ORACLE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE ENTERPRISE EDITION (OBIEE) is a BI tool by Oracle Corporation. It gathers, stores, and analyzes data to provide enterprise reports, dashboards, scorecards, ad-hoc analysis. The OLAP provides a rich end-user experience.

Oracle Bl also offers a group of web-based tools for reporting and analyzing data based around dashboards, built around tables, graphs, pivots, etc. It is a Multiple server architecture that allows you to separate data access/presentation elements based on Siebel Analytics technology.

OBIEE Architecture

Oracle Bl Server is a central component in the suite. It is a query engine which converts the logical requests to a physical SQL statement to execute data sources. It also generates optimized queries, which depends on business rules that are defined in the Bl server repository.

Oracle Bl Architecture Components

Following architecture components and their relationships:

• Clients
• Oracle Bl Presentation Services
• Oracle Bl Server
• Oracle Bl repository
• Data sources

Clients:

It provides access to business intelligence information

Oracle Bl Answers:

It is a set of graphical tools used to build, view, and modify Oracle Bl requests

• Oracle Bl Interactive Dashboards
• Display the results of answers and requests and other items
• Oracle Bl Administration Tool: It is used to build an Oracle Bl repository:

BI Presentation Server

• BI presentation server offers processing to visualize the information for client consumption. It is implemented as an extension to a Web server.
• Uses a catalog to store saved content
• Receives data from Oracle Bl Server and provides it to the client that requested it
• Gives access to Business Intelligence information
• Oracle Bl Answers – a set of tools for creating, viewing, and modifying applications
• Oracle Bl Interactive Dashboards – visualizing the results of inquiries made with Bl Answers
• Oracle Bl Administration Tool: It provides the processing to visualize the information for client consumption.
• It is implemented as an extension to a Web server.
• Uses a catalog to store saved content
• Receives data from Oracle Bl Server and provides it to the client that requested it

Oracle BI server

• The Server for Oracle Business Intelligence
• It uses a meta database directly.
• Generate Dynamic SQL requests to the physical data sources
• Structure the results to Bl Presentation Server

Repository

• Stores Metadatabase used by Bl Server.
• It is Generated by the Oracle Bl Administration Tool
• Imports meta base from data sources
• Structure and organize metadata into your business models
• Structures the business model for presentation to users who want the information

Data Sources

Oracle Bl Server accesses the business data which users want to analyze which can be in any format, such as:

• Relational databases
• Online analytical processing (OLAP) databases
• Flat files
• Spreadsheets
• XML for Analysis (XMLA)

Features of OBIEE

• RPD Presentation layer allows for creating this object
• Fully implemented interface in WEB; Rich interactive boards
• Support for Level based hierarchy and ragged hierarchy
• OBIEE provides a feature of Enterprise Reporting
• Easy Microsoft Office Integration
• OBIEE allows a user to create their reports from the scratch
• Integration with MS Office and Multilingual support
• The tool offers a real time alert engine which is based on the business Events

OBIEE vs. Tableau

Here, are some significant differences between OBIEE and Tableau:

Advantages of using OBIEE

Here, are pros/advantages of using OBIEE:

• Real time data updating within third-party vendors such as Microsoft applications
• It helps you to create new deductions or altering existing ones without any IT assistance.
• Maps and spatial visualizations help you to monitor the analytics.
• This analytical tool helps users to view and analyze data.
• Offers metrics to measure the state of the data
• Shows present key indicators of changes in the market trends etc.
• You do not require deep level technical skills to run this BI tool.
• Offers robust Customizations
• Multilanguage reports can be created with data.
• Report creation from Scratch
• Integration with major data sources

Disadvantages of using OBIEE

Here, are cons/drawbacks for OBIEE:

• This solution is not ideal for data science perspective
• It is not a useful tool for data visualization.
• It lacks lots of functionality.
• When large numbers of queries are running parallelly, the report fails.
• It tends to crash when many people login simultaneously.

Best Practices of using Oracle Business Intelligence

• Use only logical links in the Business Model Mapping layer.
• Rename the logical columns.
• Remove unwanted objects to simplify the model
• Use short names to save space in the references.
• Use names corresponding to the organization, which is easily understandable for customers.
• Do not use the same name with the name of the logical table in the BMM.
• You should avoid using quotation marks (‘) in the names and double quotes (“).
• Make the names of the object unique.