Short note to record this, as Google drew no hits on it. Windows XP machine with existing Oracle 11.1 client installation, all working fine. Installed Oracle 11.2 XE, and started getting these errors: [sourcecode] C:\Windows\System32>tnsping DBNAME TNS Ping Utility for 32-bit Windows: Version 11.2.0.2.0 - Production on 26-SEP-2011 11:01:11 Copyright (c) 1997, 2010, Oracle. All rights reserved. Used parameter files: C:\app\userid\product\11.1.0\client_1\network\admin\sqlnet.ora Used TNSNAMES adapter to resolve the alias Message 3513 not found; product=NETWORK; facility=TNS OK (20 msec) [/sourcecode]

Oracle XE 11gR2 beta has just been released, some details here and download here. It’s not a great deal of use for sandboxing DWH-specific stuff, given this list of excluded functionality (and this is by no means everything that’s not included): Bitmapped index, bitmapped join index, and bitmap plan conversions Oracle Partitioning Parallel Data Pump Export/Import Parallel query/DML Parallel Statement Queuing (source) However, it’s always interesting to have to hand for trying out other things.

This error caught me out today. I was building a Linux VM to do some work on, and for the life of me couldn’t get the OBIEE Admin Tool to connect to the BI Server on the VM. The error I got when trying to define a DSN on the Windows box was: [nQSError: 12008] Unable to connect to port 9703 on machine 10.3.105.132 [nQSError: 12010] Communication error connecting to remote end point: address = 10.

There’s an undocumented feature in AdminTool.exe that you can use the /command switch with a text file containing scripted commands to make changes to an RPD file (or create a new one). It’s undocumented and UNSUPPORTED so be careful using it. Some good details in these blog posts, especially Erik’s which has a good list of syntax. Venkat Erik Eckhardt (translated from Czech, original here) @lex Kumar Kambam I’m intrigued to know how the original posters figured out the commands available, if it’s undocumented… :)

Following the Oracle CAF tutorial here, I got to Cloning Answers Requests section and then got stuck. I’d set up my environment exactly the same as in the tutorial, down to the same paths etc. After firing up the CAF to clone requests from the SampleSales catalog: I clicked on Next and got the error “Exception occurred when while initializing repository!!!” By playing around with the passwords and path names I determined that both RPD files existed and that CAF could load them enough to validate the passwords.

A question that pops up on the OBIEE OTN forum quite often is how to use non-Oracle databases like MS SQL Server when the OBIEE server is running on a non-Windows OS such as Linux. The answer in a nutshell is that since version 10.1.3.3.1 OBIEE has been bundled with ODBC drivers for unix/linux from a company called DataDirect. See the release notes here for more information and installation instructions (as well as a list of support databases).

Yet another way to access the BI Management data discussed here - through Windows’ PerfMon tool. This will only work for installations where your OBIEE server is running on Windows. You should be able to run PerfMon locally or remotely. Standard practise would be not to run it locally on a Production machine :-) To run PerfMon go to Start->Run and enter perfmon, or navigate Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Performance

Our main servers are Unix and I’m as happy as a pig in muck at the command line, so when I’m working on Windows (where I’ve got a test OBIEE install) I like to stick with the CLI where possible. PSService is one of those tools that I instinctively reach for without realising it. Combined with Launchy, it’s even better. Simply put, you can control windows services from the command line.