OBIEE: Evaluate

I haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to use this function. It's actually so rare, that I forget how to use it.

In the fine tradition of documenting everything, here I go.

Evaluate Syntax:

EVAULATE('your db function(%1,%2)', parameter list)

The reason I need to use it is because we are removing a view that has some fun SUBSTR/INSTR action in it. I tried writing it up in OBIEE SQL, but it doesn't allow you to traverse from the end of the string...well, someone out there probably could, but I like to limit this kind of thing in the RPD, preferring instead to put it in the database. As much as we'd like to believe it, OBIEE will not be the only application accessing this data. But I digress.

Here's the original Oracle SQL:

SUBSTR( col1, INSTR( col1, '/', -1 ) + 1 )

Which reminds me of something else...there is no real way to test this stuff in the admin tool (RPD). You have to create it there and then create an ad-hoc report to make sure it's working as it should. Rather than deal with that, I just started in Answers.

First go:

EVALUATE( 'SUBSTR( %1, INSTR( %1, '/', -1 ) + 1 )', '/TESTING/TESTING1/TESTING2/REPORT_NAME' )

This resulting in the following when I hit OK:



OK, my bet is that those single quotes inside the single quotes were the cause. So I tried variations of 2 single quotes, 3 single quotes and even double quotes. None of those worked either.

What if I just put that '/' in the parameter list?

EVALUATE( 'SUBSTR( %1, INSTR( %1, %2, -1 ) + 1 )' , '/TESTING/TESTING1/TESTING2/REPORT_NAME', '/')

Voila! Yay for me.

OBIEE: Default Answers Template?

After trying out the lazyweb method of search (aka Twitter) and not getting much help, I resorted to help at the OTN OBIEE Forum. It's not Twitter's fault, I think this problem was a bit too complex to describe in 140 characters.

Here's the post on OTN. I started to get nervous too, I posted on Friday and hadn't had a response...until today. 3 days? Man...that's way too long!

Here's the short of it.

Our reports were coming out funny. Dimension column headings had one style and the Fact table column headings had another.



Using Firebug, I could easily isolate the sections.

On the Dimension column, the definition looked like this:

<th  
  class="ColumnHdg" 
  style="background-color: rgb(231, 231, 247); font-size: 9px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102);" 
  scope="col" 
  dir="ltr">Product Desc
</th>

The Fact table column was defined as:

<th 
  class="ColumnHdg" 
  scope="col" 
  dir="ltr">Basis Amount
</th>

Note the style attribute...that overrides any class settings. Very annoying.

I thought it would be relatively simple to fix. I worked with custom messages before, this had to be similar. So I began to "grep" the messages directory

c:\oraclebi\web\msgdb\>findstr /i /m /s /c:"background-color" *.*

Nothing.

How about looking for the name of the class, ColumnHdg?

c:\oraclebi\web\msgdb\>findstr /i /m /s /c:"columnhdg" *.*
messages\criteriatemplates.xml
messages\formattemplates.xml
messages\mktgadminuitemplates.xml
messages\mktgcommontemplates.xml
messages\mktglistformattemplates.xml
messages\mktgsegmenttemplates.xml

So I start with criteriatemplates.xml and find the reference to columnHdg (just now realizing that the case doesn't match...oh well). That was part of the WebMessage kuiColumnFormulaEditor. So I searched for that...

You see where I'm going.

That lead me to the javascript files (of which there are tons). Nothing...not a single thing that could possibly be adding this style attribute.

That's when I mapped the dev server drive to my local computer and opened up WinMerge

I then began to compare every single file in both the msgdb and res (javascript) folders. I would then compare the files that were different to see if that could be the cause. Still...nothing.

I had looked in the webcat before, but couldn't find anything of global significance. I was headed back there though since I had lost hope with custom messages and/or javascript.

Then I got a message from the OTN Forum Administrator...could it be? Looked at the name of the person who answered it first, John Minkjan...sweet!

Looks like you forgot to reset the OOB settings when installing OBIEE:
have a look here to reset them:
http://obiee101.blogspot.com/2009/02/obiee-editing-system-wide-defaults.html

Click through, follow his instructions, bounce the server and voila!



As of this writing, I don't know what OOB stands for; I could make something up, but it probably wouldn't be appropriate for this family site.

Thanks John!