Rittman Mead Consulting Blog Archive OBIEE 11.1.1.

6 Now Available for Download Release Highlights

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 12:27 PM

Rittman Mead - Delivered Intelligence

OBIEE 11.1.1.6 Now Available for Download Release Highlights February 21st, 2012 by Mark Rittman

Well, the news broke late this afternoon that OBIEE 11.1.1.6 was now available for download, so heres some of the key new features that you should look out for once youve installed this new release. Well start first with the front-end, then take a look at some administration and server-side changes, and then say where Exalytics fits in with things. From an end-user perspective, OBIEE 11.1.1.6 provides a much-enhanced interface for analyses and dashboards, plus some changes to the way that you create BI Publisher reports. Starting off with analyses, one of the big changes is that you can now create selection steps for an analysis by right-clicking on it and selecting the step you wish to add. By adding this feature, its now possible to publish a basic analysis to the dashboard, then have the end-user add further steps to add, remove or keep dimension members; add totals, groups or calculated items, or otherwise manipulate the analysis results set. For me, this is the major new end-user feature in 11.1.1.6, and gives power users much more control over how results are displayed on their dashboards, especially considering that any selection steps they add can then be saved as a dashboard customization for later recall.

Now that its possible to add selection steps to an analysis after its been published to the dashboard, its especially important the end-user knows what selection steps have been applied, as well as any filters. Therefore, theres a new Selection Steps view that you can add to an analysis compound layout, that shows you just whats been applied. As well as these changes to how analyses are presented, you can also now save analyses and other BI objects as favorites, whic h are then accessed from the global header area.

Another new feature, inspired by Exalytics (more on this later) but available for all 11.1.1.6 installations, is the ability to remove the Apply and Reset buttons from prompts. To do this, you can either set this at the individual prompt level, or you can remove them at the dashboard page level. Once you do so, any chang to a prompt value will trigger an automatic refresh of those e analyses connected to the prompts, though you should use this feature with care if not using an Exalytics, OLAP or fast-database data source.

Theres also a bunch of miscellaneous enhancements to the front-end including adding of new columns to existing views automatically, a new wizard for creating BI Publisher reports, and the ability to rename views once youve created them. Well post more on the new front-end features in a few days. In terms of the repository (RPD), the major new change is the introduction of MDS XML as a repository storage option, and the ability now to integrate the Oracle BI Administration tool with source control systems. MDS XML is a fore-runner of future changes to how the Oracle BI Repository is structured and stored, and allows us to save the repository, not as a single monolithic binary file, but instead as a set of XML files. Each XML file contains the definition of an individual repository object, with objects corresponding to logical and physical tables, logical dimensions, logical joins and so on. The main point of MDS XML is to be able to upload these XML documents to a source-control system, with the XML documents then needing to be resaved as a single RPD file before you can then upload it to the Oracle BI Server in the Oracle BI Domain. Its not really a substitute for MUD, its more a way of integrating with source control, and well have a posting on how this works, in detail, on our blog tomorrow.

Unfiled Notes Page 1

Finally, the other major thing that 11.1.1.6 enables is Oracle Exalytics BI Machine, one of which is on order for us and due to be delivered in the next couple of weeks. Exalytics uses an optimized version of OBIEE 11.1.1.6 as its business intelligence platform, which includes a new utility called the Summary Advisor used for recommending and creating in-memory aggregates. Again, keep an eye on the blog for more details next week on Exalytics, including how the Summary Advisor recommends and generates aggregates and how TimesTen works under the covers.

So thats it for now. Well be back tomorrow with the next installment in Endeca week, and then check back later in the day for the more details on version control within the Oracle BI Administration tool.

Tweet

Posted in Oracle BI Suite EE | 6 Comments Comments

Cheney Says: February 22nd, 2012 at 7:41 am How about the micro-charts?
Mark Rittman Says: February 22nd, 2012 at 8:52 am They didnt make it into this release, from what I can tell. Theyll probably arrive in a future update to 11.1.1.6, though nothings been said officially. Ram Reddy Says: February 22nd, 2012 at 9:51 am Thanks for your quick update . krishna prasad Says: February 22nd, 2012 at 1:11 pm Thanks for the update Did u migrate from 11.1.1.5 to 11.1.1.6 ? How do we migrate from 11.1.1.5 to 11.1.1.6 ? Mat Says: February 22nd, 2012 at 1:20 pm There are a couple of areas which I find really restrictive at the moment in 11.1.1.5, so Im keen to know whether Oracle has addressed these in this release. 1) How to format a numeric seconds duration as HH:MM:SS, where HH could be any number of hours. I.e. much bigger than 24. It s nigh on impossible to do this at the moment. You would think it would be possible for the user to simply specify a customer format for the final presentation of the value. 2) How to produce a report on different date periods without having to create a stack of different measures. In our old Informatica DataAnalyzer system, we could simply create a metric and select that into a report, then when running the report the user can select which time period to report on (e.g. YTD, MTD, current week, today, etc), and the granularity (year, month, week, day, etc), and it all just worked. Again, its nigh on impossible to do this in Oracle BI 11.1.1.5 without duplicating each and every metric many times over. Do you know if either of these issues has been addressed in 11.1.1.6? Thanks Gaurav Misra Says: February 22nd, 2012 at 1:30 pm Thanks for Quick Update Write a comment Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Your comment

Unfiled Notes Page 2

Recent Posts Oracle Endeca Week : Where Does Endeca Fit with Oracle BI, DW and EPM? OBIEE 11.1.1.6 : MDS XML Repositories, and Integration with Source Control OBIEE 11.1.1.6 Now Available for Download Release Highlights Oracle Endeca Week : What is the Endeca MDEX Engine? Oracle Endeca Week : So Just What Is Endeca?

Recent Comments Scott Powell on OBIEE 11.1.1.6 : MDS XML Repositories, and Integration with Source Control Mark Rittman on Configuring ODI 10.1.3.6 to use Oracle Golden Gate for Changed Data Capture Fiston on OBIEE 11.1.1.6 : MDS XML Repositories, and Integration with Source Control Abhinav on Configuring ODI 10.1.3.6 to use Oracle Golden Gate for Changed Data Capture Gaurav Misra on OBIEE 11.1.1.6 : MDS XML Repositories, and Integration with Source Control

Categories Apple Application Server BI (General) BI (General) BI 2.0 BI 2.0 BI Suite Developer Book Conferences Courses Data Mining Data Quality Data Warehousing Dimensional Modelling Discoverer Exadata FMW General Hyperion Hyperion Essbase Hyperion Smart View Linux Methodology Oracle BI Apps Oracle BI Apps Oracle BI Suite EE Oracle Data Integrator Oracle Database Oracle Discoverer Oracle Endeca Oracle EPM Oracle GoldenGate Oracle News Oracle OLAP Oracle Reports & XML Publisher Oracle Warehouse Builder Professional rant Real-Time Decisions Rittman Mead Seminar Series Technology The Great Blog Disaster Uncategorized User Groups & Conferences

Call us now to talk about your BI project: +44 (0) 8446 697 995 (UK) or (888) 631-1410 (USA) or +61 3 9596 7186 (Australia & New Zealand) or +91 997 256 7970 (India) Home About Us > About us > About our team > Contact us > Our clients Services > Consulting > Training > Support Consulting Services > Projects > Expert Services > OBIEE 11g > Sustainability > On Discoverer? > Oracle DW Training > OBI10g Developer > OBI11g Training Days > OBI10g End-User > BI Publisher > Oracle BI Apps Resources > Articles > Blog

Unfiled Notes Page 3

> OBIEE 11g Blog Authors > Mark Rittman > Venkat J > Stewart Bryson > Peter Scott > Borkur S > Mike Vickers > Adrian Ward > Jon Mead Rittman Mead Consulting ltd. Registered Office : Preston Park House, South Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 6SB, United Kingdom United Kingdom Company No. : 6032852 VAT No. : 900 3839 48 Rittman Mead America, Inc. Registered Office : 3605 Sandy Plains Road, Suite 240-404, Marietta, GA 30066, USA Rittman Mead Oceania Pty Ltd. Registered Office : 8/196, North Road, Brighton East, Victoria, 3187, Australia Australian Company No. : 149 458 935 Rittman Mead Consulting Pvt Ltd. #101 Evoma Business Center, 82, Borewell Road, Whitefield Bengaluru, Karnataka 560066 INDIA

2010-2011 Rittman Mead Consulting.

Privacy Policy

E: info@rittmanmead.com

Website Design & Build: tymedia.co.uk

Ins erted from <http://www.rittmanmead.com/2012/02/obiee-11-1-1-6-now-available-for-download-release-highlights/>

Unfiled Notes Page 4