Thursday, November 27, 2008

OBIEE Let's Get Professional

Recently I was asked to have a look a some development work from some off-shore companies as part of a vendor selection. This triggered me to make a small random order check list of does and don'ts before your send your material to your customer. If you know any more, let me know and I will add them to the list.
  • Don't do your development as an extension of the PAINT or SALES rpd. Start with a clean one.
  • Replacing the Oracle logo with your own Company logo, sending in the SALES webcat as a Proof Of Concept, claiming 10k as costs, is not only very stupid, it's illegal / criminal!
  • Do a consistency check before you send it to the customer.
  • Don't do any customizations in S(K)_ORACLE10 directory, create a new one.
  • Check which version of OBIEE your customer is using.
  • Clean the RPD of test users.
  • Remove any test material from the RPD.
  • Start with a clean WEBCAT.
  • Develop shared filters directly as shared filters, do not copy them.
  • DO NOT USE other customers data in a Proof Of Concept for a new lead.
  • If the customer gives you test data in separated XLS sheets, try merging them into one sheet, this will save a lot of time configuring ODBC connections.
  • Don't go overboard with the aggregate persistence wizard. 400 aggregate tables on one fact table is plain stupid. If a customer really needs that, try selling them a product like ESSBASE.
  • Install a version control system. (Don't forget to check in/out !)
  • Develop your reports based on the customers screen size, most will still be on 17" (1024 x 768).
  • Check your calculations against common sense: a €50,-- per year / per employee turnover should might be a good indicator that the calculation is wrong.
  • Check your calculations against common sense: a .0004% annual growth 5 years in a row is very very strange.......
  • Have one standard for graphs; 2D graphs are better "readable" then 3D.
  • Keep your reports to one colour schema.
  • Document your work!
  • Try to avoid case 1=0 constructions in your prompts, use a proper LOV table.
  • 27/11/08: Adrian Ward: When doing a presentation to the client, run through it first to cache the results. It will be far more impressive.
  • 28/11/08: Bytus: Never try to recreate the Excel "requirements specifications", screenshots of old systems or Powerpoint mock-ups 1:1 at all costs.
    Work towards the best approximation which satisfies the actual clients needs (not his wishes) while bringing forward the strong points of OBI EE.
    (It can never be an Excel!)
  • 03/05/08: Sunil: Above all be truthful and claim only what you know.
  • 19/01/09: John Minkjan: Create different connection pools for different user groups
  • 19/04/09: John Minkjan: Read Stephen Few: Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data
  • 06/05/10: John Minkjan: Use display folders to organize your work.
  • 28/06/10: John Minkjan: Don't use SYSTEM accounts in your connection pool
  • If you are also the DB guy: http://ora-00001.blogspot.com/2011/07/mythbusters-stored-procedures-edition.html
Till Next Time

11 comments:

Adrian Ward said...

Ha ha ha. I laughed when reading this one!

There are so many companies out there pretending to know something about OBIEE. Using them gives the product a bad name. I was hoping that Oracle would introduce a better system of showing clients which consultancies and consultants are up to scratch.

Adrian

Adrian Ward said...

Anyway, forgot to add my thoughts.
When doing a presentation to the client, run throguh it first to cache the results. It will be far more impressive.

Christian Berg said...

Nice list, John. Definitely something you could slap 90% of all OBI EE "Professionals" around with.

My 10 cents:
Never try to recreate the Excel "requirements specifications", screenshots of old systems or Powerpoint mock-ups 1:1 at all costs.
Work towards the best approximation which satisfies the actual clients needs (not his wishes) while bringing forward the strong points of OBI EE.
(It can never be an Excel!)

Sunil said...

Excellent points. I think all OBIEE professionals should keep this in mind. I would add one though..
Above all be tuthful and claim only what you know...

Sirine said...

I have a question regarding point: Replacing the Oracle logo with your own Company logo...being illegal.

Does that mean that we're not allowed to change the look and feel of the login screen and inside banner, etc. and customize it with our company logo/colours?

Thanks.

John Minkjan said...

Hi sjazi,

It doesn't say it's illegal replacing the Oracle logo. It says that it's illegal claiming the Paint or Sales repository/webcat is your work....

But if you want to replace the Oracle logo please do it the proper way by editing the .CSS file, not by renaming your own compagny logo to oracle.jpg

regards

John

Sirine said...

gotcha, thanks!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

do u have recomendation for work with true MOLAP (like essbase)

for get alredy aggregate's from essbase

John Minkjan said...

@Er,

Keep up to speed with the blogs of Mark Rittman and Venkatakrishnan on Essbase

regards John

Abhinav Banerjee said...

Nice one John, I would like to add there are quite a lot of people who take few months of training on OBIEE and then show 4-5 years of OBIEE experience. And the worst part if they are joining a company as the first OBI resource it brings a very bad name to the OBI product and the users start rejecting the product.