Oracle + Free? Wasn't an April Fools was it?

XMLP templates are just .rtf files (or .xls etc) with tags in them, so you should be able to use whatever Mac tool you would normally use for editing such files. Assuming that you mean XMLP because BIP and XMLP are two different things - XMLP is built into EBS, whereas BIP is a standalone product (although you need a full…

You might want to alter the rule to be based on dimensions and use Last() on the date and Sum() on other dimensions. http://www.wegobeyond.co.uk/blog/aggregation-based-on-dimensions-in-obiee

One thing to consider is whether archive logging has been switched off on the warehouse - it sometimes is due to the large amount of redo generated, particularly during full ETL's - and the fact that in the event of a failure it would often be quicker to just run a full ETL rather than doing a recovery.

Aside from using RLS, you can also use roles within OBIEE to restrict access on specific presentation columns. For example if you have a column "NI Number" you would double-click that column in the presentation area and select permissions. Then you would set your Authenticated User to No Access and specify only the…

I'd say it's possible to learn OBIEE using SampleApp, a decent book and some online tutorials. However as with anything, you only really learn it from using it - and that's using it in a real environment - not adding a "% Sales" column to a demo subject area. But so long as you can grasp basic modelling in the RPD…

Are you using Oracle BI Applications?

They're two different things - OBIA is content which is displayed via OBIEE, and populated using ODI (or Informatica for old versions). If you want to "learn OBIA" then you need to ask yourself what do you want to learn? ODI modelling? the subject areas themselves (in which case it helps to have a firm functional…

If you are doing anything other than simple RPD development you should have the Oracle InstantClient software installed on your client machine.

Have you an appropriate Oracle InstantClient install on your machine?

There's a BI Apps 7 one if you're interested in BIA, however that's pretty outdated now. Then again, so is OBIEE 11. There aren't any OBIEE exams that are "up to date".

When upgrading an RPD, there are generally two approaches you can take. 1) Try to merge your changes into the new RPD. 2) Diff the "out of the box" (OOTB) old version and OOTB new version, and patch those changes into your customized RPD and save as the latest version. The second option can often lead to less headache.

To implement this at the OBIEE level you generally use security filters (which link to EM roles) rather than database level VPD. Any particular reason for wanting to use VPD?

Ah - I see. I think you'd be into the realm of dragging in a hierarchical presentation column for each level (you just drag each level from the business model mapping into the presentation table) and then select the appropriate one dynamically.

If you can get the name of the starting column into a variable then you can just use that variable as your column formula. The variable will expand out to the column name, which will in turn display the appropriate value. So create a dashboard prompt which lets you select the value and sets a presentation variable for each…

Well, if you have two facts and you want to combine them, then they need to contain the same set of dimensions. Imagine you have two facts - cars and people. Cars have a num_wheels dimension and people have a hair_colour dimension. It makes no sense to report how many people have four wheels!! You can actually combine…

You CAN do it - however it's not a very extensible way to do it - ideally you'd have logic load the value into your table when populating the data model. At the very least put the logic in the RPD instead of in answers then it is easily reusable and modifiable. Or if you're on a later version of OBIEE you can use a saved…

Listagg just puts the values into a single column though - not separate columns. That makes them somewhat restrictive. If you want that, you might be able to use listagg within your analytic (I don't have access to a system to try it) but you first need to have evaluate/evaluate_aggr enabled - if you don't have access to…

Nothing native - you either have to use the Google API's, or if you're feeling a little adventurous then you can generate the HTML and style it manually - that gives you the greatest level of flexibility but it's a lot more involved. Basically you use nested HTML list objects and style the :before and :after selectors by…

have you checked the SQL that is being generated is actually meaningful? For example, is it using tables you don't expect it to? Sometimes if you get your logical model wrong then OBIEE will go "around the houses" to join two tables together, which usualyl manifests itself as you seeing a bunch of tables that aren't…