Siebel Essentials

Populate W_DAY_D correctly

By @lex on September 8, 2008 12:28 PM

2011 is near... Oracle BI Applications come with a predefined Informatica Repository and a pre-built DAC (Datawarehouse Administration Console) repository. When loading the BAW (Business Analysis Warehouse, the predefined schema) for the first time, this is called a full load. One table is of particular interest: w_DAY_D, implementing the time dimension, storing one record for each day between 1st of January 1980 and 31st of December 2010. The end day of this period is now raising concerns (and eyebrows) among admins and analysts over the globe as they see that date coming soon. So how is W_DAY_D populated? Using the DAC Client this question is easily answered. There are four tasks that take care of W_DAY_D. click to enlarge The main task SIL_DayDimension has two parameters which are passed to the Informatica workflow. $$START_DATE has a default value of 1980-01-01 and $$END_DATE one of 2010-12-31. Before you can update these parameters, you have to create a custom container using the functionality in the DAC File menu. Once the container is created, go to the SIL_DayDimension task, click the Parameters tab and update the parameters according to your needs. When a referenced object in the DAC repository is changed, it will be cloned and you have to commit that in a dialog box. click to enlarge Now we have to enforce a full load on the W_DAY_D table, which means setting the table's refresh date to NULL. This is standard behavior of the DAC. It will start the task in full mode when the refresh date of the target table(s) are set to NULL. To do this, navigate to Setup > Physical Data Sources > DataWarehouse and click the Refresh Dates tab. Here you query for the table and set the refresh date to NULL. When the next execution plan (you will have to create a new one once you have created a custom container) is run, W_DAY_D will be loaded with the new range of dates. Please keep in mind that you should only extend the date range and never narrow it, so if you have those dates of 1980 already in W_DAY_D, they should stay there for the sake of referential integrity....

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Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4 has arrived

By @lex on August 12, 2008 12:34 PM

A new release of Oracle BI EE, formerly known as Siebel Analytics has been made available for download last week. There are several new features and interesting points about the product direction. My personal highlights are: Integration with EPM Workspace and Smart SpaceDiscoverer .eex to .rpd migration toolNew sample application with support for marketing segmentationEnhanced wsdl support for BI PublisherEnhanced DAC Client (released independently) that supports upgrades from Analytics 7.8.4 But let's discuss each feature in detail. Most of this information is taken from the documentation and while the product is still hot from the oven, I was lucky to try a few things. As with all new features, they will have to prove their practicability in real life. We'll see... General New Features Integration with Oracle EPM Workspace, Fusion Edition Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Workspace (EPM Workspace) is a component of Oracle's Hyperion Foundation Services. It is the central Web interface for users to access all Performance Management content and tools. In the new release, the following Oracle BI EE applications have been integrated into EPM Workspace: Oracle BI AnswersInteractive DashboardsDeliversBI Publisher Integration with Oracle Smart Space, Fusion Edition Oracle Smart Space is a personalized information delivery solution for Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management that uses configurable desktop gadgets to deliver BI and EPM to every user in the enterprise, utilizing the Windows desktop. In addition, Oracle Smart Space includes a development toolkit for creating additional gadgets that employs common development languages and methodologies and a secure instant messaging system for shared decision making. You can launch and interact with Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards, Answers requests and BI Publisher reports in the Smart Space Content Viewer and Smart Book gadget and add them to the Favorites gadget. You can use Smart Space Collaborator to share Oracle BI content with other Smart Space users. You can also configure iBot results to be sent as Smart Space notifications and view these in the Notification gadget. You can set up for users to download Oracle Smart Space and Oracle Smart View for Microsoft Office from within Oracle BI. Once Smart Space is connected to Oracle BI, you can use Windows Explorer to browse the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog and see the folders (Shared Folders and My Folders) and documents (Dashboard and Answers request) that are available to you. Migrate Discoverer eex files to rpd files The new release includes a utility to accelerate the migration of Oracle BI Discoverer metadata (in the form of an EEX file, version 10.1.2 or higher) to Oracle BI EE metadata (in the form of an RPD file). The utility is a command line executable (MigrateEUL.exe) and accompanying properties file that can be found in the \OracleBI\Server\bin directory. An instruction document can be found in the \OracleBI\Server\Document directory. Reading the document, you find a chapter named "Why migrate to Oracle BI EE?" and the answer is given as a summary of the Oracle BI EE functionality and benefits. The rest is up to you... The screenshots below show a first encounter with the utility. I have converted a simple Discoverer EUL into an rpd file. It completed the task without errors, however there is additional manual work to be expected within the rpd file. migrateEUL.exe command line utility, click to enlarge rpd file generated by migrateEUL.exe, click to enlarge Time-aware line charts A new type of line chart (Line Time Series) is available to plot time series data. The chart automatically scales the X-axis based on the time that has elapsed between data points. The chart requires a single date or date-time data column to be selected on the X-axis. It has a single Y-axis, but supports multiple data series. There are several formatting restrictions for this chart type. New line time series chart, click to enlarge Support for Oracle WebLogic Server 10.x. (formerly known as BEA WebLogic Server) You can use Oracle BI EE and Oracle BI Publisher with the Oracle WebLogic Server New Sample Oracle BI Application and Data Set A new sample Oracle BI application and data set called "Sample Sales" has been designed to better and more fully illustrate the capabilities of Oracle BI 10.1.3.4. It showcases presentation (Answers formula building, resentation Variables, Filtering, Layouts, Navigations, and so on) and modeling techniques. The content is designed to demonstrate as much as possible of OBI EE capabilities and is primarily meant to help customers who want examples and templates to extract ideas from. This new set is meant to replace the former Paint sample content. The new Sample Sales application includes numerous reports organized in 20 dashboard pages around the following: Rankings and ToppersTrends and HistoryTiering and DistributionDetailed ReportsLists and Segmentation (Marketing) Particularly nice features of the new sample application are the detailed help and the good quality of sample data. I am also positively surprised about the presence of marketing metadata, because the marketing segmentation functionality is something that probably only a few people using Siebel Marketing are aware of, yet it can be used standalone as well. Sample Sales comes with a detailed online help, click to enlarge. The Rankings and Toppers dashboard of the new sample sales application Marketing Segmentation: Prompted Segmentation and Contact Planning Rules The segment designer now supports the "is prompted" operator as filter criteria which enables passing of values (such as a list of customer Ids) into the segment, thus enabling dynamic segments for so-called event triggered campaigns (also referred to as inbound campaigns). Contact planning rules allow a company to place volume, frequency and recency rules on all forms of communication across customer, channel, and program dimensions. Rules are created as special segments which act as a filter for other segments. Segment Tree Designer New Features for Oracle BI Publisher Besides the integration with EPM and Smart Space, which we have discussed above, there are the following notable new features for BI Publisher: Support for multidimensional data sources Oracle BI Publisher can now access the following multidimensional data sources: Oracle's Hyperion EssbaseMicrosoft SQL Server 2000...

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