Migrating Brio/Hyperion IR to OBIEE

First, I will start off with a little bit of Kerdock history. Back in 2002 when Kerdock was founded we started out as a Brio Partner. Since 2002, the BI industry has experienced a lot of consolidation. As a result, Kerdock has realigned itself twice due to the acquisitions by Hyperion and then Oracle. Kerdock today is totally aligned with Oracle and has maintained Certified Advantage Partner status which is the highest partner level offered by Oracle.

As a result of Kerdock's roots, we have worked with many clients over the years who have implemented Brio and/or Hyperion IR to solve their business intelligence needs. More recently we have been engaged in OBIEE implementations and therefore have experience working with all of the OBIEE + tool sets. Today when we meet with our legacy Hyperion clients we are starting to see more interest in OBIEE for the following reasons:

1. They have implemented v 11.x of Hyperion and would like to take advantage of the tighter integration between OBIEE and the Hyperion Workspace
2. They are on an older version of Brio or Hyperion IR and are facing support issues
3. They would like to take advantage of the enterprise framework of OBIEE such as the common information model (OBIEE Repository) to reduce report maintenance
4. They would like to take advantage of he OBIEE web based infrastructure that makes it easy to integrate with other Oracle applications as well as 3rd party applications such as Microsoft Sharepoint and Adobe Flex

So recently I attended an Oracle webcast that discussed a new migration utility that converts Hyperion BQYs to OBIEE Answers Requests and therefore make the move to OBIEE less time consuming and costly. I was pleasantly surprised at the extent of the process as it goes beyond what the Discoverer to OBIEE migration accomplishes.

The Translation workbench will require clients to be on version 9.x of Hyperion and version 10.1.3.x of OBIEE. If you are a client who is pre-system 9 you will have one additional step to migrate your BQY's to a system 9 environment. The workbench will soon be a beta release and clients can work with partners such as Kerdock or Oracle to start migrating their BQYs to Answers. The migration process at a high level involves 5 steps:

1. Import data sources - physical tables, columns
2. Accumulate BQY DM dimensions and extend physical layer
3. Generate standard names, star schemas, and presentation folders
4. Regenerate BI Repository that supports BQY reports
5. Generate Answers request definitions - criteria, pivots, charts

General release of the migration utility will not be out till some time next calendar year so if you are interested in utilizing this utility within the next few months please feel free to contact me. My email address is jim.glazar@kerdock.com

Upcoming OAUG OBI SIG Webcasts

As a Board Member of the OAUG OBI SIG I would like to point out that we have 4 upcoming OBI webcasts in the run up to OpenWorld 2009. You can also view this info on the OBI SIG website at http://obisig.oaug.org/events.php?page=Events

The webcast details are as follows:

1) What's New with Oracle BI Applications 7.9.6?
Monday, August 10th, 10:00 am Pacific, 12:00 Noon Central, 1:00 pm Eastern – 1 Hour DurationSpeaker(s) : Joe Thomas, Oracle Corporation
Abstract : The 7.9.6 release of the Oracle BI Applications was the most significant since the Oracle acquisition of OBI EE and the BI Apps from Siebel. Come learn about new BI Apps such as Oracle Project Analytics and Oracle Loyalty Analytics, along with significant enhancements to other BI Applications such as Oracle HR Analytics or Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics. New integrations to JDE and well as enhanced integrations to EBS and Peoplesoft will also be discussed.Conference DetailsConference Title OBI EE SIG: What's New with Oracle BI Apps 7.9.6Conference ID 152549725Conference KeyDate and Time 10-Aug-2009 10:00 AM PST Duration 1 HourTimezone (-08:00) US Pacific TimeDial-In Number 866.682.4770 (Toll-free) or 408-774-4073 (Toll)https://conference.oracle.com/imtapp/app/cmn_jm_hub.uix?mID=152549725Audio Conference Code: 3679513, then 0988 as the security code

2)Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE) Integration Today & Tomorrow
Monday, August 24th, 10:00 am Pacific, 12:00 Noon Central, 1:00 pm Eastern – 1 Hour DurationSpeaker(s) : Jim Glazar, Kerdock Consulting
Abstract : Learn how to integrate the current version of OBIEE (10.1.3.4) with other Oracle applications as well as 3rd party applications in order to provide pervasive business intelligence throughout your enterprise. We will demonstrate current OBIEE integration points with the following Oracle applications Hyperion Workspace and Hyperion SmartView and discuss future integration plans with Hyperion HFM & Hyperion Planning. Also, we will demonstrate how to integrate OBIEE with 3rd party applications such as Microsoft Sharepoint, Adobe Flex, and Apple iPhone.
Conference Title OBI EE SIG: > Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE) Integration Today & Tomorrow
Conference ID 153230394
Conference Key Date and Time 24-Aug-2009 10:00 AM PST
Duration 1 Hour
Timezone (-08:00) US Pacific Time
Dial-In Number 866.682-4770(Toll-free) or 408-774-4073(Toll)
https://conference.oracle.com/imtapp/app/cmn_jm_hub.uix?mID=153230394

3)Maximizing your Oracle Discoverer investment with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus
Thursday, September 10th, 10:00 am Pacific, 12:00 Noon Central, 1:00 pm Eastern – 1 Hour DurationSpeaker: Jose Villacis, Oracle
Abstract: This session covers migrating from Oracle Discoverer to Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus. Hear how Oracle Discoverer metadata and worksheet concepts correspond to Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus concepts and how to create Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus physical, logical, and presentation layers with Oracle Discoverer info.

4) Fortune 100 Company gains Efficiency with Oracle BI Solutions, Hyperion Solutions and Essbase
Monday, September 28th, 10:00 am Pacific, 12:00 Noon Central, 1:00 pm Eastern – 1 Hour DurationSpeaker(s) : Debbie Kraus, Humana - Todd Randolph, Optimum Solutions
Abstract : Learn how a Fortune 100 healthcare company planned, designed, built, and implemented an improved Incurred Financial Model process, utilizing and integrating Oracle Essbase, OBI EE and Hyperion. This organization leverages monthly operational information to estimate their claims liability, a process consisting of 3 major steps that previously used Microsoft Access Databases to manage, maintain and audit this information. Upon outgrowing this system, the company performed research, due diligence and a proof of concept in search of a new solution. The key considerations for selecting the new solution was the ability to meet current requirements and future growth, improved functionality, performance, scalability, and total cost of ownership.

BI Publisher + Sharepoint Integration

So we had a few questions on how we had achieved integration between BI Publisher and Sharepoint. There are only a few configuration steps you have to take, both in Sharepoint and BI Publisher in order to accomplish this.

First of all you need to enable either Digest or Basic authentication in IIS. Make sure you understand the security issues with each of these, specially if you are not using SSL over the internet.



In the Sharepoint website properties click "Edit" in the "Authentication and access control" section.

Enable Digest, Basic authentication or both. See my warning above about understanding the security risks.

Now go to BI Publisher and setup your Webdav directory:
In BI Publisher admin screen edit the webdav directory adding the host, port (if necessary) and match the Security setting with the selected one in the IIS configuration (basic or digest).

Save your changes.




Select the report you want to schedule and click the “Schedule” button which will display the above screen. Select “Web Folder” in the Delivery section and select your configured SharePoint WebDav directory. Enter your username/password and the path to the file you want to save. Make sure you include the name of the file (in this case I selected Price List.pdf which is the sample Price List report that comes standard with BIP). Once you click submit it will start the job.


When it’s finished it should display “Success” in the Status column like so:



Finally, go to your SharePoint site and the file should be there:

GI Joe BI Campaign - Summer 2009

by Jim Glazar June 9, 2009



Kerdock is launching a GI Joe BI campaign this summer which will include Oracle BI presentations and culminate in a screening of the new GI Joe movie in August. The event will take place in Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta. If you are interested in attending please visit our website at http://www.kerdock.com/ or shoot me an email.

I will post more details about the event as they emerge.

OBI EE Training Classes

by Jim Glazar posted 6-24-2009

I still get asked by clients who are new to OBI EE what Oracle training classes they should take. So I thought I would provide a few suggestions. If you are interested in taking classes provided by Oracle I would recommend the following:

• Oracle BI Suite EE 10g R3: Create Reports & Dashboards - This 3 day class covers the fundamentasls for creating Answers requests and Interactive Dashboards
• Oracle BI Suite EE 10g R3: Build Repositories - This 5 day class covers how to create the three layers of the repository (Physical, Model, & Presentation) utilizing the BI Admin tool

If you are going to do an OBI EE implementation utilizing the BI Apps (Pre-Builts), then I recommend also taking the following class:

• Oracle BI Application 7.9: Develop A Data Warehouse - This 5 day course covers the build of the OBAW data warehouse and the Informatica ETL processes

Since Kerdock Consulting is an Oracle Certified Education Partner we offer these training classes out of our Houston, Tx office. To see our latest class schedule go to our website at http://www.kerdock.com/default.aspx and click on the link that says "Certified Training"

If you would like to take some additional OBI EE courses beyond what is offered by Oracle, I recommend looking at the custom curriculum created by Business Intelligence Consulting Group (BICG). Their website is http://www.biconsultinggroup.com/

OBI EE Integration Points Presentation

by Jim Glazar 6/23/2009

Last Wednesday Pablo Bryan and myself delivered an OBI EE presentation at the Houston HOUG meeting. Our presentation covered the current integration points with OBI EE as well as some future integration points that are coming down the road.

As many of you well know Oracle has been on the path of converging their EPM and BI solutions under one umbrella called Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). This includes the Hyperion applications as well as the analytic applications from Siebel. I think everyone would agree that this is a good thing for clients and end users. However, the key to making this successful is integration between the products.

Our presentation covered the current integration points that exist with OBI EE version 10.1.3.4 which included integration with the iPhone, Microsoft SharePoint, Adobe Flex, Hyperion Workspace, Hyperion Essbase, Hyperion SmartView, and Oracle EBS. Our presentation included a live demonstration of many of these integration points. Future integration points covered included Hyperion HFM & Planning as well as autmated Essbase aggregation and summary maintenance.

If you are interested in obtaining the slide deck for this presentation, feel free to email me at jim.glazar@kerdock.com. Also, if you are interested in seeing these products integrated with OBI EE, feel free to contact me to arrange on an on-site demo or webcast.

Smart View 11.1.X Webinar Today

by Jim Glazar June 5, 2009

Event Details:FridayJune 5, 200912:00 pm - 12:45 pm CST
Phone Dial-In:888-437-3188 or 201-604-5096
Web Log-In:www.infiniteconferencing.comParticipant Code: 4149413

What is Smart View?The Oracle Hyperion Smart View for Office provides a common Microsoft Office interface designed specifically for Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence. Using Smart View, you can view, import, manipulate, distribute, and share data in Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint interfaces.
What You Will Learn
Integration Points with Planning, Hyperion Financial Management and OBIEE
Smart Slices
Planning Ad Hoc Functionality
Combined Data Display

Join us for this free webinar to learn the benefits of Oracle Hyperion Smart View when integrated with your Microsoft Office Environment.
Featured Speaker Chris Khoury is a Consultant within Kerdock Consulting's Business Intelligence Practice. He has 6+ years experience in Information Technology. He has worked in Software, Oil and Gas, and Telecommunications industries.
About Kerdock Kerdock is more than just a consulting firm, we are an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner, specializing in Enterprise Performance Management, Oracle Business Intelligence, and Oracle E-Business Suite with a unique offering of services, training, and licensing.