OBIEE Ramblings

A question that normally pops up in every RFx we have to respond to is what is the release history of our product. I have typically found this information hard to come by, but have been able to compile the following list (with a lot of input from Esmond Chia):

These products have a long heritage with Oracle BIEE being based on Siebel Business Analytics which was originally created by nQuire in 1997 and Hyperion Essbase was originally created by Arbor prior to being acquired by Hyperion in 1998. The following major releases of the software have occurred:

Recent Oracle BIEE release history is as follows:

• Siebel Analytics 7.0 - 2002
• Siebel Analytics 7.5 - 2003
• Siebel Analytics 7.7 - 2004
• Siebel Analytics 7.8.2 and 7.8.3 - 2005
• Siebel Analytics / Oracle Business Intelligence 7.8.4 and 7.8.5 - 2006
• OBIEE 10gR3, 10.1.3.2 - Jan 2007
• OBIEE 10gR3, 10.1.3.2.1 - Apr 2007
• OBIEE 10gR3, 10.1.3.3.0 - Aug 2007
• OBIEE 10gR3, 10.1.3.3.1 - Oct 2007
• OBIEE 10gR3, 10.1.3.3.2 - Dec 2007
• OBIEE 10gR3, 10.1.3.3.3 - May 2007
• OBIEE 10gR3, 10.1.3.4 - Aug 2008
• OBIEE 10gR3, 10.1.3.4.1 - Apr 2009

Recent Hyperion Essbase release history is as follows:

• Version 9.0 - Sep 2005
• Version 9.0.1 - Dec 2005
• Version 9.2 - Jun 2006
• Version 9.3 - Jan 2007
• Version 9.3.1 - Nov 2007
• Version 11.1.1.1 - Sep 2008
• Version 11.1.1.2 - Mar 2009
• Version 11.1.1.3 - Aug 2009 (Essbase Crystal Ball integration, Smartview Metadata, HVE Maps)

Recent Oracle BI Apps release history is as follows:

• Business Analytics Applications 7.0.x - Dec 2001
• Business Analytics Applications 7.5.x - Aug 2002
• Business Analytics Applications 7.7.x - Jun 2004
• Business Analytics Applications 7.8.x - Nov 2005
• BI Apps 7.9.0 - Jan 2007
• BI Apps 7.9.1 - Apr 2007 (added Siebel 8.0 certification)
• BI Apps 7.9.2 - May 2007 (added Profitability Analytics for OFSA 4.5)
• BI Apps 7.9.3 - Aug 2007 (certify for PeopleSoft Financials 8.4 / 8.8 and HR 8.8)
• BI Apps 7.9.4 - Dec 2007 (certify EBS R12)
• BI Apps 7.9.5 - May 2008 (certify Informatica PowerCenter 8.1.1 SP4 and PeopleSoft Financials 8.9 / 9.0 and HR 8.9 / 9.0)
• BI Apps 7.9.6 - Apr 2009 (added Project Analytics, Loyalty Analytics, JDE Fin Analytics)

The latest shipping versions are:

• OBIEE: 10.1.3.4.1
• Essbase: 11.1.1.3
• BI Apps: 7.9.6

One of my colleagues in Oracle Consulting (Gavin Steenkamp) pointed out a cool feature around monitoring performance in OBIEE today.

If you go to the the following URL on your OBIEE installation:

http://myserver/analytics/saw.dll?perfmon (log in as Administrator)

This is what you will see:

There is also of course the BI Management Pack, and Usage Tracking functionality.

A simple one today, but a question I get asked regularly is the difference between OBIEE+ and OBISE1. OBISE1 is a cut down version of OBIEE+ designed to cater for entry level deals however both are based on the same technology platform. The differences between the 2 are:

OBIEE+

• Can be licenced either by Named User or Processor
• Min 50 users, or 1 CPU
• Has the modules (see here for more detail):
• BI Server - Common enterprise business model and abstraction layer
• BI Answers – Ad-Hoc Analysis and Reporting
• BI Interactive Dashboards - Proactive business activity monitoring and alerting
• BI Briefing Books - Snapshots of dashboard pages to view and share in offline mode
• BI Publisher – Enterprise reporting and distribution of "pixel-perfect" reports
• BI Delivers – Proactive business activity monitoring and alerting
• BI Office – MS Office plugins
• Disconnected Analytics - Full analytical functionality for the mobile professionals
• Note this is an extra cost option to OBIEE+
• Licence also contains the old Hyperion Reporting Tools
• Interactive Reports
• Production Reports
• Web Analysis
• Financial Reports

OBISE1

• Can only be licenced by Named User
• Min 5, Max 50 Users
• Licence also includes a Oracle Database SE1 licence for the same # of Named Users
• Product is restricted to be used against the included Database and 1 other relational data source
• but unlimited flat file sources
• Does not contain BI Office, BI Delivers, or the Hyperion Reporting Tools. Thus only has:
• BI Server - Common enterprise business model and abstraction layer
• BI Answers – Ad-Hoc Analysis and Reporting
• BI Interactive Dashboards - Proactive business activity monitoring and alerting
• BI Briefing Books - Snapshots of dashboard pages to view and share in offline mode
• BI Publisher – Enterprise reporting and distribution of "pixel-perfect" reports

Customers can start with OBISE1 and the later migrate to OBIEE+ if they require additional users or functionality. BTW, one question I often get is can OBISE1 integrate with MS Office. You can download content from Answers/Dashboards into Office (Excel/Powerpoint) but it is a static copy of the data, unlike OBIEE which also has the BI Office plugin’s for MS Office which allow you to refresh and secure the reports directly from Excel/Powerpoint.

Another question that pops up frequently is around certification. When it comes to OBIEE, the bible is the SRSP (System Requirements and Supported Platforms). This is available in the OBIEE product documentation. BTW, a quick link to most Oracle product documentation is http://docs.oracle.com.

Simarly for BI Apps, the SRSP is available in the BI Apps product documentation.

The SRSP contains items such as:

• Harware Requirements
• Supported Operating Systems
• Supported Appliaction Servers
• Supported Identity Management Solutions
• Supported Data Sources
• Supported Web Browsers
• Supported Languages

The current SRSP documents are:

• OBIEE 10.1.3.4.1
• BI Apps 7.9.6

While the links above cover a couple of the older releases, I was asked recently for the SRSP for some really old versions of Siebel Analytics. After some digging, I found the following on the new Oracle Support (previously Metalink3) website:

Oracle Business Intelligence Certification Matrix [ID 745042.1]

When it comes to the Plus part of OBIEE+ (IR, FR, PR and WA), these product certifications are still listed in theOracle Enterprise Performance Management documentation. Specifically, the certification matrices for the various products are available here.

After much anticipation, it appears that OBIEE 11g is about to hit the streets.

Join Charles Phillips, President, and Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President, Product Development, for thelaunch of the latest release of Oracle's business intelligence software.

Be the first to hear about Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g, the new, industry-leading technology platform for business intelligence, which offers:

• A powerful end-user experience with rich visualisation, search, and actionable collaboration
• Advancements in analytics, OLAP, and enterprise reporting, with unmatched performance and scalability
• Simplified system configuration, life-cycle management, and performance optimisation

As well as the keynote and technical general session, break out sessions will cover the following topics:

Business Intelligence: From Insight to Action
In this session, you will learn about an exciting, industry-first innovation that connects business intelligence directly to your business processes. You can spot an opportunity or issue, and immediately initiate appropriate action directly from your dashboard.

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Systems Management and Deployment
Learn how you can streamline the process of configuring your system, provisioning users, and monitoring and optimising query performance. Attend this session to hear how new integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager provides unique systems management, superior scalability, and high availability and security benefits, while making upgrades effortless.

Extending Business Intelligence Analytics with Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
Learn how you can enhance the analytical power and business value of your BI solution with a unified environment for navigating and querying both OLAP and relational data sources. This session will focus on how Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g, used with Oracle Essbase, can deliver insight at the speed of thought.

Integrated Performance Management
If your organisation is using or considering performance management applications such as Oracle's Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management, you will not want to miss this session. See how you can leverage Oracle's BI solution for accessing performance management applications and performing extended financial reporting and analysis.

Visualisation and End-user Experience
The latest release of Oracle Business Intelligence provides an unrivaled end user experience, including rich interactive dashboards, a vast range of animated charting options, integrated search, and more. This session will also include a close look at how you can leverage location data to visualise geo-spatial information.