Analytics Software

OBIEE 11g was launched today in London so I thought I post my views:

- OLAP Analytics on the web from any data source: This looks very interesting but my guess is that it won't perform properly unless a proper OLAP cube supports the aggregations.
- Massive OEM integration for configuration, maintenance and deployment: Very promising, a bit worried on the change control side of things, need to be sure the OEM permissioning model supports read-only accounts, controlled Prod changes, etc. Not too convinced it will cater for everything we do. On the positive side the transaction ID on all logs to follow a user request all the way through all the BI modules is a great thing to have. Also all logs now exposed on OEM. It's good to see they have addressed one of the main issues with OBIEE, the configuration and log files hell!
- Full support for ragged hierarchies: This is a long awaited issue. It seems to be implemented in the right way. They even support ragged hierarchies in prompts.
- Following Oracle's BEA acquisition WebLogic is now the de facto J2EE OBIEE Web App Server: We don't use WebLogic may want to move to it to be on a full Oracle platform but there might be some licensing issues. There is some tight security integration with WebLogic so using other J2EE Web App servers might imply some functionality loss.
- New thin client for BI Publisher: Finally BIP gets a web thin client to be able to build pixel perfect reports. We are not using BIP at the moment but this opens the door for future use giving that it will not require any office plug-ins that don't work over SSO.
- Support for multiple instances of OBIEE in the same server: This was not mentioned in the presentations but I did ask a couple of the Oracle Product Managers and they assured this is included in 11g. They said that the new installer will take care of all the port configuration for you and you can have n number of OBIEE instances in each server. We shall wait and see, but very promising as well as we could get rid of all the OBIEE VMs we have due to Oracle not supporting multiple OBIEE instances on the same logical server.
- New for dashboards are KPIs, scorecards, Actions and workflows: This looks very good but I don't think there will be much use for us, at least not initially.
- _"Seamless" upgrade to 11g_: The installer promises to take care of all the upgrade tasks, I doubt it will do everything we have configured, we shall see.

What I didn't like:*

- A lot of the slides and white papers didn't focus on the 11g features and showed things currently available in 10g.
- Two of the demos failed/crashed while they were presenting them, so doesn't look to be 100% ready yet...
- No announcement on the availability of 11g yet. How can they launch a product without a product launch date? Allegedly it be out within 1-2 months.

Collection of documents and material from the launch:*

OEM Management Short Flash Demo
http://www.oracle.com/pls/ebn/swf_viewer.load?p_shows_id=8910854&p_referred=FlashISeminar

OLAP Analytics Short Flash Demo
http://www.oracle.com/pls/ebn/swf_viewer.load?p_shows_id=8910853&p_referred=FlashISeminar

Actions Short Flash Demo
http://www.oracle.com/pls/ebn/swf_viewer.load?p_shows_id=8910843&p_referred=FlashISeminar

Launch Event Webcast (2hs)
http://www.oracle.com/oms/businessintelligence11g/webcast-075573.html

OBIEE 11g New Feature - Hierarchy Columns
http://blogs.oracle.com/robreynolds/2010/07/obiee_11g_new_feature_-_hierar.html

OBIEE 11g Feature: Chart Zoom
http://blogs.oracle.com/robreynolds/2010/07/obiee_11g_feature_chart_zoom.html

OBIEE 11g New Feature: Chart Sliding
http://blogs.oracle.com/robreynolds/2010/07/obiee_11g_new_feature_chart_sl.html

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Technical Overview (55 pages)
http://www.oracle.com/us/obiee-11g-technical-overview-078853.pdf

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g Data Sheet (5 pages)
http://www.oracle.com/us/bi-enterprise-edition-plus-ds-078848.pdf

Oracle Business Intelligence BI Publisher 11g Data Sheet (3 pages)
http://www.oracle.com/us/bi-publisher-ds-080054.pdf

Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management Data Sheet (3 pages)
http://www.oracle.com/us/scorecard-strategy-management-ds-078849.pdf

Some screen shots:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oracle_images/page2/

Oracle Press Release
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/143363

Enjoy!