OBIEE 11g is now available to the general public!

The much anticipated new release of OBIEE 11g was made available last weekend. Oracle has been discussing this product and the conversion of OBIEE and Hyperion on their product roadmap for a while and it has finally come to fruition. While there is certainly more to come in terms of this integration, Oracle has taken giant steps forward with this release of OBIEE.

Guident attended an exclusive Partner Briefing in Redwood Shores, the launch event in NYC and has been digesting the new features and functionality to understand its application for our customers. In short, we are impressed with this release and excited about the possibilities with OBIEE 11g.

Key features of this release include:

• User Interface – the new 11g user interface is more intuitive and easier to use as it is now task oriented as opposed to product module oriented.
  
  
• Improved Visualization - Graphing and Mapping – 11g takes advantage of a new graphing engine, shared by the entire Fusion suite, providing a broader range of visually appealing, interactive charts and graphics. 11g also includes integration of GIS maps into the analytics through the use of Oracle MapViewer and Navteq map data.
  
  
• Integration with Hyperion – 11g makes it easier than ever to report from an Essbase cube and to push data into an Essbase cube. It also provides calculation capabilities and hierarchical analytical capabilities that were previously only available with an OLAP tool.
  
  
• Action Framework – 11g provides a revolutionary ability to move from insight to action through the use of richer guided analytics capabilities. 11g enables the seamless integration of external processes (e.g. SOA and BPEL workflow) within a BI analytic object. (e.g. call a process to place a Credit Hold directly from a report of Days Sales Outstanding).
  
  
• Scorecarding – 11g provides new capabilities to provide strategy maps, cause and effect diagrams, and track targets, actual and variances for KPIs.
  
  
• Smooth Upgrade – 11g requires a relatively easy upgrade as opposed to a full migration process.

Guident is beginning right away to work with our customers in planning out 11g upgrades, demonstrating the capabilities, and determining the best means for taking advantage of the new features provided. Stay tuned for upcoming webinars on these new features from Guident in the near future. Call us for any information or demonstrations of OBIEE 11g.

Multi-Developer OBI EE Environments

In an environment with more than two or three OBI EE developers, it becomes increasingly difficult to coordinate and control code changes and updates to the OBI EE catalog, repository, and BI Publisher XMLP content. The larger the development team, the more likely the chance of two developers updating the same report and inadvertently overwriting each other’s work.

Often, some type of control is enforced by dividing the content into separate areas of responsibility. For example, developer 1 is responsible for maintaining the repository, developer 2 is responsible for all accounting reports, and so on. However, this approach makes resource utilization planning difficult for project managers since work-loads are never equally distributed across the areas of responsibility.

Since OBI EE has no built-in source code control capability, one has to look for third party software that can add this capability to an OBI EE development environment. There are several options including Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, CVS, and Tortoise Subversion (TortoiseSVN), which is an open source version control tool that can be downloaded for free at http://tortoisesvn.net/.

Regardless of the tool, the solution boils down to version control on the OBI EE content files as depicted in the diagram below.

Developers run local instances of the OBI EE environment on their own workstations. All files and subfolders in the OBI EE web catalog folder, the BI Publisher XMLP folder, and the repository files are placed under source code control in a central master repository. Each workstation has a local repository that is synchronized with the master repository via update, check-in, and check-out operations.

The development server, which is mainly used by the business analysts for testing, is another subscriber to the master repository. A simple update from the repository will deploy the most current version to the development server.

Once a developer has checked-out a file, the file is locked in the master repository and no other developer is allowed to change the file until it is checked in again. Thus, no longer can one developer inadvertently overwrite changes of another. In addition, this approach provides the capability to roll back the environment to a previous version.

eDiscovery - Your Next Crisis?

 For more information on this topic, refer to:

http://www.guident.com/ or contact the author directly at mailto:info@guident.com.

Crisis Brewing

Litigation has a long tradition in the US. Now, as firms and enterprises increasingly shift from paper to digital knowledge assets, that litigation trend is also moving into the digital arena. Ediscovery is a broad term applying to one of a series of responses to a legal "triggering event." That event starts begins an obligation to preserve and disclose data that may be due to a judicial order, or even the mere knowledge of a future legal proceeding that is likely to require preserving and finding relevant information stored in your electronic documents. In the Ediscovery world, these assets are now called Electronically Stored Information or ESI. Ediscovery is a relatively new concept. You could be excused if you are not familiar with the term. In the US, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or "FRCP" issued rule 26, and related rules, in December 2007. This update to the FRCP made all ESI "discoverable" just as non-electronic information, usually paper, is discoverable. ESI, eDiscovery, FRCP… these and related acronyms are enough to make your head swim. But keep your head above water and pay attention, because if you are not ready for eDiscovery, you could be in for some serious pain, both to your organization's bottom line and to its reputation.


In our view, eDiscovery is built on a series of tools and best practices that should be present in every enterprise and that everyone should proactively follow. Sadly, few actually do, because these tools and practices are often seen as optional, a distraction from the main business activities. The tools we refer to are Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Records Management (RM) and Search. The best practices, foundation for effective management of ESI, relate to the processes and procedures you follow to oversee all your ESI – records and non-records.

So how do you get started? Meet EDRM, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model, and its sibling, IMRM, the Information Management Reference Model. We told you this wouldn't be simple.

Reference Models

The EDRM group, responsible for both these reference models, is a consortium of vendors and other interested parties wanting to develop comprehensive guidelines, standards, and tools to reduce the incidence of eDiscovery nightmares, or provide ways to cope when they occur. The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) provides guidelines, sets standards, and delivers resources to help those who purchase eDiscovery solutions and vendors who provide them, improving the quality of the tools and reducing the costs associated with eDiscovery.

IMRM, shown below, aims to "provide a common, practical, flexible framework to help organizations develop and implement effective and actionable information management programs. The IMRM Project, also part of the EDRM industry working group, aims to offer guidance to Legal, IT, Records Management, line-of-business leaders and other business stakeholders within organizations." This project within the EDRM group suggests ways to facilitate a common approach among these different groups to discuss and make decisions on the organization's information needs.



Although this diagram has the ring of endless numbers of PowerPoint slides you've seen on a variety of topics, it re-iterates some basic, commonsensical ideas that all should adopt but most ignore. We won't go into details about this, but the general themes are obvious. These various different business units, often at odds and seldom understanding each other's language and values, must work together to manage ESI, whether records or not. The result could be that eDiscovery nightmare. Some key takeaways: Decide and oversee the ways your organization creates and saves information. Throw away what isn't needed, keep what you must – all within the corporate requirements for both records and other ESI. IT will benefit (less to back up, archive, and index for search); Legal will be happy you are reducing risk; Records Management will appreciate getting all the help with ESI it can get; and business profits will be shielded somewhat from the risks of bad information management practices.

EDRM

Now what of the EDRM model itself? Again, this is not an easy concept but still critical to prepare for that inevitable crisis.

To understand this model, courtesy EDRM (edrm.net), read left to right and notice how the process sifts through huge volumes of ESI and aims to focus on the important, most relevant pieces. EDRM has eight ongoing projects to fill out the details of their goals to "establish guidelines, set standards, and delivering resources."




IMRM is related to the left-most process, "Information Management," but don't view it as a picture of Information Management itself. Instead, think of IMRM as a way of promoting cross-organizational dialog – always important, critical if that eDiscovery request comes a knocking.

So those two models give you the grand overview. In upcoming posts, we'll look at the elements of these models in greater detail. We also spoke with several leading eDiscovery tools vendors recently. We'll tell you their views and our impressions about the vendor involvement with EDRM in general. Are vendors just giving a new name to the same old products, or jumping onto the "next big thing" so they don't get left behind, or are they up to something truly useful , for eDiscovery and maybe morein this collaborative effort?

In a subsequent post we'll look at the first element of the EDRM model, Information Management. You'll see what vendors had to say and our assessment about how their views provide insights for you to get started preparing for, or better still avoiding, that next crisis.

For more information on this topic, refer to:

http://www.guident.com/ or contact the author directly at mailto:info@guident.com.

The Need for Performance and Portfolio Management

For more information on this topic, refer to:

http://www.guident.com/ or contact the author directly at mailto:info@guident.com.


With ever-increasing scrutiny of Federal IT initiatives’ performance (e.g., Federal CIO, Federal IT Dashboard, TechStat Sessions, Financial Systems Advisory Board, GAO reports, cancelled projects, etc.), the need for sound Portfolio Management and Performance Management is quickly coming to the forefront. Unfortunately, these disciplines often suffer from ill-defined processes, disjointed tools and inconsistent education. At the same time, agencies are banking on the success of their IT initiatives with large investments of time and resources. A cohesive solution of processes, tools and education is needed to bring the focus back to mission objectives and performance relative to those objectives.

What else do you believe are symptoms, contributors to this problem, and possible solutions?

Also, see the below Guident and Oracle webinar on our Project Performance Portfolio Management (PPFM) Solution.

http://www.guident.com/index.php?page=download&target=Managing_Projects_and_Budget_with_OBIEE_and_Primavera.pdf

For more information on this topic, refer to:

http://www.guident.com/ or contact the author directly at mailto:info@guident.com.

Oracle Analytic Functions in ODI

Oracle Analytic functions are a great way to write efficient, complex SQL statements. Instead of having to write multiple joins and subqueries you can write a similar statement in just one line. This is a great time saver especially when using a tool such as Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), which makes it difficult to do subqueries. Unfortunately, ODI’s knowledge modules do not support all analytic function out of the box. The problem is when ODI sees the SUM keyword it automatically triggers the use of the GROUP BY and HAVING clause regardless if is a regular SUM or analytical query SUM. If you ever tried using such a function in ODI you probably received “ORA-00979: not a GROUP BY expression”.

With just a few lines of code you can easily implement a solution to fix this issue:

1) Navigate to the KM you wish to customize to use analytic functions (can be either LKM or IKM).

2) Create a new KM Option

3) Open the knowledge module and navigate to the Details tab, “Load Data” step (or “Insert flow into I$ table” step for IKM).

4) In the Definition tab look for the lines of code that contains (either Command on Target or Source):

<%=snpRef.getGrpBy()%>
<%=snpRef.getHaving()%>

And replace it with the following

<% if (odiRef.getOption("USE_ANALYTIC_FUNCTION").equals("0")){
out.print(odiRef.getGrpBy());
out.print(odiRef.getHaving());
} else
{
out.print("--Group by functions are suppresses by KM");
}
%>

5) Click the option tab and be sure to check your option name (USE_ANALYTIC_FUNCTION). Click Okay to complete.
6) When creating your interface and choosing your KM, in the flow tab you now have the ability to select the user defined USE_ANALYTYIC_FUNCTION.

The USE_ANALYIC_FUNTION option works by suppressing the GROUP BY and HAVING clause of the query when the value of Yes is selected. Because the GROUP BY will not be used you can use any analytic function you like.