Good Sunday afternoon reading, locate you obips_config_base.xsd and open it read only in a text editor (or download the PDF here).
It' contains loads of info on the instanceconfig.xml tags.
Have a special look at the <!-- Top Secret, Do NOT Expose On Penalty Of Dismissal (throw away) –> stuff
(Kudos to the genius who left them in the normal download 
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When logging in for the first time you normally get an empty dashboard page:
Wouldn’t it be nicer if you can give a dashboard which already has some content ?
Let prep the instance config.xml
add: <DefaultName>Template</DefaultName> between the <Dashboard> tags
Now let’s make a template dashboard.
Step 1 build a nice dashboard:
Save this dashboard in the shared folder with the name ‘Template’
First create a folder Template:
Create a folder dashboards:
Next save:
Set the owner in the catalog
Create a new user:
don’t forget to assign it to a group:
Log in to OBIEE:
Check the catalog folder of the user to see that it’s actually saved as a personal dashboard.
This is ideal to create cooperate standard default dashboards for all users.
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In 11g it is still controlled by the instanceconfig.xml. You can edit the file and restart the system to see the effect.
Especially the MaxVisible.. parameters are of interest when you seem to “miss” data on the screen on large reports.
Be aware these are system wide controls, so don’t change the DefaultRowsDisplayed just for one report!
<ServerInstance>
<Views>
<Table>
<MaxVisiblePages>1000</MaxVisiblePages>
<MaxVisibleRows>500</MaxVisibleRows>
<MaxVisibleSections>25</MaxVisibleSections>
<DefaultRowsDisplayed>30</DefaultRowsDisplayed>
</Table>
<Pivot>
<MaxVisibleColumns>300</MaxVisibleColumns>
<MaxVisiblePages>1000</MaxVisiblePages>
<MaxVisibleRows>500</MaxVisibleRows>
<MaxVisibleSections>25</MaxVisibleSections>
<DefaultRowsDisplayed>30</DefaultRowsDisplayed>
</Pivot>
<Charts>
<MaxVisibleColumns>2000</MaxVisibleColumns>
<MaxVisiblePages>1000</MaxVisiblePages>
<MaxVisibleRows>2000</MaxVisibleRows>
<MaxVisibleSections>25</MaxVisibleSections>
<JavaHostReadLimitInKB>4096</JavaHostReadLimitInKB>
</Charts>
</Views>
</ServerInstance>
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Doing look and feel customisations in OBIEE11g is not harder then in then 10g, you just need to pay attention where you put stuff. Since the weblogic server tend to overwrite stuff during startup and or updates it’s good practice to have a special directory for your customisations. Here is how you do it in WIndows XP.
First create a new folder say D:\OBIEE11gCustom
Set the security so that everbody can see it, if neccesary make it shared:
Next step is to add the folder to the instanceconfig.xml file:
[Code]
<URL>
<CustomerResourcePhysicalPath>D:\OBIEE11gCustom</CustomerResourcePhysicalPath>
</URL>
[/Code]
In the next article I will show you how to expose it from the weblogic server.
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If you have a separate development presentation server, you can use the developersprompt: (http://obiee101.blogspot.com/2008/10/obiee-developersprompt.html) for bypassing the BI servercache. If you always want to bypass the Presentation server cache add this to the instanceconfig file of the development presentation server:
<WebConfig><ServerInstance><ForceRefresh>TRUE</ForceRefresh></ServerInstance></WebConfig>
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Lately I get a lot of OBIEE “performance” tuning questions.
FI: Our client is downloading a report with 4 million rows and the server get’s very slow our even crashes……….
Or: Out client has a report with 2 million rows and 20 columns with a sort option on each column…….
First: I said it before and will say it again and again…..
OBIEE is not an ETL tool. It is NOT designed to handle large amounts of non aggregated data. It’s designed to handle dimensional structured data with sufficient aggregation tables.
So please please stop hammering in nails with an plush screwdriver!
Of course there are some tuning possibilities you might want to explore.
From the OBIEE documentation:
Specifies one or more directories for temporary space.
Each directory listed needs to be an existing fully-qualified, writable directory pathname, with double quotes ( " ) surrounding the pathname. Specify mapped directories only. UNC path names and network mapped drives are allowed only if the service runs under a qualified user account. To change the account under which the service is running, see the corresponding topic in the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Deployment Guide.
Specify multiple directories with a comma separated list. Valid values are any fully qualified pathname to an existing, writable directory.
For optimum performance, temporary directories should reside on high performance storage devices.
If you specify more than one directory, they should reside on different drives.
Syntax: WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS = "<full_directory_path_1>" [,"<full_directory_path_2>"{, "<full_directory_path_n>"}] ;
Example 1: WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS = "C:\Temp" ;
Example 2: WORK_DIRECTORY_PATHS = "D:\temp", "F:\temp" ;
NOTE: Specifying more than one directory per drive does not improve performance because file I/O takes place through the same I/O controller. In general, specify only one directory per disk drive.
Specifying multiple directories on different drives improves the overall I/O throughput of the Oracle Business Intelligence Server because internally, the processing files are allocated using a roundrobin algorithm that balances the I/O load across the given disk drives.
Rule of thumb: Invest in fast drives, consider virtual / RAM drives.
From the OBIEE documentation:
Specifies the maximum amount of memory to be used for each sort operation. Multiple operations can each use memory up to the value specified. The limit for SORT_MEMORY_SIZE is determined by the physical memory of the server machine and on the number of sort operations that might occur simultaneously. Specify KB for kilobytes, MB for megabytes, and no units for bytes.
Example: SORT_MEMORY_SIZE = 4 MB ;The size specified by SORT_MEMORY_SIZE sets the upper limit on how large the sorting buffer can be in the Oracle Business Intelligence Server. When this limit is exceeded, data is sorted in allotments of the size set by SORT_MEMORY_SIZE and the sorted sets are merged together. For example, suppose SORT_MEMORY_SIZE is set to 4 MB and the size of the data to be sorted is 32 MB. The server performs the sort once per each 4 MB of data, for a total of eight sort operations,
and then merge the results into a single result set. This technique allows the Oracle Business Intelligence Server to sort data of indefinite size.
The merge process itself is generally not costly in terms of resources, but it does include a read and write of each result set in a temporary file. To reduce the time this takes, increase the SORT_MEMORY_SIZE. This parameter can be tuned over time by taking into consideration the data size of the query and the number of concurrent users.
Rule of thumb: Don’t go overboard with this value, 10mb for a hundred concurrent users is 1 Gb of server memory. Don’t let OBIEE push other processes into the swap memory of the OS.
From the documentation:
Specifies the increment that the sort memory size is increased by as more memory is needed. As more memory is required, the size increases by the value specified until it reaches the value of
SORT_MEMORY_SIZE.
Example: SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE = 256 KB ;This parameter defines the increment by which SORT_MEMORY_SIZE should be reached. For example, suppose SORT_MEMORY_SIZE is set to 4 MB and the data to be sorted is just one megabyte. As data is fed into the sort routine, the size of the sort buffer increases only by the increment size, rather than the full size allowed by SORT_MEMORY_SIZE. This mechanism allows the Oracle Business Intelligence Server to sort smaller result sets efficiently without wasting memory.
Rule of thumb: 5 – 10 % of the SORT_MEMORY_SIZE
From the documentation:
Several operations—sort, join, union and database fetch—can require memory resources beyond those available to the Oracle Business Intelligence Server. To manage this condition, the server uses a virtual table management mechanism that provides a buffering scheme for processing these operations. When the amount of data exceeds the VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE, the remaining data is buffered in a temporary file and placed in the virtual table as processing
continues. This mechanism supports dynamic memory sizes and ensures that any row can be obtained dynamically for processing queries.
When VIRTUAL_TABLE_PAGE_SIZE is increased, I/O operations are reduced. Complex queries may use 20 to 30 virtual tables, while simple queries may not even require virtual tables. The
default size of 128 KB is a reasonable size when one considers that the size for virtual paging in Windows NT is 64 KB. This parameter can be tuned depending on the number of concurrent users and the average query complexity. In general, setting the size higher than 256 KB does not yield a corresponding increase in throughput due to the 64 KB size limit of Windows NT system buffers, as each I/O still goes through the system buffers
Rule of thumb: Trust the documentation, more then 256 KB is not necessary.
All the parameters are set in the NQSConfig.INI File
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I still wonder why people want to do it: A report with more than 65000 rows, but still….
You can override the maximum number of rows that can appear in a Table view by modifying the Oracle BI Presentation Services configuration file (instanceconfig.xml) to add the following entry.
<ResultRowLimit>95000</ResultRowLimit>
The internal default is 65000. If the user exceeds this value, the server returns an error message when the table view is rendered.
NOTE: This entry applies to the Table view, not the Pivot Table view.
The ResultRowLimit entry controls the maximum value that can be set for the DefaultRowsDisplayed, DefaultRowsDisplayedInDelivery, and the DefaultRowsDisplayedInDownload (fi download to Excel) entries.
To set DefaultRowsDisplayed, DefaultRowsDisplayedInDelivery, or DefaultRowsDisplayedInDownload to a value that exceeds the current value of ResultRowLimit, you also must increase the value of ResultRowLimit to equal or exceed the value that you want to set.
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<ReportAggregateEnabled>true</ReportAggregateEnabled>Save instanceconfig.xml, and restart your BI Server and Presentation service.
Make sure you don’t accidentally put this inside an element nested inside <ServerInstance>, or it won’t work.
{enable508}true{/enable508}It changes this
Put it between the serverinstance tag of the instanceconfig.xml
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Note: Have a look at Stijn his comment on 508 Compliancy
Page 196 of the Presentation Services Administration Guide (the example to change kmsgAuthenticateRemembermyIDandpassword) triggered me to look for the option to switch on this feature:
Of course the answer can be found the manual on page 18….. It is controlled by the value of :”AllowRememberPassword” in the instanceconfig.xml. set it to “true” between the serverinstance tags to switch it on:
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When you try to create big PDF files in OBIEE after a certain size you will get an error like:
A fatal error occurred while processing the request. The server responded with: Error while executing PDFRpcCall.processMessage com.siebel.analytics.utils.InputStreamWithLimit$ReadOverTheLimitException at com.siebel.analytics.utils.InputStreamWithLimit.incTotalBytes(InputStreamWithLimit.java:58) at ...............
Basicly it means that the FOP processor is running out of workspace. The workspace is controlled from the instanceconfig.xml JavaHost part. Instead of enlarging the default value of 1024 kb you could also consider setting this to unlimited.
<JavaHost>
<PDF>
<InputStreamLimitInKB>0</InputStreamLimitInKB>
</PDF>
</JavaHost>
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Sometimes you want to redirect a user to a different SKIN and or STYLE. One method is giving the SKIN/STYLE name in the login URL.
To enable this feature you first you have to define a parameterlist in Auth\UserIdPassword part of the instanceconfig.xml:
<Auth>
<UserIdPassword enabled="true">
<ParamList>
<Param name="NQ_SESSION.STYLE" source="url" nameInSource="STL"/>
<Param name="NQ_SESSION.SKIN" source="url" nameInSource="SKN"/>
</ParamList>
</UserIdPassword>
</Auth>
Restart the presentation server. Now add the SKIN and STYLE to the URL: http://vmobiee:9704/analytics/saw.dll?Dashboard&SKN=siebel77&STL=siebel77
{Remember to clear your browser cache first!}
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In addition to settings mentioned in this article: http://obiee101.blogspot.com/2008/11/obiee-presentation-services-cache.html. You sometimes you want to bypass the presentation / cache for development purposes. Or more often when you get weird write back behaviour. Add this to the instanceconfig file:
<CacheMaxExpireMinutes>-1</CacheMaxExpireMinutes>
<CacheMinExpireMinutes>-1</CacheMinExpireMinutes>
<CacheMinUserExpireMinutes>-1</CacheMinUserExpireMinutes>
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After a small discussion: “why the hell he needed more then the OBIEE default of 100 gauges on a single screen?”, he convinced me that it was for development purposes only.
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Altered in the instance config it would look like this:
If you still run out of cells try this:
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