OBIEE 12c new features

The long awaited OBIEE 12c has been released by Oracle, 5 years after 11g was released. This is a major release for OBIEE with the intent to reposition Oracle BI as a big player in the already crowded field of BI, data discovery, self service. Other BI tools such as Tableau software in particular have been steadily gaining market share over Oracle BI as confirmed by the 2015 Gartner magic quadrant for BI and analytics platform. The main complaints about the Oracle BI product are: complexity, difficulty of use beside cost . One of the main features of OBIEE 12c is the visual analyzer, a web-based tool that allows the business user to explore Oracle analytics and simplify the creation of visualizations as well as data discovery and data staging and ingestion . This application is already available in the cloud version of Oracle BI: Oracle BI Cloud Service. Certain people have dubbed Oracle Visual Analyzer the “Tableau-killer”, very doubtful but only time will tell; one thing for sure is that Tableau has gained a lot of momentum lately. One of the core strength of the BI server has been the ability to federate disparate data sources; this however required configuration the BI back end metadata repository. In order to remediate that limitation, OBIEE 12c offers a new self service capability that allows users to upload their files (limited to Excel xlsx format at this point) and create analyses without having to modify the Oracle BI repository metadata.  The main features are listed below.

Oracle BI Metadata Repository

New Command Line Utilities

Download Repository Command: to download the repository used by the service instance.
Upload Repository Command: to upload the repository to Oracle BI Server
List Connection Pool Command: to create a list of connection pools in JSON format for a specific service instance: to upload a modified JSON file containing updated connection pool values to a specific server instance
Update Connection Pool Command:  to upload a modified JSON file containing updated connection pool values to a specific server instance
Rename Application Role Command: to rename application roles
Delete Application Role Command: to delete application roles
Rename Users Command:  upload a JSON file containing a list of application roles that you want to delete from a specific server instance
Delete Users Command: to upload a JSON file containing a list of users that you want to delete from a specific server instance
List Repository Variables Command: to create a list of repository variables in JSON format for a specific service instance
Update Repository Variables Command: to upload a JSON input file or a modified JSON file containing variable information to a specific server instance

DISPLAY | SORTKEY Syntax Supported in the SQL ORDER BY Expression

The Oracle BI Server now accepts the DISPLAY and SORTKEY keywords in the SQL ORDER BY expression.

Logical Level Sequence Numbers for Time Dimensions

The Sequence Numbers tab has been added to the Logical Level dialog. The new tab allows you to add absolute or relative sequence numbers to time dimensions.

Oracle Database Fast Application Notification and Fast Connection Failover Supported by Oracle BI Server

The Oracle BI Server supports the Fast Application Notification (FAN) event and Fast Connection Failover (FCF) Oracle Database configuration. Fast Connection Failover enables quick failover when the data source's Oracle database is not available. According to the documentation, This functionality will run in the background. When an Oracle Business Intelligence query initiated by an analysis user fails due to the Oracle database being unavailable, the query will fail quickly and the user can then retry the query rather than waiting for the database request to time out.

Oracle BI Publisher

Generate Explain Plan from SQL Data Set

You can now  generate an Explain plan at the data set level for a single query or at the report level for all queries in a report.

System Administration

Invoking WLST From a Single Location: Contrary to previous versions, WLST can only be invoked from the Oracle_common folder
Oracle Home Location Redefined and No Middleware Home: simplification of the folder hierarchy; there is no more a Middleware home only ORACLE_HOME.
OPMN is No Longer Used in Fusion Middleware:

OPMN has been deprecated; system components are managed by the Web Logic Management Framework. The WebLogic Management Framework provides heterogeneous management capabilities for Oracle Fusion Middleware products that require basic administrative capabilities. Its capabilities include start, stop, configuration settings, and other such basic product lifecycle operations through a common command line, API and user interface.
Moving From Test To Production is Carried Out in a Different Way: The migration process between environment has radically changed, we shall revisit this in future posts. This used to be a major pain point when working with Oracle BI.
New Commands For Process Control:  new capabilities that include start, stop, configuration settings, and other such basic product lifecycle operations through a common command line, API and user interface.
Managing Metadata In Business Intelligence Archive Files:  A compressed archive file that contains a cohesive set of BI metadata artifacts (data model, content model, and authorization model). Again one of the main pain points of Oracle BI; one can now get a compressed file containing a cohesive set of BI artifacts (web cat, repository, security etc…) that can be imported into a BI instance. This makes it much easier to take a backup of a BI instance.
Single Enterprise Install: The Oracle BI installation has been simplified by only offering a single install type for your Enterprise which provides an Administration server, and a Managed server doing away with the Simple Install and the Software Only install.
Changes to Scaling Out: Scale out procedures for Oracle Business Intelligence have changed
Simplified Configuration: Configuration files are no longer duplicated.
Managing System Component Instances Using Commands: OBIS (BI Server) system component instances are separately managed in BI 12.2.1 using service instance commands
Collecting Diagnostic Bundles: A new script enables you to collect the diagnostic bundles Synchronizing Mid-Tier Database Connection Details Command needed by Oracle Support or Development to help resolve issues

Synchronizing Mid-Tier Database Connection Details Command: Synchronizing Mid-Tier Database Connection Details Command

Security features

BISystemUser and BISystem Removed: To simplify administration and configuration in this release Oracle Business Intelligence no longer requires a real user called BISystemUser (or equivalent) for internal communication. The system user concept is now deemed "virtual" and is represented by the credential oracle.bi.system/system.user, for which the values are securely randomly generated by the Configuration Assistant. Oracle BI components continue to use this credential for internal communication, backed by Oracle BI Security. The application role BISystem is also no longer present in the Policy Store, and will be removed from any upgraded 11g environment.
User GUIDs Removed: to simplify user administration, GUIDs have been replaced with user names.
Database Security Store:Security Store (Policy and Credential Stores) is configured in a relational database rather than in a file adding robustness; this file was prone to corruption.
Easier SSL Configuration: End to end SSL configuration has been simplified.
Migrating Catalog Groups to Application Roles: Introduction of a new process enables you to migrate Catalog groups to application roles

BI Presentation Services

Enhancements to Graphs: Ability to sort graph views by using a context menu (right-click).

Enhancements to Views: Introduction of a new type of view (heat matrix), ability to sort graph, heat matrix, pivot table, table, tree map, and trellis views by using a context menu

Enhancements to Analyses: specify whether to multiply data by a 100 to display it as a percentage when setting the properties of a column a long overdue feature

Overall the In Release 12c (12.2.1) the look and feel of the user interface has been refreshed and cleaned up.