Visual Analyzer On-Prem vs BICS vs DVD - Hierarchical Coloring

Question

In this document (which is specifically related to BICS) https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/bi-cloud/bilug/working-color.html#GUID-C4326955-9458-4845-B70D-4D9AB3D8F75C , I see this regarding Hierarchical Coloring: "Click the visualization that you want to adjust the hierarchical palette for. In the visualization’s toolbar, click Menu, select Color, and then select Hierarchical Palette to turn this option off."

So it appears that Hierarchical Coloring is available in VA in BICS.  It is also present in my version of Data Visualization Desktop.  However, it is not present in my on-premise version of Visual Analyzer (installed with OBIEE 12.2.1.2.0, Build 20160923.092103).  Instead, my VA options appear exactly as shown in this document: https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/12212/biee/BIVUG/BIVUG.pdf

So I presume that my VA is working properly, per the documentation. But that certainly is disappointing to my "customers" who saw the DVD demo and loved the hierarchical coloring option.  We are having trouble imagining any technical reason that this feature would have been included in the cloud version but not in the on-prem version.  It seems to us that VA is VA, no matter whether its host computer is in Data Center "A" and accessed remotely in the Cloud, or is in Data Center "B" down the hall from us.  Indeed, the two machines could, theoretically, be sitting side-by-side in the same room.

Well anyway, here is the question: Can we, in general, anticipate that product features such as this one will eventually possess matching functionality across all platforms?

Mark.Thompson · Answer

Yup.  Reminds me of a classic line from the 1976 movie 'All the President's Men': "Follow the money."

Gianni Ceresa · Answer

You aren't missing anything ... technically speaking ...

From a technical point of view there isn't really a huge issue making it impossible to align the features of the tool in all the versions (cloud & on-prem).

There is some extra work for testing: cloud is on a highly controlled environment, they manage every single setting of the OS etc., on-prem is already a different story, so there is some testing to validate it works on all the versions of on-prem (linux, Windows, AIX).

But it's mainly a sales strategy: first delivery to cloud trying to get people moving to cloud to always have the latest possible things. If you decide to stay on-prem you accept to come second.

Mark.Thompson · Answer

Thanks, Gianni.  Good answer.  I understand the theory.

Still, in practice, it seems to me that if there is an enhanced version of OBIEE that they can (and do) unzip and install on their machine "A", it should be possible to make it available for us to download and install on our machine "B".  If the software is good enough for Oracle's BICS customers, then it is production quality, and should be good enough for on-prem customers as well.  I guess I must be missing something.  Whatever that "something" is, it isn't obvious to me.

Thank you again.  Correct Answer awarded.