency to grow in the time they are “alive”. For the Physical and Business layer OBIEE has the option of using display folders:

Which is a nice way to organise your stuff and most of all to have it look more “professional”

These folder only contain shortcuts to the “base” material.

So let’s start organizing our stuff

Till Next Time

OBIEE 11g is coming!

We don’t no when, but we do know that the increase in graphical possibility’s will be HUGE!.

In that lays a huge danger, developers have a natural tendency to try out all options, and even worse give all the options to their clients often resulting in very “colourful” dashboards.

If you are coming from OBIEE 10G and want to prep for 11g you might want to catch up on some reading on how to make good graphs, instead of only colourful graphs!

For several years the books of Stephen Few: (http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/) where considered as the one and only standard. Certainly he was one of the first to write things down: (Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data ) This is still a must read for every Dashboard developer.

Recently a new book has arrived “The wall street journal guide to information graphics” by Dona M. Wong. Personally I find this easier to read then the Stephen Few book. I like the setup where on the left page there is a “bad” example and on the right side there is a “good” example. Another good feature of the book is the statistical “brush-up” chapter.

Till Next Time

The ATR files in the OBIEE repository manage privileges on a item and provide a “readable” text for both the name and description of an object. Dan Malone of Calpoly did some basic research on how these work.

This article describe the build up of the ATR file when used for a report.

WOW: backup the files before you start to hack them, one misplaced byte can really f*&^k up your system!

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Didn’t I read about this in several other blogs you might ask. Well you are right there. It probably started with the guys from carpe diem: http://carpediemconsulting.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/resetting-the-oc4j-password-in-obiee/ And since all the others copied there article from them nobody noticed they didn’t clear the security cache. Here is the version from the original documentation:

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Ciber SSIS specialist Frank Reterink heeft eens uitgebreid onderzocht wat nu de haken en ogen zijn bij de import vanuit Excel via SSIS.

Inleiding (uit de “literatuur”):

Bij de import van Excel bestanden maakt de Excel connection manager in Integration Services gebruik van de “Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Jet 4.0” en de ondersteunende “Excel ISAM” driver Deze driver heeft een aantal eigenaardigheden:

- Data bronnen:
Voor het aanroepen van en sheet of benoemd data bereik moet achter de naam een $ geplaatst worden. Om syntax errors te voorkomen moet die complete naar door rechte haken [Sheet$] omgeven worden.

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Ever seen these:

They are QR Codes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code. Most modern mobiles have a small application on board which can read the information. Because of the build in error correction they are ideal for stuff like address labels.

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Impress with real venn diagrams:

First get your data:

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or how to get from:

to this:

in 5 minutes.

It uses the same technique we used with the googlemaps. Create a new narrative view.

In the prefix part put:

<!–Get an empty map–>

<img xsrc="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=t&chm=europe&chs=440×220" id="GD_mapImg"/>

<!–chm ==> geographical area (africa, asia, europe, middle_east, south_america, usa, world)–>

<!–chs ==> canvas size max 440X220–>

<!–more info http://code.google.com/intl/nl/apis/chart/ –>

<script type="text/javascript">

// setting up parameters

var chartURL = "http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=t&chtm=europe&chs=440×220&chds=1,6";

var chartBGColor = "&chf=bg,s,EAEAEA";

//specify the gradient: <default color>, <start of gradient>,.., <end of gradient>

var chartPalette = "&chco=AEF5EB,EFE6CE,DFAE6B,1F6913,D94801,A63603,7F2704";

var chartDataLabels = new Array();

var chartData = new Array();

In the Narrative part put:

// Use the push command to fill the array:

chartDataLabels.push(’@1′);

chartData.push(@3);

In the postfix part put:

// putting it all together

chartURL = chartURL + chartBGColor + chartPalette + "&chld=" + chartDataLabels.toString().replace(/,/g,'’) + "&chd=t:" + chartData.toString();;

// now get the image from Google Chart

document.getElementById(’GD_mapImg’).src = chartURL;

</script>

Remember to check the HTML box:

There are maps for africa, asia, europe, middle_east, south_america, usa and the world. For more info see: http://code.google.com/intl/nl/apis/chart/

Till Next Time

This article is also published on http://obiee101.blogspot.com/

As promised in a previous article (http://obiee101.blogspot.com/2009/04/obiee-final-skills-creating-great.html) I will show you some tips and tricks on how the implement the findings of Stephen Few in OBIEE.

Let’s start with a simple top 7 list of product revenue:

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Somebody asked me how you can show zero’s (0) in a bargraph. Have a look at this table:

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