Oracle BI EE JDE Cadran – Accelerate

Usage Tracking

Date: 25-11-2015 Author: Rick Brobbel

Last Edited: Rick Brobbel Cadran Consultancy b.v.

Project: Oracle BI EE Subject: Usage Tracking Version: v98

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Table of Contents

1 Usage Tracking ....................................................................................................................... 3 2

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Oracle BI - JDE Cadran - Accelerate – Usage Tracking

1 Usage Tracking

Usage Tracking is BI on BI and targets ICT-departments to bring insight in the usage of BI. It collects information about users, analytics, 1 dashboards, queries and subject areas and can then provide information about frequency, data sizes, query times and so on. 2 The summary is already logged by the BI-server in the logfiles and OEM-diagnostic pages and in the Administration panel (sessions): 3

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See http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/fmw/bi/bi1116/ut/ut.html for Tutorial. 1 This tutorial has been used to set up Usage Tracking in Oracle BI Server. 2 3

Component Explanation Screen Print Database Connection

The database connection used is the Oracle BI Repository database of the schema OBIEE_BIPLATFORM as it has been created by the RCU (Repository Creation Utility) during the installation of Oracle BI. The Connection Pool connects to this database where the table S_NQ_ACCT resides, which is the key table containing the information.

In the Write Back tab the value of Unicode Database Type has been left unchecked as it turned out that this would mash up the data in the table (prefixes like N' start to appear in text fields).

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Component Explanation Screen Print

Variables To make this connection flexible the connection parameters

(database, user, password) are using repository variables. The Connection Pool uses the variables to connect to the location of this database, the correct schema and user and password.

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Component Explanation Screen Print Physical Layer

In the physical layer aliases have been created on this single table to support either Facts and Dimensions. The star schema is fairly straight forward.

Logical Layer In the logical layer multiple dimension tables with

hierarchies have been created to support the various corners to access all metrics. Multiple facts (base and derived) with their specific aggregations have been created. In all Logic Table Sources the following filtering has been in applied in the Content - WHERE - clause:

"BIRepository".""."OBIEE_BIPLATFORM"."BI_UT_FACT_S_NQ_ACCT_UsageTrackingFacts"."SUBJECT_AREA_NAME" <> 'UT'

This prevents the queries on Usage Tracking to be included in the statistics. Therefore Usage Tracking itself is not tracked.

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Component Explanation Screen Print Logical Layer Logical Table Sources

The Time Dimension has been purified to Year - Quarter - Month - Start Date - Start Time. All redundant attributes (such Week, Ran, etc) and references to End Date and End Time were removed in order to support better working of zoom-in or drill-down and for ago-functions.

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Component Explanation Screen Print

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Component Explanation Screen Print

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Component Explanation Screen Print

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Component Explanation Screen Print Presentation Layer

The components of the Presentation Layer have been copied from Oracle BI SampleApp.

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Component Explanation Screen Print Oracle Enterprise Manager

Configured to the letter according to the instructions in http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/fmw/bi/bi1116/ut/ut.html. Our specifics are the reference to the correct Connection Pool and database schema as configured in the Repository File.

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Analytics & Dashboards

All Analytics Queries are prefixed to bypass caching in order to be real time always:

SET VARIABLE DISABLE_CACHE_HIT=1;

The database tables involved (S_NQ_ACCT and S_NQ_DB_ACCT) will grow over time. Purging might be in place. This can be achieved by periodically applying the following scripts:

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DELETE S_NQ_DB_ACCT WHERE START_TS < '01-APR-2014'; -- SET THE AGING DATE HERE BY WHICH YOU WANT TO PURGE DELETE S_NQ_ACCT WHERE START_TS < '01-APR-2014'; -- SET THE AGING DATE HERE BY WHICH YOU WANT TO PURGE

The table S_NQ_DB_ACCT has children for the S_NS_ACCT. They are related by entry ID. The S_NQ_ACCT.ID = S_NQ_DB_ACCT.LOGICAL_QUERY_ID. These are related and kept integer in the database. That means that you can only delete records from the S_NQ_ACCT that has no children in the S_NQ_DB_ACCT. The above DELETE-statement does not take this into account. When this becomes problematic you need to delete records in the S_NQ_DB_ACCT based on date first and then from the S_NQ_DB_ACCT based on ID does not exist in LOGICAL_QUERY_ID.