Blog

by Rushendra Prasad

This blog post offers an insight into the features and functionalities of Google Data Studio and compares it with popular data analysis tools like Tableau, QlikView and new entrants like Power BI.

Disclaimer: This article and all features assessed are as on Sep, 2017 and subject to modifications / enhancements by Google.

by Rushendra Prasad

To read part 1 of this blog post, please click here.

This blog post discusses how to integrate Oracle BI server and make use of the existing Subject Areas built on RPD in Tableau desktop workbook as Data Source.

This is applicable for 8.2, 8.3, 9.0 and later versions.

by Rushendra Prasad

This blog post discusses how to integrate Oracle BI server and make use of the existing Subject Areas built on RPD in Tableau desktop workbook as Data Source.

This is applicable for 8.2, 8.3, 9.0 and later versions.

by Balaswamy Kaladi

In today’s world of big data, analytics, and data warehousing, data volumes continue to grow, seemingly only matched by businesses’ appetite to exploit data for commercial advantage, and do so ever more quickly.

Historically, to deal with the kind of large data volumes that are now becoming commonplace, expensive and heavyweight technologies from vendors such as Teradata, Netezza and Vertica were needed. These typically cost millions of dollars, and required hardware, software, and consulting.

by Santoshkumar Lakkanagaon

What are the different types of Cassandra distributions available?

• Open Source Apache Cassandra (GitHub)
• DataStax Community Edition (free for development and production)
• DataStax Enterprise with OpsCenter, DevCenter and Drivers (free for development and license required for production)
  

by Santoshkumar Lakkanagaon

Modern Big Data requirements include:

• Multi-region availability
• Fast and reliable response
• No single point of failure
• Scalability
  

Traditional relational databases (RDBMS) are not enough to meet these requirements because the relational model provides normalized schema, table joins and ACID compliance which causes a massive overhead for big data. In order to support these features, we need high-end systems which are not cost effective. Additionally, such systems often require substantial downtime.

by Jeremiah Johnson

Data scientists are master communicators.  They speak fluently with people in operations areas and those in information technology departments.  They understand technical jargon, business lingo and are information experts.  Unlike a jack-of-all-trades, who knows a lot but masters nothing, data scientists know plenty and often are experts in many fields.  Most importantly, they find solutions for business problems.

by Parul Singh

Teaching is a complex, multifaceted activity that often requires the instructors to juggle between multiple tasks and goals simultaneously. The following are the small but powerful set of metrics that can interpret workloads and instructor assignments to make a better decision for effective and efficient instructor planning for courses. This would also support budget, resource allocation analyses and decision-making. 

by Mangesh Dange

Oracle Big Data Discovery is a set of end-to-end visual analytic capabilities that leverage the power of Hadoop to transform raw data into business insight in minutes, without the need to learn complex products or rely only on highly skilled resources. 

Expert Team Focuses On Quickly Getting Companies To The Cloud

Newark, CA – March 4, 2015 - KPI Partners, a leading provider of business intelligence and data discovery services, today announced the formal launch of the KPI Partners Cloud Practice, a global team of experts that will assist companies with quickly adopting cloud technology.  They will do this by providing solutions and services such as quick start programs, systems implementation, systems integration, managed services, staff augmentation, and cloud applications.

NEWARK, CA -- 02/26/2015 -- KPI Partners today announced it has been selected as a Oracle Fast Track Program Partner for Big Data Discovery.

KPI Partners' Cloud-Based Reporting and Analytics Platform Honored for Innovation

NEWARK, CA -- 02/18/15 -- KPI Partners, the industry's leading provider of cloud-based business intelligence and data discovery services, today announced that its KPI Cloud Analytics for NetSuite solution has been honored as a finalist for the 2015 BIG Innovation Award.  KPI Cloud Analytics for NetSuite helps enable companies to gain maximum return from NetSuite ERP information quickly through dynamic reporting that contains powerful visualizations. 

On February 4th, KPI Partners was joined by representatives from Oracle for a webinar which profiled the reasons an organization may consider a migration from Hyperion Interactive Reporting/Brio to Oracle Business Intelligence Consulting Service (BICS).

by Ksheetij Dongre

Migrating Code from Development to Production in the Cloud

The cost of cloud migration is not cheap but the promise is that the company will acheive a significant return on investment over the long haul.  The objective of this article is to help us understand how to setup Development and Production environments in the cloud, specifically regarding these components of a data warehouse (DW):

by Jeremiah Johnson

With more and more of life taking place on the internet, it has become imperative to have a web presence if you want to stay relevant in today’s day and age.  Whether you are a small business owner that wants to branch out into the digital market, or you are one small piece of a very large enterprise puzzle, getting your information online has never been more important.

On December 11th, KPI Partners was joined by the Global Finance Team at Colorcon for a customer spotlight webinar which profiled the successes and challenges of the performance management solution at Colorcon.

by Donald Hammons

This article addresses the utility of the hybrid-agile delivery model designed to provide for rapid innovation, prototyping and deployment specific to new software product development and innovation.

by Potnuru Hatakesh

Adoption of "The Cloud" is growing significantly as more a enterprises start to see and experiencing the value in agility, scalability, and cost savings.

by Sid Goel

I often get this question from various IT people:  "Why do business analysts like fancy dashboards?"

Los Angeles, CA – November 5, 2014. KPI recently announced the launch of an internal expert services team for Oracle BI Cloud Services (BICS) that acts as a specialized advisory group for projects focused on this new technology.  The KPI Partners Oracle BICS Task Force can demonstrate real-world use case scenarios and an accelerated value-driven approach to cloud-based analytics.

by Myles Gilsenan

Financial managers in all industries need to be aware of the health of their organization as well as the health of the processes that enable sound financial management.  In this article, I will outline some basic metrics that can be used to identify and evaluate the health and efficiency of the accounting and finance function as well as the financial health of the organization.

While it is true that specific metrics can vary across industries, in this article we will address metrics and concepts that can be applied across most industries.

The metrics to be discussed will be broken up into the following categories:

by Naresh Meda

What Is A Level-Based Measure?

A level-based measure is a column whose values are always calculated to a specific level of aggregation. Here is an example of a level-based measure using a Products and Revenue table.  A level-based hierarchy is created for Products as follows:
                                                           
 
By default, when we drill down within the products hierarchy from Brand level to Product level, the corresponding Revenue drills down to Product level.

by Myles Gilsenan

I attended Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) 2014 recently with a focus on BI, Big Data and ERP. As usual there was no shortage of information. The Partner briefings were particularly helpful in getting some insight into how Oracle sees the future.  

by Ramesh Ponaganti

BI Applications Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) Human Resource Analytics provides the following new content as part of the release 11.1.1.7.1.

 by Shiva Molabanti

by Shiva Molabanti

Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS) - Every organization should carefully evaluate the tool, as well as its potential for end-user adoption.

In today’s technological landscape there’s an ever-accelerating demand for increased efficiency and effectiveness. An organization, before evaluating a new solution, must consider end-user adoption for every technology prior to implementation, particularly when the cost of deployment and training are often driven by the rate of user adoption.  

by Naresh Meda

by Shiva Molabanti

by Sid Goel

This week I have been in attendance at Oracle Open World where my focus has been on the Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) track.   The presentations have revolved around 2 primary themes: Cloud and Oracle Data Integrator (ODI).

by Darren Chilton

by Avinash Mohan

Exploring the different ways Tableau connects to data and whether dimensional modeling is necessary when using Tableau’s architecture.

Architecture

Tableau has two primary ways to connect to data sources and work with them as shown in this simplified architecture diagram shown below .

by Prashanth Ashwathram

Making a business intelligence (BI) project successful is a daunting task in itself not just because of the complexity and tools involved, but because it requires cooperation from different functional groups, multiple source systems, and gaining user acceptance from groups of users that are often resistant to change.

The challenges add on further when the BI projects are planned to be executed in an onshore-offshore model. There are obviously many positives and benefits from this approach which can make this model a highly successful provided we follow some of the best practices.

by Ron Cruz

One of the challenges facing our clients is a disjointed landscape for their customer-facing business intelligence tools.  This doesn’t happen in finance as everyone knows where the end product goes (CFO), nor does it happen much in product development.  When it comes to customer analytics, many companies struggle with disjointed systems and difficulty getting the data they want.  The sentence of, “I think we have that data….somewhere,”  is often uttered at companies that have these issues.

by Parul Singh

The need for robust reporting and a structured enterprise data warehouse for educational institutions is becoming a necessity.  This type of modern architecture empowers academic institutions with best-in-class reporting and analytic capabilities to increase faculty, staff and student productivity; streamline operations and institutional advancement; and ensure student success.

There are a few key star schemas that can aid universities and their stakeholders to make informed decisions and deliver a better student experience:

by Madan Thota

Endeca Information Discovery (EID) is a data discovery tool that helps business analysts to rapidly explore relevant data.  If you are already using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) and wish to reuse the BI data models from Endeca Information Discovery, here are the options.  The primary difference between both tools is that one is used for pre-defined analytics while the other is used for having a conversation with your data (analytics vs information discovery).  The overall goal for both approaches is to get the most value out of the data available.   

by Kumar Krishnaswamy

A quick Google search for “Tableau Data Security” returns a link to a Tableau knowledge base article for User Filters and Row Level Security.  The knowledge base article clearly lays out the options available for implementing data security – defined as the ability to control what data a user sees.  The goal here is to not regurgitate that content, but to examine each of the two data security options laid out by Tableau and determine how they fit various use cases in the enterprise context.

by Manohar Rana

Student Curriculum Analytics provides the critical information required to analyze, support, communicate and plan a university curriculum effectively.  The insight provided by this analysis can help different departments focus on the courses that require more attention, understand their student's enrollments patterns, and evaluate instructional staffing requirements.

San Jose, CA – May 21, 2014.  KPI Partners, a Platinum level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today announced it has achieved OPN Specialized status for Education and Research.

by Will Hutchinson

Since 2008, we have experienced a recession with a slow recovery.  Organizations have deferred capital spending in order to conserve cash.

by Puneet Aggarwal

Many customers have real-time reporting requirements that are analytic in nature. Essentially, they have a real-time report as a starting point for a more detailed real-time analysis which can go a few levels deep. Shown below is a generic example of one such requirement for Account Analysis.

Premier support for Oracle Discoverer is ending in June 2014 and if you're feeling the pressure to migrate to another solution, you're not alone. Moving to Oracle Business Intelligence and Oracle BI Applications, Oracle's newest flagship platform for business intelligence and decision support, is a decision facing many Discoverer customers.

Happy Halloween From KPI Partners

The team at KPI wishes you a safe and candy filled Halloween.  Here's a snapshot of all the October activity at KPI Partners:

by Shiva Molabanti

Prerequisites:

• OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1 (If your version of Oracle BI EE is not 11.1.1.7.1, download Patch 16556157: OBIEE BUNDLE PATCH 11.1.1.7.1 from My Oracle Support).
• To support Oracle BI Mobile App Designer with Oracle BI Web Catalog, Apply OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1 MLR Patch 17004920.
• Download Oracle BI Mobile App Designer Patch 17220944 from My Oracle Support.

Installation Steps:

1. Stop All OBIEE 11G services (Weblogic Admin Server, Managed Server and OPMN services).
2. Apply OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1 MLR Patch 17004920 using OPatch Utility.
3. Apply Oracle BI Mobile App designer Patch 17220944 using OPatch Utility.
4. Deploy the Oracle BI Mobile App Designer (MAD) manually using Weblogic Configuration Assistant as shown below.
5. Open Command prompt window and Navigate to: <MW_HOME>\Oracle_BI1\common\bin
6. Run "config.bat" to start the WebLogic Configuration Assistant Tool.

On welcome screen, select ‘"Extend an existing WebLogic domain" and click "Next."

Kusal Swarnakar, Co-Founder of KPI Partners, visits with Joel Borellis, Group Vice President of Partner Enablement at Oracle, on the set of Oracle PartnerNetwork Live during Oracle OpenWorld 2013.

KPI was offered the unique opportunity to be a featured guest as part of the first keynote presentation at Oracle OpenWorld. The audience included several thousand partners, customers, media members, and industry analysts. KPI is one of over 5,000 Oracle partners around the globe, so we were very appreciative of the invitation to participate.

by Sridhar Kasthuri

A key component to any Business Intelligence (BI) Architecture is the Extract, Translate and Load (ETL) process. The ETL process is typically scheduled on a daily basis and is capable of data movement from legacy systems into a data warehouse. It is also used to facilitate the work of the database administrators who connect different branches of databases as well as integrate or change the existing databases.

by Jaime Seagraves

The New York Police Department has developed what they are calling a hi-tech analytical dashboard tool that collects crime and event data around the city. This Domain Awareness System, known as “The Dashboard,” is helping the NYPD combat crime and terror on the streets.

by Shiva Molabanti

The Oracle Data Integrator platform integrates into the broader Fusion Middleware platform and becomes a key component of this stack. Oracle Data Integrator provides it's run-time components as Java EE applications, enhanced to fully leverage the capabilities of the Oracle WebLogic Application Server. Oracle Data Integrator components include the FMW exclusive features for Enterprise-Scale Deployments, high availability, scalability, and hardened security. 

by Veera Reddy Ramidi

This blog introduces and explains the detailed step by step process for executing the Domain Load to Business Analytics Warehouse. Here, we are illustrating for the Student information Analytics data using the new OBIA 11g which is supported only for PeopleSoft 9.0 Campus Solutions. This blog can be used similarly for any other Analytics using OBIA 11g.

by Sharath Venkataranga

The most common question faced by any ETL developer or a Data Warehouse project implementer is always related to performance. Whatever the tool may be, and however fast the job may be running, the end user will always desire something which is a little faster and quicker.

by Keith Mascarenhas

FSG is a report-building tool for Oracle E-Business Suite used for creating financial statements such as the income statement, trial balance, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. FSG reports typically are complex to build, difficult to maintain, and do not provide the modern analytical capabilities that exist with the Oracle Business Intelligence platform.

The BI Apps from Oracle present customers with a nice head start to getting their BI environment up and running. But for many customers, their user community demands lighting-fast speeds while running dashboards, reports and ad-hoc queries. 

by Shiva Molabanti

Version 11.1.1.7.0 of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) Supports Multiple-Source Session Variables

In addition to supporting regular session variables that are populated from one data source, Oracle Business Intelligence 11.1.1.7.0 also supports session variables that can be populated from multiple data sources. These multi-source session variables can be used in logical queries or in repository data filters and contain the union of values from the different data sources. There is no restriction on the number of values that the multi-source session variable can hold. To create a multi-source session variable, you first create row-wise initialization blocks for each source.

by Nancy Hamilton

Join me as I will be representing KPI University at KScope 2013, the Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) Conference, June 23 – 27 in the exciting city of New Orleans.  Register to attend one of our two hands-on BI labs featuring OBIEE 11g Analysis and Dashboards.  See you in New Orleans!

As part of the prestigious honor of being recognized with an Oracle Excellence Award for Specialized Partner of the Year, KPI Partners is mentioned in the most recent printed and online issue of Oracle Magazine.

by Kurt Wolff

It may be strange to be writing this with the intention of posting to a blog, but I thought someone should step back a minute and issue a few words of warning about information that can be found on the web about Oracle BI EE.

Oracle Exalytics was recently launched at Oracle's Open World Event, which was held during October in San Francisco. Despite the numerous of claims of product excellence and testimonies from former clients, guests at the event were largely left wondering about the $100,000+ product.  Since the product was largely unseen, it leaves many clients asking is Oracle's newest BI innovation, the self-described "BI Machine" an absolute necessity?

Several of Oracle's customers who've used the product seem to think so.  A key feature of the project that has been touted by Oracle enthusiasts is the product's ease of deployment. A current client of Oracle and Exalytics enthusiast, Nilson Group, which is based in Sweden, praised the software's ability to update on the back end, without causing any project delays. Allowing the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to run on the Exalytics software eliminates operations problems that would otherwise be present on other systems.

Another client, Thomas Reuters, praised the new in-memory feature of the program that allowed it to analyze a 10 billion row data set, due to the capacity for in-memory storage. For a customer without Exalytics that attempted this same feat on traditional hardware, it would be impossible.

The main features that have been praised include the 1TB of ram (Oracle claims it can use even more data to its memory management capabilities) and exceptional processing speed, which has been known to remarkably serve up to 10,000 individual program users at once. Despite it's success, Oracle's newest program is not the end-all be-all solution.  No piece of hardware can take the place of the strategical and visonary components that only expert human resources can supply.  

For business owners that are looking to this newest development to solve glitches and memory problems, it looks like there is a solution. However, one must also consider the expertise and strategic vision needed to develop complete solutions customized to an enterprise or industry.

Time will tell if the newest addition to Oracle's high-profile business tools is indeed a must for the BI community.

Living in a global, ever-expanding economy means there are more people interacting than every before. Consider retail giant Wal-Mart, for example. The company conducts over a million transactions with customers every hour. That may sound like a feat in and of itself, but the company also keeps records associated with those transactions.

Well, it was bound to happen. After all, since we live in an age in which meeting the love of your life is now as likely to be accomplished by how accurately you've completed an online dating questionnaire as anything else, is it really surprising that the same principle has begun to be used to determine educational outcomes too?

Late Sunday September 30th, all clients, partners, prospects, and friends were invited to join us for good times, good music, casino games, complimentary cocktails, and appetizers aboard the 100 foot luxury yacht. We transformed this yacht into a vegas-themed party spot for one special night.

So, your global enterprise has collected some data...  How do you start to make sense of all this raw data?

As part of a recent award win, we were asked to generate a short video that could be used as part of the various award ceremonies.   The objective was to capture, in less than a minute, the essence of KPI Partners... basically an extended elevator pitch with cool visuals.

KPI Partners Launches E-Book On Project-Based Decision Support Systems

BOSTON, MA – September 4, 2012 – There is a saying that if it cannot be measured, it cannot be managed. Traditionally, projects have used schedules and budgets to monitor progress. This only provides part of the answer. It does not address other variables.

KPI Partners Ranks #1480 On Inc. Magazine’s Annual Ranking Of The Fastest-Growing Companies In America

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – August 21, 2012 — KPI Partners, a a strategic data and business intelligence consultancy, today announced that the company was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000 list, a compendium of the most entrepreneurial and fastest growing companies in America. This is the company’s first year appearing on the list.

by Kurt Wolff

Suppose you have a series of datetime pairs in Oracle BI... The problem is to display the differences between DATE1 and DATE2 in days, hours, minutes, and seconds.

by Kurt Wolff

When you duplicate a table, you create a new physical table with a new name. If this table is involved in a query, the SQL FROM clause will list this table. If the table does not exist in the database, then an error will occur.

Creating an alias creates a copy of the metadata table object that will be referenced in SQL with a new alias name. The alias name in SQL, as it is for all tables, will be derived its metadata ID.

To see the table IDs in OBIEE metadata, use the Oracle BI Query Repository utility. Here are some physical tables (and aliases) in a repository that I’ve created. It’s the last five digits of the ID that will be used to create the table aliases in SQL.

by Kurt Wolff

Row level security (constraining a user’s view of the data to rows which meet pre-defined criteria) is a common requirement in OBIEE. This post will explore this topic, using a simple schema with a single fact table and three dimension tables, built around the theme of retail sales.

by Kurt Wolff

Suppose you have a dashboard with three pages (tabs). Suppose further that not every user should see all three tabs. Most users will see a limited set of the tabs – some will see two, some will see only one. You want to define web groups to cover all the possible combinations. How many web groups would you have to create?

What is Business Intelligence? Listen to a brief history of BI, where we've been, where we are now, and where we are going...

by Kurt Wolff

If you have tried to develop dashboards or coherent sets of reports as an analytic application, you have had to think about how best to structure a web catalog.

On March 6th, KPI Partners broadcast a webinar which demonstrated how organizations can dramatically improve the effectiveness of their sales people by analyzing Salesforce.com data with Oracle BI.

Don't let the name fool you. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is no lightweight.

KPI Partners Founder, Sid Goel, was recently quoted in a recent article regarding the release of Oracle Exalytics:

by Kurt Wolff

Stephen Few designed the Bullet Graph as a way to display measurements vs. goals or other benchmarks. The screen shot below shows bullet charts in the column “MTD & Proj Comp MAgo” (Month to Date and Projected Expense Compared to Month Ago).

by Kurt Wolff

An OBIEE dashboard designer recently asked how to turn a prompt for a single month into a filter for a range of months. For example, if the user selects “Aug” in the prompt, the results should include not just August but also the three months preceding and following August (i.e. May through Nov).

by Kurt Wolff

One of the tricky things for users of relational databases is forming queries without overstating (or understating) results as a consequence of table joins.

On January 10th, KPI Partners broadcast a webinar which took a deep dive into their exclusive pre-built solution for Manufacturing Analytics.  Pavan Nanjundaiah, KPI's resident expert on the subject, demonstrated how this solution can help existing customers of Oracle BI Applications further extend their decision support capability.

by Kurt Wolff

Linear regression is a statistical technique for drawing a line through a set of data points that “best fits” the data. It is a useful and standard technique for quantifying trends.

The experts at KPI Partners have completed a marathon schedule of webinars from the end of October through December.   In the event you missed an event, a recording from each of the webinars have been posted to the KPI Partners webinar archive.

by Kurt Wolff

One of the questions that comes up over and over again is how to show all periods in a query when facts don’t exist for all periods or how to show all products when facts don’t exist for all products.

by Kurt Wolff

[Note: the following discussion is based on OBIEE version 10.1.3.4.0 and Oracle XE version 10G, both running on Windows. The behavior of other versions of OBIEE could be different.]

by Kurt Wolff

Here’s a not uncommon scenario. You are designing a dashboard page with a report such as sales by customer. To show sales by customer, you design a report containing the CustomerName column so that facts are grouped by customer. You provide a multi-select prompt to allow the user to select which customer data to view. But you also want to provide the ability to view the data for all customers as a total, without grouping by customer.

KPI Partners has developed a pre-built analytic application specifically designed for manufacturing and costing processes.

Minneapolis, Minnesota – November 17, 2011 -- KPI Partners today announced the introduction of Manufacturing Analytics for Oracle BI, a solution developed for use with the Oracle Business Intelligence platform and the Oracle E-Business Suite Manufacturing modules. KPI’s Manufacturing Analytics enable any organization to monitor and analyze the manufacturing processes and costing details that exist within an organization.

by Kurt Wolff

Here is a technique for enabling the user to set join columns with a dashboard prompt.

by Kurt Wolff

The Ago() “time series function” can be used to show data for a  previous time period, as long as the previous time period corresponds to a level that has been defined in the period hierarchy. A typical period hierarchy containing day, month, quarter, and year levels would allow you to use the Ago function to construct measures showing data for day ago, month ago, quarter ago, year ago (or N days ago, N months ago, etc.).

by Kurt Wolff

Someone asked a question on a “Siebel Analytics” email group a few days ago that I thought was worth discussing briefly here. The question posed was how to put a date prompt on a dashboard and return data for that date and the next 30 days. The solution could not involve presentation or report variables, since these were introduced only in a later version of Siebel Analytics that the person who posed the question did not have.

by Kurt Wolff

There are times when you might want to visually present data directly in tables or pivot tables rather than create a chart view. For example, you may have too many values to show in a chart. Or the number of values returned by the query might vary, making the size of the chart sometimes too small to accommodate them all, sometimes too large. Or you may want to visually scroll up and down a table to compare values and would like a visual representation right there in the table.

The team of Sid Goel, Kusal Swarnakar, and Sid Singh collaborated on a webinar last week that covered the much misunderstood subject of Bookings, Billings, and Backlog Analysis.

by Kurt Wolff

I thought it would be worth exploring the interrelated topics of repository groups, web groups, system session variables,  Delivers, the SA System subject area, and My Account. 

On Sunday of Oracle OpenWorld week, guests joined KPI Partners on an exclusive full day winery tour through Napa Valley. Participants were transported via executive limo bus from San Francisco, provided tours of 3 Napa Valley wineries, and experienced a four-course lunch overlooking the hills of Napa.

On Monday evening, all clients, partners, prospects, and friends were invited to join us for good times, good music, complimentary cocktails and appetizers inside the Roundabout Theater @ Zeum.

Award Winning Business Intelligence Applications Solution Realized an ROI of $500 Thousand In The First Week

ORACLE OPENWORLD, San Francisco, CA – October 3, 2011 – KPI Partners, a member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, is honored to be selected as Oracle’s 2011 recipient of the North America Titan Award in the ‘Business Intelligence Application Solution’ category. The awards are presented on Tuesday, October 4th during the Oracle North America Partner & Titan Award Gala held at San Francisco’s City Hall.

KPI Partners has developed a pre-built analytic application specifically designed for standard repair processes.

San Francisco, California – October 2, 2011 -- KPI Partners today announced the introduction of Depot Repair Analytics for Oracle Business Intelligence, a solution developed for use with the Oracle Business Intelligence platform and the Oracle E-Business Suite Depot Repair module. KPI’s Depot Repair Analytics enable any organization to monitor and report on repair processes throughout the entire life cycle. Key analytical areas include Repair Orders, Estimates, and Shipping & Billing.

Oracle OpenWorld draws more than 45,000 attendees from 117 countries

San Francisco, California -- October 1, 2011 — KPI Partners, a leader in Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), will be attending and exhibiting at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 from October 2-6. Leadership from KPI Partners will be on hand to discuss the company’s exclusive pre-built analytical solutions for Oracle BI, their award-winning solutions, and their EPM/Hyperion practice.

By Harisha Pattela

To install and configure BI Composer for Oracle BI EE, use the following steps as a guide:

Step 1

Extend a Web Logic Server domain & to install BI Composer runtime implementation shared libraries:

1. Stop the Web Logic Server.
2. Launch the Configuration Wizard.
3. Select Extend an existing Weblogic domain, and then click Next.
4. Select the domain folder (for example, <mw_home>/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain), and then click Next.

By Kurt Wolff

When I read the questions people ask about data modeling on OBIEE forums, one that seems to come up frequently is what to do when you have fact tables that do not join to all dimension tables.

By Kurt Wolff

“Writeback” – presenting an Answers interface so that users can update data in database tables or insert new rows – first appeared in version 7.8.4. To use OBIEE’s writeback capabilities, there are several set up steps. While each one is simple and fairly straightforward, it’s easy to forget all the steps and where each one is located. This document contains the instructions in case you find yourself forgetting them. Since many people like to demo using Excel as a data source, it focuses first on using Excel. Later, an example using an Oracle table is discussed.

By Kurt Wolff

It is often convenient to set a number of session variables to capture date values that you use repeatedly in your queries. For example, if you have weeks that end on Saturday, you might want to have the date of the most recent Saturday in a session variable, called perhaps PREVIOUSSATURDAY. You can then use that session variable as the default date value in your queries – for example, “Periods”.”Date” = VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.PREVIOUSSATURDAY).

By Kurt Wolff

This post shows how you can use presentation variables to select a single value in a dashboard prompt and produce a result set that includes a range of values. For example, you could select a single year in a prompt and show data for that year and the preceding three years

SAN JOSE, CA -- February 10, 2011 -- KPI Partners, a leading provider of business intelligence technology solutions, today announced that the company will host 9 free workshops throughout western North America in March and April. The workshops are being conducted in partnership with Oracle Corporation and will feature Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11g and the Oracle BI Applications. OBIEE 11g is the most recent release of Oracle's leading business intelligence software application.

By Kurt Wolff

The OBIEE Answers (10g) user interface says to use "fmap" when referring to resources on the presentation server.

By Kurt Wolff

There are many times when it is very beneficial to pass the value of session variables (or report variables) into the SQL used to define a Select table in the physical layer. This allows the select statement to focus on just the data you want, rather than creating a view with potentially millions of rows and then subsequently applying a filter to that result set.

By Kurt Wolff

A common question is whether OBIEE can display a table and freeze the header “like you can in Excel”. OBIEE does not offer that feature out of the box, but you can do this (more or less) with the narrative view and the appropriate html.

By Kurt Wolff

In addition to familiar SQL aggregation functions such as Sum, Max, Min, Average, and Count, OBIEE also supports an aggregation function called “Aggregate”. This function is available for use in formulas written in Answers.

By Kurt Wolff

What is the formula behind a measure? What is the source of the column in the report? These kinds of questions could be handled in multiple ways. The data dictionary feature is one, although a common reaction to the data dictionary feature is that it’s more suited to IT than to the business users. Another way is to present a “tool tip” in Answers (the text of which comes from the Description property of the logical or presentation column in the metadata). However, many users do not have access to Answers or mainly encounter the columns while perusing reports in a dashboard.

New Oracle Business Intelligence Application Designed to Track Performance Throughout Project Life Cycles 

To help organizations gain greater insight into project performance, Oracle today introduced Oracle(R) Project Analytics, a new component of the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications, which monitors key project performance metrics and enables users to control project costs and improve project performance and profitability.

Oracle Project Analytics is one of two applications newly introduced with the general availability of Oracle BI.

ORACLE OPENWORLD, SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Oracle today announced that market-leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Value Added Resellers (VARs) and Systems Integrators (SIs) are supporting Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System. The growing ecosystem is playing a significant role in the worldwide adoption of Oracle's EPM offerings.