Endeca Integration With Oracle E-Business Suite - A Technical Perspective

Shashi Tiwari
Nani Infotech Inc

Abstract
Oracle Endeca Information Discovery (OEID) offers a broad range of features for the exploration and visualization
of information. Learn more about Endeca, and how to integrate this product with Oracle E-Business Suite R12
version. This session also offers advanced clustering techniques and guidance to maintain Endeca integration with
Oracle EBS extensions.

Information Discovery
Oracle Endeca Information Discovery is a complete solution for data discovery processing both traditional analytic
data and non-traditional data, including external and unstructured information. The latest enterprise data are
mostly semi-structured or unstructured data. Traditional BI tools has a disadvantage to process unstructured data
such as emails, social media, content management etc.

These days there is a large amount of data available in on-line forums and social media. For example, based on
user’s feedback in Facebook or Twitter – latest trend analysis for a product can be developed. Since Oracle Endeca
is an enterprise platform, users can collaborate effectively across an organization. Compared to traditional BI tools,
Oracle Endeca is fast and efficient in delivering enterprise solution.

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Oracle Endeca Architecture

There are 3 main components in Oracle Endeca. Integration Suite includes a set of tools used for loading
information which includes structured, unstructured, and semi-structured content into the Oracle Endeca Server.

Oracle Endeca Server is a hybrid, search and analytical database which provides flexibility in combining wide,
varied data and reduces the need for upfront data modeling. Endeca server utilizes high flexible No-SQL like model
to handle diverse and dynamic data changes.

Studio is a visual application environment that provides drag-and-drop authoring to create highly interactive,
personal and enterprise-class information discovery application. Studio also includes self-service data provisioning,
which gives business users the ability to add their own data, connect to existing enterprise sources and
consolidate.

Oracle E-Business Suite Extensions For R12.2 and R12.1

Oracle E-Business Suite Extensions for Oracle Endeca R12.2/12/1, referred as V5 feature following E-Business
products. With V5 in R12.2.2.4, Oracle has introduced search and Filter Capabilities in Oracle EBS. Before starting
the Endeca Installation, it is recommended to apply required patches for Oracle EBS extensions for Oracle on EBS
instance. Also, product specific configurations and roles/responsibilities should be reviewed.

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Endeca Installation and Configuration
Following diagram shows various activities that should be performed on E-Business application tier and Endeca
server to setup the configuration. Even though Endeca and EBS application can reside on the same node, it is
recommended to install on separate servers due to high memory requirement for Endeca. Endeca requires 32 GB
RAM and must be installed on 64 bit Linux Platform.

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Endeca services run using the following port numbers. Make sure that if you are planning to install Endeca on the
same server as EBS application, these port numbers are available, if not the standard installation will fail.

Port Component Description

7001 Oracle Endeca WL Managed Server

7002 Oracle Endeca WL Domain Admin Server

7004 Oracle Endeca Studio UI WL Managed Server

7005 Oracle Endeca Integrator WL Domain Admin Server

7006
Oracle Endeca Integrator Server UI WL Managed Server

7011-8011 Oracle Endeca Server Internal Data Domains

In order to start the Endeca installation on the server, file system should be created as /u01. If you don’t have this
file system setup, you can create a softlink for /u01. Modify /u01/Oracle/quickInstall/EidConfig.properties file for
configuring the EBS application server connection details such as EBS Middle Tier Host Name, Middle Tier Port,
Application Server ID and Database server details.

Installation is started by executing envsetup.sh. In total there are6 phases in the installation .First step in the
installation process is to install the express database for storing metadata.

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Once the metadata database installation is completed, connectivity information should verified before proceeding
with remaining installation steps as shown in the following screen shot. In total there are six phases in the
installation.

Installing the six phases in Endeca is a simple process by choosing the install phase number in the right sequence
order. It would take less than couple of hours to complete the installation. As part of the installation, WebLogic
server and two domains – Endeca and Integrator and three managed servers – including Endeca, Studio and Clover
are configured as shown in the following.

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Endeca Service Startup
Since there are multiple services are connected with Endeca, by default Oracle has provided a startup script -
/u01/Oracle/quickInstall/bin/startAllEndeca.sh. This script has a menu format, and a specific component excluding
database can be restarted.

EBS Data Source Creation

After confirming that Admin and Managed Server URL’s are accessible, EBS data source should be created by
executing /u01/Oracle/quickInstall/bin/createJndi.sh. Product specific folders should be verified by accessing
Studio Integration.

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EBS Product Specific Configuration
Depending on the EBS module, there are product specific configuration that should be performed. For example, AP
module – product specific patch 18079801 should be applied and following profile should be setup. Product
specific artifacts should be configured on Endeca server. Also, roles and responsibilities with security context
should be setup on the EBS server to access the Endeca reports.

Endeca Clustering
In order to support high availability and to distribute load across multiple servers, Oracle supports clustering
configuration in Endeca. In Endeca Clustering, a Leader and follower nodes are configured. Cluster coordinator
communicates between leader and follower nodes. Cluster coordinates also updates data and configuration across
the nodes in a cluster.

To setup clustering, it is recommended to have an external load balancer to distribute the load across the servers.
A shared common disk across all servers running in a cluster should be setup through NFS to access the single set
of domain index files.

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References
http://www.rittmanmead.com/2012/04/oracle-endeca-oeid-exploring-unstructured-data-twitter-blog-analytics-
part-1/

Oracle E-Business Suite Extensions for Oracle Endeca Clustering Guide, Release 12.1.3.4 (Doc ID 1562373.1

http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/5rulesofedd-wp-fp-2167861.pdf

Oracle E-Business Suite Extensions for Oracle Endeca Release Notes for Release 12.2 V5 (Doc ID 1663193.1)

Installing Oracle E-Business Suite Extensions for Oracle Endeca, Release 12.1.3.3 (Doc ID 1539016.1)

https://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/announcing_oracle_e_business_suite

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