How to retrieve the custom column labels used in Analyses using Catalog Report

Question

Hello Experts,

We have OBIEE 12.2.1.4.0 on Linux. We used the Catalog Report to retrieve information about the dashboards and analyses. We are  trying to fill some gaps in the information retrieved through the catalog report , specifically around custom headings used for columns. We have a number of analyses where we have used custom column headings/labels and are trying to see how to bring in this information on the catalog report. Any guidance or suggestion is much appreciated.

Thank You

Rakesh

3822729 · Answer

Thanks Gianni for sharing your knowledge . Appreciate all your suggestions.

Gianni Ceresa · Answer

I would try to take an approach being not too tightly coupled with your current environment as you never know what the future looks like. Keep the unix scripting (with file system access to the OBIEE catalog objects) as plan B, and focus on using the OBIEE webservices for the catalog first. This way you could run your code even on a different box and connect to various environments to etc. Will be "cleaner".

Using https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/12213/biee/BIEIT/methods.htm#BIEIT286  you can navigate in the whole shared catalog (what happen in users personal folders is their problem) as long as you use an account with enough permissions, and get all the XML and you are then free to do whatever you want.

I do that for auditing etc, works really well and you are totally independent of the platform (you can use a older WSDL version if you want to cover 11g as well as 12c with the same code, the newer version of WSDL would give you 12c and OAC support).

3822729 · Answer

Hi Gianni

Thanks for your suggestion. I was to get the label/caption in the xml of the Analysis.

If I want extract all the custom headings in all the analyses in the system and load into a DB table and  model it for reporting data dictionary, what method would you suggest ? Unix scripting or any OBIEE 12c API ? Please advise.

Thanks

Rakesh