Need actual path/location

Question

Hello Experts,

I have to move the list of reports from one environment to version control tool.

Path provided by enduser are like:

ex:

Report path:

/shared folders/Logistics reports/Subject Area Contents/Logistics/Main dashboard/Invoiced/Invoiced_details_reports

but when we check the catalog present on version control tool it has a path like:

Actual Location on version control tool:

/shared folders/Logistics reports/_filters/Logistics/Main dashboard/Invoiced/Invoiced_details_reports

Please let me know is there a way we can find the actual path for moving the report as the number of reports to migrate is quite large in number.

Hope I am able to explain.

Thanks & Regards.

Abhi

Gianni Ceresa · Answer

You are looking at the wrong problem. You are trying to solve something which can't be solved because of OBIEE catalog not being a bunch of folders and files but an entity by itself.

3521884 wrote:My main concern is that if someone give me list of objects having the path listed as it is visible in GUI, how one can get the corresponding list of actual path that is saved on disk.

And how do you get the real path/filename of those objects as that's what you will have to save them as on disk?

You are doing a little mistake in the whole process: you are taking the OBIEE catalog from a filesystem point of view. Like if it was just files and folders.

This is not true.

The OBIEE Catalog on disk has to be taken as a blackbox: it is maybe stored as files and folders, but they aren't just files and folders. There is a whole layer of metadata and logic which is applied by OBIEE. This is why you always have to use the OBIEE tools like the Catalog Manager to deal with the catalog operations (except if you perfectly know how the catalog is built and works, and therefore you will be able to play at the filesystem level as you know what you are doing).

If you get the paths you see in the GUI: you can't store things in your version control with those paths as this will make them impossible to restore. If you get the paths from the disk, you can restore those files from the versioning system freely (as long as always work on the object and the related .atr).

Your solution is to fully understand how the catalog work, all the files and folders which have a different name on disk compared to GUI etc. This isn't documented, you generally get there after some years digging in the catalog.

User_B7ZTH · Answer

Hello Gianni,

Yes you got it correct what I am taking about is the Path which we is visible in GUI and actually saved on Disk are different But they represent the same thing.

My main concern is that if someone give me list of objects having the path listed as it is visible in GUI, how one can get the corresponding list of actual path that is saved on disk. I tried to generate the report from catalog manager but it is giving me the path same as what it is shown in GUI.

However I am still exploring other option present in catalog manager to generate the corresponding path of disk, let me know if you experts has any idea or out of functionality for the same.

Big thanks to all for your response.

Br.

Abhi

Gianni Ceresa · Answer

Sorry but I don't get what you are asking ....

If you took paths from the filesystem, there are many other things which are different on disk than what you see in the GUI, not just "_filters" being nicely shown as "Subject Area Contents".

So what is your concern with the real path of things in the catalog? How are you moving them?

Any version control solution will not be aware of the OBIEE catalog logic, it will not know how to rename some filenames to the real names of things, it will not know what the dashboard.layout file is for. OBIEE does, it will display different names and will know that a folder containing a folder containing a dashboard.layout file is not a folder by a dashboard etc.