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OBIEE/BI Publisher 12c - Bypass Login Possible?

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chillychin
chillychin Rank 6 - Analytics Lead
in Oracle Business Intelligence Applications

I recently upgraded from 11g to 12c, and am going through testing with my end users.

Apparently in 11g, my end users were able to "bypass" the login screen by using a certain URL

Namely this one

http://<hostname>:9704/analytics/saw.dll?bieehome&startPage=1&NQuser=<userid>&NQPassword=<xxxxxxxx>

So it looks like they fed the userid and password via the URL.

They were using this url bypass to display some reports on an internal intranet website for reporting, more specifically they were using this for BI Publisher.

I tested this URL for OBIEE and I see that it does indeed work in 12c. But they also have some reports in BI Publisher that they want the same functionality, and I cant seem to get it to work.

I tried using this URL in BI Publisher

http://<hostname>:9502/xmlpserver/servlet/home&NQuser=<userid>&NQPassword=<xxxxxxxx>

And I get an error 404.

I am assuming that since the OBIEE 12c URL works, something similar should work for BI Publisher

Has anyone tried doing this for their BI Publisher?

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Answers

  • Gianni Ceresa
    Gianni Ceresa Mod 
    chillychin wrote:I am assuming that since the OBIEE 12c URL works, something similar should work for BI Publisher

    Your assumption is wrong.

    It always worked only for /analytics, from 10g already if not wrong. It never worked for /xmlpserver (Publisher).

    Publisher in OBIEE 12c (like in 11g) uses the OBIEE (fusion middleware) security, so you first need to login and have a valid session in OBIEE to then be able to use Publisher.

    The username and password in the URL is a nQuire functionality (nQuire > Siebel > Oracle), the name of variables starts with "nQ" for that reason. Publisher isn't a nQuire tool, it is now packaged next to OBIEE and can use the same permission framework, but it's still something else.

    So to view a Publisher report bypassing the login you will have to display the publisher report in an OBIEE page and link to that one, or will also probably work if you link to an OBIEE page which then redirect to the Publisher report (because OBIEE will take the values from the URL to make the login before to display the page and execute the javascript doing the redirect).

  • Sherry George
    Sherry George Rank 7 - Analytics Coach

    Is the BI publisher integrated with OBIEE? And what is the BI publisher security model?  If it is "Oracle Fusion Middleware"  then you could use NQuser and NQpassword parameter to pass the credentials.

    Example:

    http://demo.us.oracle.com:7780/analytics/saw.dll?bipublisherEntry&Action=open&itemType=.xdo&bipPath=%2Fnew_folder_1%2Ftest_rpt.xdo&path=%2Fshared%2Fnew_folder_1%2Ftest_rpt.xdo&NQuser=weblogic&NQpassword=Admin123

  • chillychin
    chillychin Rank 6 - Analytics Lead

    Hi Gianni

    Im not privy to 10g, but I do see in the 11g enviroment that it did work for /xmlpserver - At least in my enviroment

    This is an article I found while searching for 12c documentation that speaks to the BI Publisher enviroment: https://nerdsofobiee.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/bi-publisher-accessing-reports-using-url/

    Though the article does not specify which version of BI Publisher.

    In our 11g enviroment I can use this URL: http://<servername>:9704/xmlpserver?&id=bip_oipa_reader_test&passwd=87654321 - This then brings me to the home page of BI Publisher without needing to log in, so it appears to work to me.

    Im not sure if there is some "magic" happening some where that enables this, but I do see it works in 11g, I would be curious to see if anyone else can do the same thing.

    But you do bring up a very interesting idea - it totally glazed over me that a BI Publisher report can be displayed in OBIEE - And since the OBIEE GO URL, or bypass page works then I can try giving that a shot.

  • chillychin
    chillychin Rank 6 - Analytics Lead

    I admit I am not familiar with BI Publisher, so I hope I make sense talking about it.

    The BI Publisher was installed with OBIEE, so I am guessing it is integrated.

    Where/how would I find the BI Publisher security model? Im guessing again it should be "Oracle Fusion Middleware" since it was installed along with OBIEE.

  • Sherry George
    Sherry George Rank 7 - Analytics Coach

    You can find 'BI Publisher security model' under Administration-->Manage BI Publisher-->Security configuration.

    And yes,  most probably you have' Oracle Fusion Middleware'. So give my example a try and see if it works.

  • chillychin
    chillychin Rank 6 - Analytics Lead

    Hi Sherry

    Your example does get me a lot closer! I do have an additional question or two

    If I wanted to "just" show the dashboard - Minus the header with all the links how would I go about doing it?

    For example if I want to just display the report itself

    I tried searching around for options to format the URL but I cant seem to get any working

  • Gianni Ceresa
    Gianni Ceresa Mod 
    chillychin wrote:Im not privy to 10g, but I do see in the 11g enviroment that it did work for /xmlpserver - At least in my enviroment

    Interesting, I'm kind of sure Publisher wasn't cooperative in 11g

    That's why it didn't shock me that it doesn't work in 12c, and it can even get worse if you enable the "fake" SSO to not have to login again when using Visual Analyzer. That one make things even worse (at least so far, looks like a kind of first attempt to manage the authentication).

  • chillychin
    chillychin Rank 6 - Analytics Lead

    Hi Gianni

    My apologies - I mixed up the URL when I was doing testing, but in BI Publisher there was a way (up to 11.1.7 at least) to pass in username and password through the URL

    I finally found the blog post here

    http://optimalbi.com/blog/2014/06/23/undocumented-features-are-great-if-you-can-find-them/

    Going back to my question quickly - Does anyone know how to remove the header bar and ONLY show the dashboard if I were to display a BI Publisher report in an OBIEE dashboard?

    My end users had the BI Publisher report displayed in an iFrame previously, trying to get the same functionality.

  • Gianni Ceresa
    Gianni Ceresa Mod

    Ok, so for Publisher in 11g it's maybe also related on the security implementation.

    For the header/footer of OBIEE I don't guess you can hide them, so your better option is the one Sherry George suggested (and the linked blog too): the GO url. Because it's an OBIEE (/analytics) link it will accept your nQUser & nQPassword.

    Doesn't cover your needs?

  • chillychin
    chillychin Rank 6 - Analytics Lead

    The GO URL does work and gets me a lot closer - The only issue is that my end users embedded their reports on their dashboards.

    From what I can see if I use the GO URL it by passes the login page (perfect) BUT it then shows me the OBIEE interface - The header, footer, the links to the catalog/home etc

    Im trying to get rid of this highlighted section

    pastedImage_0.png

    I was hoping to JUST show the dashboard/report contents as the report is embedded into an iFrame