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OBIEE - How do you work with multiple developers on one RPD at once?

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chillychin
chillychin Rank 6 - Analytics Lead

I know this may be opening up a can of worms by asking this question but I was wondering - For users that have multiple developers working on one RPD, how are you going about this?

My team recently got merged into another team, and in the past our OBIEE development team has been only 1 or 2 active users at once.

So traditionally, we only had 1 or 2 developers that would be actively using the RPD for changes etc.

Now with our team merger, they were wanting to give more people access to the RPD for development purposes.

I have looked into the built in OBIEE MUDE three way merge method - And for the life of me I am unable to get it to work properly.

I would have RPD A, RPD A.1 and RPD A.2 - I add something in RPD A.1, and also add something in RPD A.2. When I try the three way merge I always get one final RPD that has either ONLY the change from RPD A.1 or ONLY the change from RPD A.2. I am unable to get the changes from BOTH RPD into one final RPD file. Not sure if I am doing something wrong there (if someone knew that would be appreciated).

I have read that the 3 way merge is a bit buggy/not recommended, which leads me to ask the question - How do you manage a multi developer enviroment?

Answers

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Rank 10 - Analytics Guru

    Whoa let me call in the rest of the bunch X-D

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Rank 10 - Analytics Guru

    Yes. THAT slide.

  • elb666
    elb666 Rank 2 - Community Beginner

    Hi Chilly

    Yes, this is a huge can of worms!  Yes MUDE is...not so good.  and Yes, the 3-way merge...leaves much to be desired.

    Even though we may not be "real" developers, we still should follow software development life cycle (sdlc) best practices, like using source control and having isolated development environments for each developer.

    Long story short, each developer needs his/her own sandbox environment in which to do development.  Development should be committed to a source control system (e.g., Git).  You can even use the source control system for merging (I haven't used the Admin tool to merge in at least 4 years!). 

    I have some resources on github linked to from obiee1.com, and you should feel free to join us at irc obihackers for discussion. It is a huge topic, one about which I am very passionate, and one that can't be covered in depth in the forum.

  • elb666
    elb666 Rank 2 - Community Beginner

    as an aside, I am STRONGLY opposed to committing the RPD binary in source control and am happy to argue ad infinitum about it!  just don't do it!

  • Joel
    Joel Rank 8 - Analytics Strategist

    Definitely one area that OBIEE can improve on. There is no one right way to do multi user development and no ideal way either. As @elb666 has said, there are channels outside of ODC where you can have this discussion in more detail.

  • Robert Angel
    Robert Angel Rank 8 - Analytics Strategist

    Sorry, one member banana from the bunch was missing.

    Personally - mude - no, never.

    Online mode - even more so, never!

    So practical compromise?

    Each person works on their own version of the rpd. We agree on some ground rules before hand to avoid clashes. When you have completed you deploy to dev and test it. When you have completed testing then you merge your changes into the test copy and retest there and then hand over to BAU to test in preprod (if you have that luxury) and deploy to live at their discretion. Merge changes done and checked by users and individuals so doing give the group a heads up to again avoid clashes.

    Ideal, no!

    Workable as long as we are all adults - yes!

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Rank 10 - Analytics Guru

    Image result for minions banana