Oracle BI Cloud Service : What is it and Where Will it be Useful? Francesco Tisiot, Principal Consultant, Rittman Mead OUG Ireland 2015, Dublin

Transcription

1 Oracle BI Cloud Service : What is it and Where Will it be Useful? Francesco Tisiot, Principal Consultant, Rittman Mead OUG Ireland 2015, Dublin

2 About the Speaker Francesco Tisiot Principal Consultant at Rittman Mead Based in Verona, Italy Writer for Rittman Mead Blog Over 7 years of experience in Oracle technology DW OWB/ODI OBIEE Exalytics/Exadata francesco.tisiot@rittmanmead.com

3 About Rittman Mead Oracle BI and DW Gold partner Winner of five UKOUG Partner of the Year awards in 2013 and including BI World leading specialist partner for technical excellence, solutions delivery and innovation in Oracle BI Approximately 80 consultants worldwide All expert in Oracle BI and DW Offices in US (Atlanta), Europe, Australia and India Skills in broad range of supporting Oracle tools: OBIEE, OBIA ODIEE Essbase, Oracle OLAP GoldenGate Endeca

4 Oracle Cloud Business Intelligence BICS v1 available since September 2014 Part of the wider PaaS (platform-as-a-service) offering including database, Java, documents etc Aimed at a very specific set of use-cases initially Adding BI and analytics to cloud-based apps Departmental sandbox-type analysis

5 Oracle Cloud Business Intelligence - What is it Runs in Oracle s public cloud environment ( No upfront license cost Pay monthly as OpEx Only reports against a single Oracle database schema (Oracle Cloud Schema-as-a-Service) Standard OBIEE - but will possibly preview new functionality before on-premise versions Patched automatically by Oracle Customer able to be max one version behind? Comes with two instances - pre-prod and prod Code promotion through BI Archive export/import Oracle BI-as-a-Service Admin access over HTTP Oracle Schema-as-a-service Database (single source) Cloud On-Premise

6 Oracle Cloud Business Intelligence - What s new? New component: Thin Client Data Modeller Replacement for OBIEE On Premise Admin Tool Simplifies Metadata Layer creation and management Accessible via browser No need of Windows only client Contains a subset of the features Preview of New Visualisations

7 Oracle Cloud Business Intelligence - What is it Administration and Maintenance Dashboards and Analysis Data Modeler Oracle Database Schema + Application Express Oracle BI-as-a-Service Oracle Schema-as-a-service Database (single source)

8 Oracle BI Cloud Services v.1 Logging into BICS, Accessing Services

9 Logging In and Providing Identity Domain Login separate to oracle.com login; provided during Cloud service provisioning process Identity Domain is the tenant ID; all users of same service use same domain ID

10 Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service : Dashboard View basic metrics on system usage (users, author count over period) Subscription details; Company name etc Click on Service Instance URL to launch OBIEE Presentation Services Click to launch OBIEE Home Page

11 Oracle BI Cloud Services v.1 Accessing BI Dashboards & Analyses

12 BI Cloud Service Home Page and Dashboards Answers and Dashboards (with new Oracle Cloud look-and-feel) But with tools to upload data, build the RPD, administer users, manage system

13 Standard Dashboard and Analysis Editor Experience Regular Presentation Services interface - Dashboard, Analysis Editor, Catalog view etc All data visualisations available + preview of new visualisations Uses new Skyros theme from Fusion Apps

14 Dashboard and Analysis Limitations in v1 Can create analyses, dashboards, use filters, selection steps, calculations etc Can create dashboard prompts, filters, use repository and session variables etc No access to Agents, Scorecards, BI Publisher (anything that uses NQ_ tables) Only Navigation Actions No Essbase, SOA / EBS integration etc No import/export of catalog objects

15 Oracle BI Cloud Services v.1 Uploading data to Database Cloud Service

16 Oracle Database Cloud Service Each instance of BICS comes with Oracle Database Cloud Service (Schema-as-a-Service) ApEx environment with 50GB storage attached Able to run PL/SQL packages (with 5m timeout) Either create tables, views etc from ApEX, or use data uploader in BICS Click to launch ApEX Home Page

17 ApEx Development Environment Full ApEx environment for application building, table creation, SQL queries Can be used to build supporting applications, administration screens for OBIEE application Make use of PL/SQL functionality Data cleansing Call Web Service REST APIs More complex processing and calculations DB Cloud Service dashboard has tools for data and application exports

18 Options for Uploading Data to BI Cloud Service (DB Cloud) Use ApEx front-end and tools within it (data upload, data modeller etc) Use SQL*Developer and SFTP data upload facility Use BI Cloud Service Data Uploader

19 BI Cloud Services Data Uploader Custom ApEx application shipped with DB Cloud Service for BICS Upload CSV, text, xls and xlsx files to Database Cloud Paste data from clipboard and upload Limited data re-formatting features Preferred method for uploading data Click to launch Data Uploader

20 BICS Data Uploader Step 1 : Select File to Upload Press Upload to upload txt, csv, xlsx or xls file to application Contents of file then appear in Preview window Or just paste data from clipboard into same preview window Option to ignore headers line Option to select delimiter char

21 BICS Data Uploader Step 2 : Select Target or New Table Either select existing table to upload to, or enter details for new table Incoming columns in file mapped to table columns Ability to change column case, strip spaces, format as number

22 BICS Data Uploader Step 3 : Preview Content, and Upload Preview file contents with transformations and final column names Upload file to Database Cloud Service - is the used to load a regular DB table Review table and check for loading errors

23 Oracle BI Cloud Services v.1 Creating the repository

24 Thin-Client Data Modeller New thin-client data modeller, works with RPD online Single repository per tenant Regular RPD, but modeller only supports subset of BI Administration features Single LTS per logical table No Alias, have to create DB views Single business model Only logical calculations But otherwise - an RPD Click to launch Data Modeller

25 Thin-Client Data Modeller - New Features since v1 Pre-Post Aggregation calculations No concept of Physical and Business Model in Data Modeller Expressions with indirectly joined tables Cross Fact calculations based on shared dimensions Creation of Aliases Tables and Views are duplicated Same object can be used in multiple roles Auto suggest Fact and dimensions Joins added automatically

26 Data Model Overview List of Tables and Views available in DB List of Fact Tables and Dimension Number of KPI and joins highlighted List of Joins Lock and Publish buttons List of Columns List of Variables

27 Data Modeller Repository Creation Workflow 1. Add tables to Database Cloud Service via data uploader 2. Lock Model (RPD) 3. Select either a dimension or fact to create 4. Select table to base fact or dimension on 5. Format logical column names, values 6. Add calculations, aggregations 7. Add hierarchies 8. Add security 9. Publish model and unlock

28 Create Fact and Dimensions from Flat Table Facts and Dimensions can be created directly in Data Modeller from Flat Tables Select Flat Table to Add Drag Columns to Fact and Dimensions Review Objects Created

29 Variables Can create static and dynamic repository variables Also create session variables, including access to system session variables Access to :USER etc system session variables

30 Oracle BI Cloud Services v.1 Administration and Maintenance

31 Manage Users and Application Roles Click on Manage link on Homepage, launches BICS Service Console View users, assign to roles Map roles to application roles defined by tenant administrator Click to launch BICS Service Console

32 Snapshots (BI Archives) Entire system (RPD, catalog) can be snapshotted with versions stored online Download and upload snapshots Test to production migration Restore snapshots for versioning Note - overwrites entire RPD, catalog Does not include DB Cloud elements, need to be archived separately

33 Oracle BI Cloud Services v.1 Example Application : Where will it be useful?

34 Oracle BI Cloud Service - Use Cases Departmental sandbox-type analysis Data Upload from On-Premise DB, Local XML or CSV files Metadata layer created from Flat tables Analysis/Dashboards created in minutes No need of IT involvement Adding custom BI and analytics to cloud-based apps Source Data already in the Cloud

35 Oracle BI Cloud Services v.1 Example Application : Cloud CRM Reporting

36 Example Application #1 : Cloud CRM Reporting - Scenario Many customers use SaaS applications for CRM, sales automation, talent management etc Often silos of information, and hard to report against Access via REST APIs rather than SQL / ETL BI Tools needed, but prefer if SaaS deployed too Solution : Oracle BI Cloud Services, but how to access SaaS data sources? Salesforce.com example

37 SaaS Data Access Solution : DB Cloud PL/SQL REST Access Database Cloud Service supports PL/SQL packages, procedures ApEx has APEX_WEB_SERVICE API, supports RESTful and SOAP web service calls Salesforce.com provides REST API for retrieving objects, data PL/SQL package retrieves Salesforce instance data in XML Stages into Database Cloud Schema for OBIEE access Need to work around 5 min timeout for PL/SQL prods DB Cloud limitation Break retrieval into small steps, <1 min BEGIN apex_web_service.g_request_headers(1).name := 'Accept'; apex_web_service.g_request_headers(1).value := 'application/xml'; l_clob := apex_web_service.make_rest_request( p_url => ' grant_type=password&client_id=' clientid '&client_secret=' clientsecret '&username=' username '&password=' password, p_http_method => 'POST', p_body => ''); XMLData := XMLType(l_clob); FOR r IN ( SELECT ExtractValue(Value(p),'/OAuth/instance_url/text()') AS r_instance, ExtractValue(Value(p),'/OAuth/access_token/text()') AS r_token FROM TABLE(XMLSequence(Extract(XMLData,'/OAuth'))) p ) LOOP

38 Build Repository Against Database Tables PL/SQL Package calling Salesforce.com REST API populates Oracle tables Oracle Tables then mapped into BI repository Facts and dimensions created Variables defined Users added into roles

39 Supporting SaaS Security Models Superuser full import of SaaS dataset Full load of Data in DB Apply SaaS security settings in BICS Superuser REST-APIs Database Security Managed in Repository Front-End User related data retrieval on the fly Connection Parameters passed to REST-API call Table Functions called on the fly Analysis response time slower REST-API call limits User REST-APIs Table Function Front-End

40 Supporting SaaS Security Models Full import of SaaS dataset presents the problem - how do we then respect app security? Users will connect into OBIEE as themselves, no online access to SaaS security Solution : download user > account security objects, join those to facts to perform row-level filtering Needs knowledge of underlying SaaS row-level security setup Join security access table to model to apply data restrictions But then allows BICS app to work disconnected from SaaS application, but still apply correct security rules

41 Rittman Mead Salesforce.com - BICS Application Enter Connection Detail and Choose Full/Incremental Load Create BICS Users and Assign to Salesforce Users View/Build Dashboards and Analysis using Salesforce Security Settings

42 Details Salesforce.com REST-APIs are common for all Force.com applications Objects Metadata REST-APIs calls available Mapping of Objects->Tables can be automated Data retrieved in XML can be natively parsed in the Oracle DB11g Oracle DB12c can also parse JSON ApEx Application used to Load Data check PL/SQL Full/Incremenal Load Manage BI users -> Salesforce User mapping

43 Thank You for Attending! Thank you for attending this presentation, and more information can be found at Contact us at or Look out for our book, Oracle Business Intelligence Developers Guide out now! Follow-us on Twitter or Facebook (facebook.com/rittmanmead)

44 Oracle BI Cloud Service : What is it and Where Will it be Useful? Francesco Tisiot, Principal Consultant, Rittman Mead OUG Ireland 2015, Dublin