OBIA: Installing Informatica 9.0.1

I'm in the process of building out a tip-to-tail dev/test system that includes the components from OBIA.

The components include:
- EBS Vision database
- Informatica PowerCenter 9.0.1
- Data Warehouse Administration Console (DAC)
- OBIEE 11.1.1.5
- OBIA 7.9.6.3

I recently rebuilt my EBS instance. I put my last go at it on a removable disk and seem to have misplaced it.

This will be part of a series of posts describing the entire process. I don't do it often enough and so I have to "remember" what I did, now I'll have my own reference.

Environment

As usual, this is running in a VirtualBox virtual machine.
- Host: Ubuntu 11.04, Natty Narwhal
- VirtualBox: 4.1.2
- Guest: Oracle Enterprise Linux (64 bit)

Linux oracle-web-tier 2.6.32-200.13.1.el5uek #1 SMP
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

- Installed software: 11gR2 Database, OBIEE 11.1.1.5, Oracle Web Tier

I grabbed the download from edelivery, file name is: V26109-01.zip.

Other references:

- OBIA 7.9.6.3 Documentation Library
- OBIA Installation Guide for Informatica PowerCenter Users Release 7.9.6.3: Specifically this section, Installing Informatica PowerCenter Services.

Step 1, create a database account.

CREATE USER infa IDENTIFIED BY testing
  DEFAULT TABLESPACE users;

GRANT DBA TO infa;

**Note I have given DBA privileges, this is not necessary.**

It is simply easier, for now, to do it this way.

Step 2, unzip the files on your system.

It is recommended that you create an OS user specific to this task. I am using my previously existing oracle (dba, oinstall) account

Step 3, run the install.sh file

[oracle@oracle-web-tier infa_zips]$ ./install.sh
OS detected is Linux
unjar task is in progress.............
unjar of ESD completed.....
Do you want to continue installation (y/n) ?
y
Starting installation ...

\***************************************************************************
\* Welcome to the Informatica 9.0.1 HotFix 2 Server Installer.  *
\***************************************************************************


To verify whether a machine meets the system requirements for an Informatica installation, 
run the Pre-Installation System Check Tool (i9Pi) before you start the installation process. 
You can find the i9Pi tool in the following directory: /i9Pi


Before you continue, read the 9.0.1 HotFix 2 Installation Guide and Release Notes.
You can find the 9.0.1 HotFix 2 documentation in the Documentation Center at 
http://my.informatica.com
Configure the LANG and LC_ALL variables to generate appropriate code pages and 
create and connect to repositories and Repository Services.
Do you want to continue? (Y/N)Y
Installer requires operating system Linux version 2.6 and later.
Current operating system Linux version 2.6.
Current operating system meets minimum requirements.

 Select a choice :  
1.   Install Informatica 9.0.1 with Hot Fix 2 or Upgrade from a previous version of Informatica 
to Informatica 9.0.1 with Hot Fix 2 
2.   Apply Informatica 9.0.1 Hot Fix 2 to existing 9.0.1 install.
Enter the choice(1 or 2):1
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Checking for existing 9.0.1 HotFix 2 product installation.
Select (G)UI mode (needs X Window support) or (C)onsole mode (G/C):G
Launching installer in GUI mode ...
Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...

Launching installer...

Preparing SILENT Mode Installation...

===============================================================================
Informatica 9.0.1 Services HotFix2               (created with InstallAnywhere)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

System Requirements:



License Key and installation directory:



Confirmation:



Running...



Configuring...



Create a domain and Enable HTTPS. Enable HTTPS is checked by default, I won't be using it.



Configure the database connection and JDBC URL



Testing the connection...



Informatica Domain. I'm going to accept the defaults:



Summary

===============================================================================
Configuring Installation...
---------------------------

 [==================|==================|==================|==================]
 [------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------]

Installation Complete.

To verify your installation, open up http://localhost:6007/administrator/, username is administrator and the password is the one you supplied during installation.



You'll be redirected to this page.



Next steps will be to cover the Information Repository Service and Informatica Integration Service. That of couse, is later.

BI Forum: Day 2 (Atlanta)

Part I, Day 1 is here.

Agenda
Jean-Pierre Dijcks - Memory MADness: How to Apply Big Speed to Big Data Analysis
Shyam Varan Nath - Tips and Tricks from OBI Application Implementations
Panel Session 2 - Should all BI projects by Agile?
Jacques Vigeant - Overview of Oracle Scorecard & Sneak Peak at 11.1.1.4
Greg Vlahos - How-to Tips for Integrating Essbase in OBIEE

Jean-Pierre Dijcks
I met JP at the Exadata SIG, and I've been reading his blog ever since. Super smart, witty, and funny, all combined to make for an interesting presentation. First off, you'll note there is no link to his presentation, that's because the contents are top secret; we were all forced to sign multiple NDAs. OK, maybe I'm dreaming there.

His presentation got my vote for best speaker (yes, that's kind of mixing things up, sue me).

Shyam Varan Nath
Shyam is Mr. Everything. He's running (or was, not sure) the Exadata SIG and the BIWA SIG. Same as JP, I met him at the Exadata SIG last year in Las Vegas.

I haven't gotten into OBIA much just yet, kinda of sitting on the edges watching for now. From my understanding, OBIA is a set of pre-built reports on top of a pre-built datawarehouse that is loaded with pre-built ETL (Informatica). The value proposition is that it gets you up and running very quickly. Naturally, if you have a lot of customizations in your source systems (PeopleSoft, EBS, JD Edwards, etc), you'll have more work on your hands.

The latest release of OBIA, 7.9.6.3 was mainly to integrate with OBIEE 11g; 7.9.6.2 was supported but not certified.

Panel Session 2
This was essentially a continuation of Stewart Bryson's presentation the day before, Agile Data Warehousing with Exadata and OBIEE11g. Mr. Bryson was the "impartial" moderator.

A lively discussion with one panelist, no 2 (shaved head) panelists taking both sides, Waterfall and Agile. I think the final answer is "It Depends." Unfortunately I don't remember the actual winner.

Jacques Vigeant
Mr. Vigeant presented on Scorecard; this was my first exposure to the tool (Scorecard, not Jacques). I'm still a little hazy on what it does, my impression is that it essentially allows you to create Goals and then set alerts based on certain conditions. Pretty slick stuff, but I'm not even close to that yet.

Greg Vlahos
First off, poor Mr. Vlahos, he had the last slot of the conference...it was down to 75% capacity, if that.

Topic: Essbase

Quite a hot topic too, if demand is an indicator, and it is.

I'm still not sure of the difference between Essbase and Oracle OLAP cubes, but that's a different question.

Mr. Vlahos described the Essbase cube as "Aggregate tables on steroids" which sounds about right. If you're using Essbase, definitely a good read.

BI Forum: Day 1 (Atlanta)

Here's the schedule:

Jeff McQuigg - Advanced OBIEE Metadata Topics
Kevin McGinley - Mobility & OBIEE: There are Options
Suyog Rao - BIEE Security: Deep dive into understanding and troubleshooting security aspects
Phillipe Lions - What's coming in OBIEE 11.1.1.5, and Hidden Gems of OBIEE 11g
Panel Discussion 1 - OBIEE 11g - Was it worth the wait?
Stewart Bryson - Agile Data Warehousing with Exadata and OBIEE 11g

Jeff McQuigg
I've heard and read lots of good things about Jeff (none of them true by the way) so I was very much looking forward to his presentation. Bonus points to Jeff for running Brew Palace (I couldn't find Natural Light though...dangit). I seem to surround myself with beer people, good beer people (also known as beer snobs), so I do drink decent beer away from home.

The highlights based on his presentation agenda:
- Combo Tables - Basically tables that mix attributes and measures. In short, create 2 logical tables using the same physical source. Put your attributes in the Dimension and your measures in the Facts. I know this method which makes me appreciate one of my mentors even more.
- Make Dims & Facts Reach - Surprising result to me, putting the bridge table along with the Fact table is more performant. I thought it was the other way around. Something learned. Bonus.
- Non-Conformed Dimensions - Solution #2 involved setting the levels, though not necessarily at the table (Content) level, but at the metric level...for every single metric. That was counterintuitive, of course, but what can you do. I thank the mentor again though.
- Canonical Time - First, thanks mentor. Second, Jeff calls this the old-school way or the Siebel way. It's the method I have used. Though if left to my own I would probably go the other way, creating a different (aliased) date dimension for each slice. I think what Jeff said is true, it's more intuitive this way.

I'm pretty sure at this point my brain was full. So you'll have to go through the presentation yourself on the last 2.
- Selecting a Logical Table Source
- Controlling Join Paths

Kevin McGinley
So the first 2 guys had shaved heads, a sign of good things to come.

Kevin presented on the mobile aspects of OBIEE. I follow Jake at the AppsLab, so I'm fairly up to speed with the concepts in general. I did get to show Kevin Untappd, which is a Foursquare like web app for the phone, but for beer, not locations (see how this is all tying in?). I understand the native vs. web app, in most circumstances I would choose the web app first and then consider a native app. Unfortunately, it's difficult to change skins in the presentation layer. I need to attend a nice session on doing that one of these days.

BTW, check out Kevin's appendix, lots of really good information there.

Suyog Rao
If there ever was a villain, it was Suyog.

Security was a hot topic. I won't pretend I know a lot about security in 10g or 11g so I won't really opine. All I do know is that there was quite a lot of audience participation (i.e. WhyTF did you do that? That won't work! etc.). I wish I could have stayed the whole time, but I got a migraine and ducked out for the remainder of the day.

If I did get anything from that session, it's that Suyog gives a shit. That's a good thing.

So I missed Phillipe's and Stewart's presentations and also the panel discussion. I had planned on taking the side of "It was worth the wait" just because I didn't believe it was, but no go for me.

Learning Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (OBIA)

In the same vein as Learning Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE), this will serve as a summary for me (and hopefully you) on all things OBIA. I need to get ramped up rather quickly so I should be doing a lot of writing (to reinforce) to go along with it.

Let's start with the basics.

• Oracle Home
• A nice non-Oracle overview of what OBIA is at Siebel Essentials, Can you describe Oracle BI Applications?, h/t RNM
• Oracle's documentation library
  • System Requirements (pdf)
  • Installation Guide for Informatica PowerCenter Users
• All things OBIA on the aforementioned RNM's site
• White Papers
  • OBIA Overview
  • Metricsphere: Justifying Oracle Business Intelligence Applications: Build vs. Buy
• Demos
  • Financial Analytics with Essbase (flash, 3 min.)
  • Oracle Financial Analytics: General Ledger (flash, 3 min.)
• Blogs
• The OTN forums have always been a great source of information as well.

I haven't had a chance to look up a whole lot of blogs yet, but I will. If you know any good ones out there, leave links in the comments. I'll add them to the page.

Essentially, OBIA sits on top of OBIEE and is setup to run against PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, EBS and others. For now, I'm interested in the EBS side of things...I've been downloading and unzipping all weekend. John Piwowar [ blog | twitter ] has promised to do a series of posts in the very near future detailing the installation of EBS. I've been the fortunate recipient of his EBS wisdom this weekend which means I've only had to download 46 GBs of install files. WTF is that all about?

Update 09/14/2011

Along with the Learning OBIEE post, this one seems to pop up a lot in search results...which means I shall finally begin to maintain it.

Installation

• Informatica PowerCenter 9.0.1 on Oracle Enterprise Linux (64 bit)
• Informatica Repository Service
• Informatica Integration Service