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1.0 Introduction

The objective of this article is to share an interesting activity on migrating IBM Cognos (Cognos) reports to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) for a leading financial service client (Client).  The client was using Cognos extensively for their financial management reporting areas.  As they were not getting the intended results out of Cognos, they decided to move onto OBIEE not only to get a holistic view of their financial reporting pack at enterprise-level but also to align with their corporate reporting strategy.

Just to let you know, these two BI tools (Cognos and OBIEE) uses a different frame-work altogether. So, achieving a 100% automation on migration is not possible. However, with the help of Java APIs and Unique Processes, many of the manual efforts have been automated resulting in almost a 35% saving in terms of cost, efforts and timelines.

Some of the other things to be noted:

Some of the high-level migration steps followed:

Now, let’s talk in detail about the migration process which has been divided into three stages – (1) Identification (2) Evaluation (3) Implementation.

2.0 Identification

This particular step played a crucial role in eliminating un-wanted/duplicate reports and migrate only the reports that are actually being used by Business Users, from Cognos Connection Catalog.

Reviewed the list of identified reports for enabling Security both at Object and Data levels and categorise them into business-area wise.

3.0 Evaluation

Based on the list of migrated reports, an evaluation strategy prepared with the help of Business Users to determine:

3.1 Manual Process

High-level manual steps for migration:

3.2 Automation Process

High-level automated steps for migration:

As you may be aware, Cognos uses Java programming interfaces for managing its meta-data. A custom Java API has been developed to:

With the help of the above automated steps, a good amount of information on reports has been gathered which not only helped for a realistic estimation but also to migrate the reports to OBIEE in a structure manner.

Another task was to identify a relational DW model requirements by analysing different objects based on the below diagram:

The most challenging task was to migrate Cognos Cubes to relational dimensional models in Oracle DW environment. To support roll-ups and high-performance, a number of aggregates and hierarchies have been built in OBIEE RPD.

4.0 Implementation

This section talks about implementation which has been carried-out in three phases:

4.1 Datawarehouse Customisation and ETL Development

Based on the evaluation processed in (2) above, the immediate task was to develop a relational model requirements using ETL tools and database objects with features like partitions, etc.

4.2 OBIEE RPD Development

Based on the design and development of Oracle Datawarehouse, OBIEE RPD has been developed to support:

5.0 Benefits

To summarise, the entire activity has been completed in 24 weeks to migrate 200 Cognos reports along with 4 cubes and with resources as follows:

Migrating from Cognos to Oracle Business Intelligence resulted in a multitude of benefits for a customer including cost savings and increased business value.

To realize these benefits at the lowest possible cost, it is extremely important to follow a best and proven migration method and technical best practices developed through experience.

This blog outlined a proven-process that used automation techniques along with manual processes as well as a case-study of customer that have achieved the success after migration from Cognos to OBIEE.

If you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact us at +44 (0)207 7780091 or info@reliason.com. Alternatively, visit us at www.reliason.com to learn about how we can help your Organisation on Oracle BI technologies and to access our whitepapers and test-drives.

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1.0 Introduction

The objective of this article is to guide you through the detailed process involved with code-promotion of BICS snapshot (data-model, catalog content, application roles and security setups) from Development/Test to Production environment.

Please note this document is written based on Oracle BICS current version 17.1.6.0.0. Some of the screenshots may look different in future releases.

If you are looking for migrating Oracle BI-Apps RPD to BICS, check this article for detailed steps.

2.0 Pre-requisites

Please follow the below pre-requisites before promoting the snapshot into Production environment:

Take a snapshot of your target (production) BICS environment (in case of any issues during migration and to restore at a later date) using console as shown below and set a password.

Login to BICS -> Launch Console -> Click on Snapshots and Models:

3.0 Creation of Snapshot in Dev/Test Environment

Before taking snapshot, make sure to unlock/publish any data-models and also logout any BICS sessions so snapshot will be in a clean state.

Login to your BICS dev/test environment and navigate to Console -> Snapshot and Models -> Create a Snapshot and give an appropriate Description.

Download the created snapshot and provide a password which is required for ‘Upload Snapshot’ step in target/production environment.

4.0 Upload/Replace of Snapshot in Production Environment

Before proceeding further, make sure all the steps mentioned in section 2 above are fulfilled on creating backup snapshots.

Login to BICS Production -> Launch Console -> Click on Snapshot and Models -> Upload Snapshot -> select the snapshot created in section 3 above and provide the password.

Once the snapshot is uploaded, you will see the below confirmation about successful upload of Snapshot:

Now that the snapshot is available in your production environment, the next step is to Restore to make use of it:

You will be prompted with three Restore options and check the appropriate options:

Check all options if your code-migration involves all three areas. If not, choose the appropriate ones.

You will see a successful snapshot restore completion message if everything goes well during restore process.

In order to review restored objects, navigate to:

5.0 How to promote individual objects to Production Environment?

In the above steps, we looked at promoting entire catalog or data-model or application roles but not on promoting individual components. Now, first let’s look at how to promote individual catalog objects (reports, dashboards, visual analyser projects, filters, prompts, etc.).

Navigate to Oracle BICS / Catalog and select a Folder and click on Archive and choose the appropriate permissions:

It generates a file with folder name and with an extension of .catalog (ex: Disco to BICS Migration.catalog).

Or if you want an individual object to be archived, check this screenshot (ex: Sales Effectiveness V1.catalog).

At the moment, there is no option available to promote a portion of RPD or application roles separately. If there is one available in near future, this blog will be updated.

If you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact us at +44 (0)207 7780091 or info@reliason.com. Alternatively, visit us at www.reliason.com to learn about how we can help your Organisation on Oracle BI technologies and to access our whitepapers and test-drives.

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As you may be aware, Oracle released its latest BI tech-stack version 12c during October 2015 which is packed with abundant new enhancements and stunning new visualisations. The latest version is 12.2.1.0.0 and you can visit OTN page to learn more about it.

Here’s a quick snapshot of its features:

To learn more about OBIEE 12c features, check Oracle’s documentation.

This blog talks about all the detailed steps involved upgrading your OBIEE 11g tech-stack to 12c version.

Basically, the upgradation is a two-step process and is carried out by using BI Migration Script (migration-tool.sh):

The BI Migration Script is used to generate the BI Migration Tool jar file.

2.0 Migration Process Steps

The entire migration process is covered by these high-level steps with more details in the later sections:

One important note to mention here is – it is going to be an Out-of-Place upgrade meaning you will be installing a new OBIEE 12c environment and then migrate metadata from OBIEE 11g environment. The new OBIEE 12c instance can be installed alongside the existing OBIEE 11g instance. Having both OBIEE 11g and OBIEE 12c instance also gives an opportunity to validate the reports in OBIEE 12c side by side with OBIEE 11g.

2.1 Pre-requisites

Take a quick look at these pre-requisites as these will help in achieving a smooth installation and avoid further re-works during the migration process:

2.2 Generate BI migration to .jar file

The BI Migration Tool is self-executing and self-contained. You need to generate BI Migration Tool jar file by using BI Migration Script (migration-tool.sh). This tool will copy the RPD and Catalog along-with the necessary files so they can be used in 12c environment.

Follow these to generate BI migration tool jar file:

Replace the ORACLE_HOME with the actual path to your 12c ORACLE_HOME which is created during 12c installation.

2.3 Creating Export Bundle

The export bundle is a ‘.jar’ file and consists of the metadata information from the 11g Oracle home.

To create an export bundle:

Following is a sample command for creating an export bundle:

2.4 Import Export Bundle

You need to follow the below procedure only if you are configuring 12c system for the first time.

If you have already configured 12c system, you will have BI Domain and BI Service instance created. Now, need to perform the procedure to import the export bundle using the BI Migration Script.

Steps:

The Configuration Assistant starts and the Welcome screen is displayed.

The Prerequisite Checks screen is displayed.

The Database Schema screen is displayed.

2.5 Perform Import using BI Migration Script

Use the BI Migration Script (migration-tool.sh) to import the 11g data in to the 12c system, if we have already configured the 12c system. The BI Migration Script automatically determines the Oracle home and the Domain home directories.

To import the metadata in to the 12c system:

2.6 Validate Oracle BI Deployments

Now we can logon to OBIEE12c and see the Reports and Dashboards working. We can use 11g weblogic password and the Dashboards and Reports should work

3.0 Post Migration Steps

After completing the data migration for Oracle BI EE, manually migrate the configuration settings for catalog groups and other components such as security for WebLogic and Enterprise Manager, BI Server, and BI Presentation Services.

Below are the post migration steps need to be performed after the upgrade:

For detailed instructions on post migration steps please refer to oracle’s documentation.

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The objective of this article is to guide you through the detailed process involved with migration of on-premise OBIA with different analytics applications (Finance, SCM, HR, Procurement and Spend, Manufacturing Analytics and Custom Subject Areas) to cloud-based Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS).

Oracle BICS is one of the latest cloud offering from Oracle with a proven platform for creating powerful business intelligence applications, enabling users from the workgroup to the enterprise.

Some of the features of Oracle BICS:

Before getting into more details, let’s discuss the need to migrate Oracle BI-Apps content to Oracle BICS. Consider you are on OBIA 7964 version with OBIEE 11g versions which

So the above barriers (there are many more under the hood!) can be easily achieved by moving your Oracle BI-Apps content to Oracle BICS.

NOTE: This document is written based on Oracle BICS current version 17.1.4.0.0. Some of the screenshots may look different in future releases.

1.1 Migration Path

Since Oracle’s acquisition of Siebel Analytics in the year 2005, there are multiple major versions of OBIEE have been released. As an existing customer one could still have any of these previous versions, though many of them are out of support already.

You can practically migrate from any previous versions of OBIEE or Seibel Analytics to Oracle BICS. With the older version, the path you take may be different and relatively longer. The diagram below highlights the path to Oracle BICS from different versions of OBIEE:

If you are on OBIEE 11g and thinking to move to latest tech-stack OBIEE 12c, check this detailed document.

And if you are still on OBIEE 10g, it is high-time to consider upgrading to latest OBIEE tech-stack to take advantage of abundant enhancements and stunning new features. Check Oracle’s link for a step-by-step upgrade instructions:

2.0 Pre-requisites

There are a few requisites to be followed before getting into action:

NOTE: Migrated on-premise RPD cannot be modified in Oracle BICS environment. Any modifications need to be handled in on-premise environment and upload the data model again. If you attempt, you will receive this type of warning:

3.0 Migration Process

Let’s look at the process involved in moving Oracle BI-Apps content (Finance, SCM, HR, Procurement and Spend, Manufacturing Analytics, etc.) into Oracle BICS.

In order to cover the process in-depth, this article is divided into three parts:

First, let’s look at the process involved in migration of Oracle BI-Apps RPD/Data Model and Catalog to Oracle BICS. We will be covering the other two parts separately.

The migration process mainly consists of three parts:

3.1 RPD Lift and Shift

As shown in the below diagram, develop your data model using on-premise BI Administration Tool, make sure to run global consistency check to avoid any type of errors (warnings are fine) then change the physical connections to point to your on-premise database or Oracle DB Cloud Service. Please note during RPD lift and shift process, you cannot connect to BICS own database.

Once these are done, upload the data model (.rpd file) onto Oracle BICS using Console and Replace Data Model.

3.1.1 Develop Data Model

If you already have up and running on-premise OBIEE instance, there is no need to develop a separate data model instead you can use the same data model/rpd file. If not, you may have to develop a thorough and working data model.

3.1.2 Consistency Check

It is recommended practice to run a global consistency check after every change in data model/rpd to avoid any potential inconsistencies which leads to issues in starting the services or report errors. Typically, any warnings can be ignored as they arise out the best-practices but they can be fixed as well so your RPD will be in a good state.

3.1.3 Change RPD Database Connections to Cloud

Obtain necessary Database Cloud Service hostname, username and password for updating respective RPD physical connection pools as your on-premise RPD physical connections will be pointed to on-premise database.

3.1.4 Upload data model onto Oracle BICS

Before proceeding further, please make sure the snapshot is created as mentioned above under Pre-requisites. Login to Oracle BICS environment and click on Console and then on Snapshots and Models.

Click on Replace Data Model and choose on-premise rpd/data model and provide the password which is your rpd default password.

Depending on the size of the data model (and connectivity), it takes couple of minutes to load it and you can check also the status of completion in the task bar of the window.

If there no errors during upload process, you will a success message with your data model name on the top of Console screen.

To verify the uploaded data model, click on Analysis and Create Analysis and you should be able to see new subject-areas similar to your on-premise data model:

3.2 Webcat Lift and Shift

To upload on-premise webcat content, it must be from another Oracle BICS or OBIEE 11.1.1.9.0 and above versions only. The below activities need to be performed:

3.2.1 Replace ‘shared’ with ‘company_shared’

Check if you need to replace any folders as your on-premise webcat might have something like ‘/shared’ and your BICS with ‘company_shared’. This can be done with a simple XML Search/Replace option using on-premise BI Catalog Manager.

3.2.2 Archive On-Premise Catalog

Archive catalog and move to a temporary location. Choose options relevant options for timestamps and permissions whether to carry-forward them or not.

3.2.3 Un-archive On-Premise Catalog into Oracle BICS

Now, logon to Oracle BICS and then click on Catalog to Un-archive the catalog objects. It would be good to create a separate folder just to avoid any conflicts with existing catalog folders and objects.

Create a new folder ‘On-Premise Catalog’ under ‘Company Shared’ standard folder:

Select the newly created folder and click on Unarchive to select archived file and select a relevant option under Replace.

Your on-premise catalog objects are now in Oracle BICS:

3.3 Migration of Application Roles

If you already have OBIEE 12c on on-premise, it is easy to get a snapshot or .bar file for Application Roles. The .bar file can be directly imported into Oracle BICS using Console and Upload Snapshot options.

If not, they need to be created manually. We will be extensively talking about these steps in our next series on ‘Enabling Security’.

4.0 Limitations and Future Enhancements

At the moment, some of the features of Oracle BI-Apps are not supported in Oracle BICS environment. For such list, you may like to check Section # 5 of Oracle’s documentation for more information.

With regard to enhancements, there are none at the moment but looking at Oracle’s cloud-first strategy, one can expect a bunch of enhancements in the whole migration process, data loading and data security/governance.

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The redshift cluster was made up of 8 dc1.large nodes, which provided an approximate equivalent to their existing Oracle RAC cluster in terms of CPU and Memory, as well as using SSD storage.

Migration to Redshift

In the interest of time, we decided to export one of the clients smaller star schemas in terms of number of dimensions, but one which contained a suitably large row set to give some meaningful performance results. The Star schema we used was based on site visit analysis, and contains 4 dimension tables, 1 bridge table, 1 lookup table and 1 fact table. There is also a view overlaying the fact table which provides some in-DB calculated fields. The model is displayed below.

To get the data into Redshift we generated a CSV export of each table, split these into 16 chunks each and then posted these to S3. We then used the Redshift copy command to load them into the a schema called tableau in the database. For the time being the tables in Redshift were creating using equivalent DDL as per their existing database, but without any performance enhancements, e.g. no compression, sort or distribution keys.

Configuring Tableau

The first thing we needed to do was to download the Redshift drivers. As the user base was large Apple Mac based we fetched the driver from http://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/mgmt/install-odbc-driver-mac.html
Once installed, you can then Start up Tableau and create a connection to the database.

Once connected you can select the tableau schema from the drop down, and the list of available tables and views will display. We can then configure the Data Source by selecting the tables/views we want to perform analysis against, configure the join between them, and add any appropriate calculated fields and filters. We’ll start off by
building a straightforward analysis on the number of visits by property for 2014.

We’ve added two calculated fields, ‘Total Visits’ and ‘Visit Group’. Total Visits is simply a count against the table’s primary key. Visit Group is a way of classifying the popularity of each site, and uses some logic against the Total Visits field to identify if a site has a large number of visits. We define it as:

Finally, we add a filter against dim_date to restrict the output to 2014.

You can then test validity by clicking Update Now, which will return a rows set for the query.

Visualisation

Now that we have a data source defined, we can create a visualisation for it, using Tableau’s built in set of graphical options. If we click on Sheet1, we are presented with a blank worksheet, and the dimensions and measures from the data source we just defined:

We’ll start by creating a pie chart analysis show all the visits against sites classified as ‘Large’. For this we require at least 1 dimension and 1 measure (for this example we’ll use Property Name and Total Visits). We first drag the measures and dimensions into the Marks panel. We’ll display each property slice in a different colour, as well as show the property name next to the slice, so we move Property Name on the Color and Label sections. We would like the number of visits to be reflected by the size of the slice and also have this display next to the slice, so similarly we drag Total Visits onto the Size and Label sections. So our Marks panel now looks like this:

Next we drag the Visit Group onto the Filters Panel, which allows us to restrict by Large sites:

Finally, we want to have the year displayed above the Pie Chart, so we drag the Financial Year dimension into the Columns section, and we’ll add a title. The Pie Chart renders like this:

To ensure this is returning sensible results, we’ll run a query against the database to validate:

Looks good! So whilst this is only a basic analysis, it’s a good start to show that we can start running our existing reports against Redshift with little or no modification.

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Retraining is not required if the users are acquainted with Oracle BI Enterprise or Oracle Cloud Applications. BI Cloud service can be easily adopted as the edition is designed with a built-in tutorial and data import wizard. With BI Cloud edition, users can simply load their data, fetch analytics and share ahead with colleagues.

BI Cloud Service supports uploading of data in various ways from different sources such as on premise data, third party data, data stored on clouds, web based file loading and many other methods. BI cloud model is a full featured, secure and SSAE 16 Type II certified service edition that allows users to share reports and dashboards in shared folders easily even after granting control access to data and functions.

Why Adopt Oracle BI Cloud Analytics

• Increase user productivity with user friendly and interactive interface with built-in guide and tutorials
• Get data insight with interactive visualizations and easy to create advanced calculations
• Analyse and manage activities across the entire system with well-structured and customized dashboards
• Fast set up and a low cost subscription service
• Immediately available on any device for secure data collaboration and sharing
• Performance pact cloud service edition offering flexibility, performance and reliability

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Now what is managed cloud? It allows the users to choose specific IT functions they want to manage in-house while leaving the rest to its service provider. Companies relying on managed cloud hosting find it easier to focus on their core business area – innovating applications, new products and taping new customers. You can decide from any two options when considering managed cloud services:

• Hire/train experts to manage complex cloud infrastructure, applications and tools OR rely upon multiple service providers for management and support of cloud hosting server.
• Employ a trusted cloud hosting partner to manage most or all of cloud hosting workload

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Self-service BI system empowers end users to make their own views on the data by customizing their reports. The workers are not hindered by the IT staff nor does the IT department spend time creating new reports in the existing BI system. This is how it potentially benefits both the groups. Also, it has been predicted by 2017 majority of the business users and analysts will have access to self-service tools for preparation of data analysis. Consequently, self-service BI will act as a convenient and seamless tool for data integration between numerous numbers of data assets within and outside the enterprise, granting users more control over BI applications than ever before.

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Self-service BI system empowers end users to make their own views on the data by customizing their reports. The workers are not hindered by the IT staff nor does the IT department spend time creating new reports in the existing BI system. This is how it potentially benefits both the groups. Also, it has been predicted by 2017 majority of the business users and analysts will have access to self-service tools for preparation of data analysis. Consequently, self-service BI will act as a convenient and seamless tool for data integration between numerous numbers of data assets within and outside the enterprise, granting users more control over BI applications than ever before.

Managed services reduce the risks and external costs of software vendors, meet the demands of today’s volatile economy and enable customers to achieve goals in a stipulated timeframe. Companies expecting to reach real-time/quick results should rely on an Independent Software Vendor (ISV). ISVs have technology and industry experts on board who can work with the customer to deliver the best results and reduce costs. The best managed service providers continue to expand their solutions to meet customer needs and will provide industry experts to deliver business results through technology

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