Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) is an innovative and comprehensive BI platform that delivers the full range of BI capabilities on a next-generation architecture designed for proper enterprise deployment. Business Intelligence is a necessity for all modern organizations. Advanced AI has allowed them to collect massive amounts of information on processes, performance, and quality of goods and services. OBIEE is a helpful tool for processing the data collected and providing in-depth analysis, consequently empowering organizations for informed decision-making.
OBIEE enables IT organizations to define a single, logical view of all enterprise data – whether in a single data warehouse or across multiple operational and analytic sources – and provide business users with new levels of self-sufficiency to access, interact with, and utilize this information to increase effectiveness.
Though OBIEE is a potent tool, it requires technical knowledge to introduce any customization in an existing data model or repository. Adding new dimensions, stored procedures or views, etc., can be tedious.
This article will go through the steps required to add a database view as a dimension in OBIEE.
Adding a new object in OBIEE Subject Areas
As we know, OPLA provides Out of the Box ETL setup and integration with Agile PLM, which brings all default and most of the custom fields into OBIEE subject areas where we can use them in dashboards and reports. There are scenarios when custom fields from Agile PLM or other external systems need to be brought in that cannot directly be mapped using OPLA Configurator. For example, when custom entities or attributes are introduced in any source systems, it may become challenging to integrate them into the OPLA OBIEE dashboards.
Xavor has worked with various clients from Fortune 500 Companies to Startups and SMEs. Our technical team has handled multiple such use cases, developing our expertise in handling such implementations. In the following section, we’ll guide you on adding a new entity in OBIEE subject areas using a custom view introduced in the Agile PLM database.
Proposed Solution
In this solution, we will see how to add multi-text agile PLM fields into an OBIEE dashboard directly without using the OPLA configurator. Very few people know that we can query Agile PLM Objects/entities directly from OBIEE Database staging schemas, i.e., ODM.
You can check out the steps for the complete process below:
- Create View in ODM: Create a view containing multi-text fields. You can also use any ODM table in that query.
- Add View in MDS: As we can’t access Agile PLM Objects directly from MDS, we must create the required view in ODM. After that, we need to bring it into MDS.
- Add view in BI RPD File: There are three layers in a repository, namely the Physical layer, the Business Model and Mapping layer, and the Presentation layer.
To add a view to storage, we have to introduce some changes at each layer, described below:
- Connect repository in BI Administrator.
- Right Click on PLMBIMDS in the physical layer and choose “Physical Table.”
Configuration
- Use select query to add the view as a physical table and column names in the Columns tab.
- Add a new Logical Table in the Business model and Mapping layer using the aforementioned physical table as a source. Add columns and define their mapping in the logical table.
- Link newly added logical table with all required entities. In this scenario, we have linked it with just one relevant entity to explain how to create a relationship between new and old entities. For this purpose, you have to select all required entities, right-click on them and choose Business Model Diagram for selected objects only. A new popup will appear, having all required entities. You can add all the necessary relationships there. Choose Window from the menu and click on fresh join. Drag it from one entity to another and specify relationship properties.
Saving and Future Use
- Before saving these changes into the repository, perform the below steps:
- File -> Check Global Consistency
- File -> Save
The presentation layer is used as Subject Area for OBIEE Dashboards. New columns could be added in subject areas using the below steps:
After all these steps, upload the repository to the OBIEE server, and all newly added custom columns will be available for you to use.
Conclusion
While Oracle OBIEE is a potent tool for BI, ETL, and data management, there are some mapping limitations; for example, it struggles with mapping multi-text fields present in the Agile PLM database.
In scenarios like these, following this guide will enable you to map your data fields successfully and create customized relationships between entities without being dependent on OPLA Configurator. Documentation and resources for this activity are not readily available. Still, through this guide, you can accomplish this task within 30 minutes. That will propagate the mapping across your entire repository since this is a one-time activity.
Xavor Corporation offers full support and development services for the Oracle tech stack. It has been helping businesses optimize their enterprise apps and extend the useful life of crucial software; such as Oracle Agile PLM, Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, and others for over 25 years. Xavor’s team of experts can provide 24/7 helpdesk support, upgrade services, and bespoke customizations; to adapt Oracle enterprise apps to your organization.
To learn more about how Xavor can improve your Oracle software functionality, visit our website or contact us here.