OBIEE 11.1.1.9.0 Out NOW!

To download, click here!

These are the some of the new features available with OBIEE 11.1.1.9.0. I have highlighted extremely useful ones in indigo, and you’ll probably say “OMG, FINALLY!!!”.

Answers and Dashboards

Scorecard and Strategy Management

This release provides the ability to specify the number of decimal places to include in scores.

Dashboards

This release provides the ability to create custom export layouts for exporting dashboard content to Excel.

Managing Accounts

This release provides enhancements that enable you to replace account entries in the Access Control List (ACL) and to manage Unresolved Accounts.

Selection Steps

This release provides the ability to use variables to override values in selection steps.

Export Functionality

This release includes the following enhancements to the export functionality:

1. New and changed components in the “Print & Export Options dialog,” including:
   1. New options in the Orientation component to specify the orientation for PDF and Powerpoint.
   2. New options to specify whether to include charts, images and formatting.
   3. New option to specify whether to wrap text in columns.
   4. New option to limit column width.
   5. The default value for the Print Rows component has changed to All.
2. The page break options have been renamed to Each member of all columns (previously Innermost Column) and Each member of first column (previously Outermost Column in the “Section Properties dialog” and the “Sections Formatting dialog: Display Options tab.”
3. When you export a column that includes an image to Excel, the extra blank column that previously appeared will no longer appear.
4. The Format component in the “Agent editor: Delivery Content tab” now includes the Excel 2007+ value.
5. The Export menu no longer includes the Excel 2003 and Powerpoint 2003 options.
6. When you export a column whose data format is set to Percentage, the column is now exported as a percent format. (In previous releases, the column was exported as a custom format. Then, in Excel, when you changed the format from custom to percentage, Excel multiplied the value by 100 and displayed the result with a percent symbol, which changed the data.)

Enhancements to Analyses

This release provides, for analyses, the ability to:

1. Initiate a search within the subject areas that are displayed in the Subject Areas pane. See “Subject Areas pane.”
2. Save columns to the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog for reuse in other analyses.

Metadata Repository Builder

Whole Rpd Checkout Option Added to Multiuser Menu

If you need to check out an entire repository rather than using projects for multiuser development, you can use the Whole Rpd Checkout option.

Improvements to Aggregate Persistence

This release provides the following aggregate persistence improvements:

1. The Oracle BI Summary Advisor wizard now includes the Use Surrogate Keys field which is selected by default. Selecting this option improves the performance of surrogate key creation and allows aggregate persistence to create aggregates for levels with non-unique level keys.
2. Aggregate persistence auto-corrects, or hardens, level keys that are not unique.
3. Aggregate persistence creates aggregates for logical dimensions with unbalanced (ragged) and skip-level hierarchies.
4. Aggregate persistence generates chronological keys for time levels without chronological keys for which aggregates are to be created. When the chronological keys are generated, a new column is added to the physical dimension aggregate table to store the chronological key values. A new logical column is created in the logical table of the time dimension.
5. The delete aggregates statement has been enhanced to delete the logical key and logical column created when chronological keys are generated by aggregate persistence.
6. Aggregate persistence can now store actual column values counted on distinct values, which allows aggregates with count distinct measures to serve queries for these measures at higher grains. The Aggregate Persistence wizard now included the Persist ‘Count Distinct’ measures as raw values option which when selected appends the as_raw_values clause to all valid count distinct measures specified.
7. The Summary Advisor command line utility (nqaggradvisor) is available to generate an aggregate specification script that you can then run to create the aggregates. The nqaggradvisor utility is only available if you are running Oracle Business Intelligence on the Oracle Exalytics Machine.

Initialization Block Written in JSON Syntax

This release provides the ability to use variables to override values in selection steps. A variable used to override selection steps must use an initialization block with its initialization string written in JSON syntax.

Translation Keys

Translation keys have been added to all presentation objects. The translation key is automatically populated and by default it matches the presentation object’s name; however, you can modify the translation key. When you externalize display names in the Presentation layer and run the Externalize String utility, the results contain the translation key.

New Administration Tool Options

Two new Administration Tool options have been added: Display Translation Key in the presentation tree and Edit presentation names.

Script Added to Upgrade DataDirect Drivers

Customers using DataDirect drivers and upgrading to Oracle BI EE 11g Release 11.1.1.9 must use the new script to upgrade to the DataDirect drivers required by Oracle BI EE 11.1.1.9. This upgrade must be done on each server running DataDirect with Oracle BI EE.

Cloudera Impala Supported

Oracle BI EE now supports Cloudera Impala as a database. The DataDirect Connect ODBC driver needed to connect to Impala is now provided.

Access to Hyperion Planning Data Sources

Oracle BI EE now supports Hyperion Planning as a data source.

Expanded Oracle 12c Database Support

This release provides support for the following Oracle databases: Oracle 12c Database In-Memory, Oracle 12c Database on Exadata, and Oracle 12c Database In-Memory on Exadata. This release also provides Oracle BI Server support for the compression, Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression (EHCC), and in memory Oracle database features.

New features for System Administration

New Properties for Full-Text Search

New properties have been added to enhance full-text searching.

New or Enhanced Configuration Elements

New or enhanced configuration elements for the instanceconfig.xml file are available:

1. Configuring Export — The following elements are available to configure for export:
   1. Orientation
   2. DataValue
2. Configuring for Graphs and Gauges — The DefaultWebImageType element now supports the html5 format for rendering images.
3. Configuring Settings for Fetching Data for Table Views, Pivot Table Views, and Trellis Views — The DefaultFreezeHeadersWidth and Default FreezeHeadersHeight elements are available to specify the default width and height of table views, pivot table views, and trellis views that use scrolling as the method to browse data.
4. Enabling the Ability to Export Dashboard Pages to Oracle BI Publisher — The EnableDashPageExport element has been enhanced to include the ability to export dashboard pages to BI Publisher for custom export layouts as well custom print layouts.

New NQSconfig.INI Settings

The following configuration parameters have been added to the NQSconfig.INI file.

• DEFAULT_JOBQUEUE_SIZE_PER_THREAD
• ENDECA_SERVLET_URL
• INIT_BLOCK_TABLE_NAME
• INIT_BLOCK_CONNECTION_POOL
• MEMORY_COMPACT_PERIOD_IN_SECONDS
• NUM_INIT_BLOCK_THREADS_PER_USER
• SUPPORT_ANALYTICAL_WORKSPACE_TARGETS

Debugging Agents Using Fusion Middleware Control

Agent log entries are now written to the scheduler log file, and are visible using Fusion Middleware Control.

New Features for Security

New Privileges

The following new privileges were added to the Presentation Services Administration page:

• Add EVALUATE_PREDICATE Function
• Save Column

New Features for Integration

SchedulerService Web Service

Oracle Business Intelligence includes a SchedulerService Service.
Methods were added for this new web service.