This chapter describes known Oracle Business Intelligence product and documentation issues. These issues pertain to all areas of Oracle Business Intelligence, such as installation, migration, analyses and dashboards, metadata repository development, and system administration.
This chapter includes the following sections:
Oracle Business Intelligence Analyses and Dashboards Issues and Workarounds
Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Issues and Workarounds
Periodically, Oracle Business Intelligence patches are released. Some patches are mandatory and other patches are optional.
To see the available patches, go to My Oracle Support:
To obtain a patch, see "Obtaining Patches that Can be Applied with OPatch" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Patching with OPatch.
This section describes general issues and workarounds for Oracle Business Intelligence.
Section 1.2.1, "Error Accessing Reports in a High Availability Environment"
Section 1.2.2, "Avoid Including Internet Protocol Version 6 Addresses in Configuration Files"
Section 1.2.4, "Disregard Note About the Sample Usage Tracking Repository Model BAR File"
Section 1.2.5, "Documentation Is Incorrect About Which WSDL Version to Use"
Section 1.2.6, "Unpack Example Should Include Template Parameter"
Section 1.2.7, "The Definition of getScheduledJobInfo Method is Inconsistent"
Section 1.2.9, "Documentation About Creating and Using Impersonate User is Incorrect"
Section 1.2.10, "After Migration from 11g WebLogic Users Not Appearing In 12c WebLogic"
Section 1.2.11, "Act As Not Working for Linux Or Solaris X64"
Section 1.2.12, "Updating authenticationschemas.xml Needs Additional Statement"
In a high availability environment, users accessing reports from the Oracle BI search results might receive "Page not found" errors.
To work around this issue, go to the report URL and replace the alias host name (for example, bihost1) with the physical host name.
If you are configuring the system to use Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), do not specify IPv6 addresses in the configuration files. Instead of specifying IPv6 addresses, specify host names or DNS entries that map to an IPv6 address.
When using the Essbase Cube Deployment Services wizard to create a new Essbase connection pool in the Oracle BI repository, there is no opportunity to enter the shared logon username and password. However, in the current version of Oracle BI a shared logon is required for all Essbase connection pools.
An Essbase connection pool that is configured without a shared logon causes the Oracle BI Server to use the CSS shared token authentication, which is no longer supported for Essbase connections from Oracle BI. This might cause Essbase connections from certain Oracle BI components such as Visual Analyzer to fail with the following error:
[nQSError: 96002] Essbase Error: Login failed with error 1051293. Verify the URL and the login credentials.
There are two ways to work around this issue:
While using the Essbase Cube Deployment Services wizard, the user can select an existing Essbase data source and connection pool from the repository that already has the shared logon information provided.
After completing the Essbase Cube Deployment Services wizard, the user can open the repository in the Administration Tool and manually update the connection pool created by the wizard to provide the required shared logon information. The user can also uncheck the SSO option if it is not required.
In Oracle Fusion Middleware System Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition in section 7.1 "About Usage Tracking", there is a note about a sample usage tracking repository model BAR file (usage_tracking.BAR). You must disregard the note because this BAR file is not intended for customer use.
In Oracle Fusion Middleware Integrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition in section 1.2 "What are the Oracle Business Intelligence Session-Based Web Services?", the last paragraph suggests that depending on your client version, you access the WSDL document using one of the following Oracle BI EE web services URLs:
http://host:port/analytics-ws/saw.dll/wsdl/v6
http://host:port/analytics-ws/saw.dll/wsdl/v7
This paragraph should not mention v6 or v7, but should say that for Oracle BI EE 12c, if you want to develop new code or recompile existing code, you should use version 11 (or higher) of Oracle BI EE web services URL. For example:
http://host:port/analytics-ws/saw.dll/wsdl/v11
In Oracle Fusion Middleware System Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition in section 3.4.1 "Adding New Computers" in step 5, the unpack command must include the -template parameter or it will fail. The syntax for displaying help should also be shown.
The incorrect documentation reads as follows:
For example in:
ORACLE_HOME/oracle_common/common/bin
./unpack.sh -domain=DOMAIN_HOME -nodemanager_type=PerDomainNodeManager
The documentation should be corrected to read as follows:
For example in:
ORACLE_HOME/oracle_common/common/bin
./unpack.sh -template=[location of copied jar file from master node] -domain=DOMAIN_HOME -nodemanager_type=PerDomainNodeManager
Note: The syntax to display help is:
./unpack.sh|cmd -help
In Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher in the ScheduleService chapter in section "getScheduledJobInfo() Method" the signature incorrectly references the JobInfo object as follows:
JobInfo getScheduledJobInfo(int jobInstanceID, String userID, String password);
The signature should instead reference the JobDetail object as follows:
JobDetail getScheduledJobInfo(int jobInstanceID, String userID, String password);
Documentation for Oracle BI EE for Release 12.2.1 states that you can use the following EPM Components with Oracle BI EE: Workspace, Financial Reporting, and Calculation Manager. This is incorrect. You can use only EPM Workspace with Oracle BI EE Release 12.2.1.
In Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition in the "Embedding Business Intelligence Objects in ADF Applications" chapter in section "How to Create and Use Impersonate User", the documentation is wrong for Oracle BI EE Release 12.2.1. You must use the following procedure instead:
Configuring the Impersonate User in Oracle Business Intelligence 12c
The 11g oracle.bi.server.impersonateUser permission does not exist in 12c. To create a user or application role with permission to impersonate, you must create a permission grant using the Resource Type oracle.bi.user, with a name of an asterix (*) and an action of "impersonate".
Connect to Fusion Middleware Control for your Oracle BI EE instance using an administration account.
From the Weblogic Domain menu, select Security.
Click Application Policies.
Click Create to display the Create Application Grant page.
In the Permissions section, click Add (+).
Select Resource Types.
Select oracle.bi.user from the Resource Type list.
Click Continue to display the Add Permission dialog.
Enter an asterix (*) in the Resource Name field.
Select impersonate in the Permission Actions section.
Click Select.
You now add a new grantee.
In the Grantee section click Add (+) to display the Add Principal dialog.
Note: You can choose to grant the newly created permission to either an application role or a user. In this example we choose user.
Select User from the drop down list.
Select Includes from the Principal Name list, and enter an asterix (*) into the field.
Click the search arrow icon (>) to display a list of users.
Select the user you want to give the permission to and click OK.
This example uses "weblogic".
Click OK on the Create Application Grant page.
This gives the impersonate permission to the user.
If you migrate from Oracle Business Intelligence 11g to 12c (12.2.1), and you are using the embedded WebLogic Server LDAP provider, then after you migrate, you will have to manually migrate or recreate any additional users and groups you have defined in the 11g embedded LDAP provider.
You should migrate users before running the 11g to 12c Oracle BI EE migration tool.
For more information, see "Exporting and Importing Information in the Embedded LDAP Server" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Securing Oracle WebLogic Server:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24329_01/web.1211/e24422/ldap.htm#SECMG331
In Oracle Fusion Middleware System Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition all references of "customMessages" must be changed to "custommessages" (lowercase "m" for messages). This change is necessary because folder names are case-sensitive for Linux and UNIX.
For example, step 2 of the section "To create the custom message template" incorrectly says:
To create the custom message template in a separate XML file, create and open the file in the BI_DOMAIN/bidata/components/OBIPS/customMessages directory.
This step should instead say:
To create the custom message template in a separate XML file, create and open the file in the BI_DOMAIN/bidata/components/OBIPS/custommessages directory.
In Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition in the "Integrating with Oracle E-Business Suite Security" chapter in section "Updating authenticationschemas.xml", the documentation is incorrect for Oracle BI EE Release 12.2.1 or higher. The following statement must be added between step 4 and step 5:
Locate the sub-element RequestVariable source="constant" and change the value of the nameInSource attribute from ssi to the name of the service instance created during domain configuration. If not chosen explicitly, the default value is ssi. For example:
<RequestVariable source="constant" type="auth" nameInSource="ssi" biVariableName="NQ_SESSION.SERVICEINSTANCEKEY" />
If the entry doesn't already exist, add a new entry under:
<AuthenticationSchema name="EBS-ICX">
This section describes issues and workarounds for Oracle Data Visualization.
Section 1.3.1, "Bidirectional (BIDI) Languages Are Not Supported"
Section 1.3.3, "Map Visualizations Sometimes Show Incorrect Geography in Asian Languages"
Section 1.3.4, "Data Sources Page Displays Incorrectly in Chrome"
Oracle Data Visualization does not support bidirectional (BIDI) languages. In Oracle Data Visualization, you cannot access the Data Sources or Visualizations panes if you use BIDI languages.
An error occurs if you are using Asian language data sources (for example, Japanese or Chinese) and are working in a canvas that already contains data elements and you try to drag a data element to a blank area of the canvas. To prevent this error, be sure to drag the element directly to a specific drop target such as Rows, Columns, Values, Color, Size, or Shape.
If you are using Asian language data sources (for example, Japanese or Chinese), then map visualizations sometimes do not correctly identify countries, states, or provinces. For example, if you upload a Microsoft Excel file containing data about China and Japan, and you change the chart to a map, then China might not be highlighted correctly on the map.
When you use Oracle Data Visualization in the Google Chrome browser, the Subject Area and Data Source buttons that you click to sort the data source list do not display properly. Despite the display issue, the buttons function properly.
This section describes issues and workarounds for Oracle Business Intelligence analyses and dashboards.
Section 1.4.1, "Treemap View Fails to Download in PDF, Excel, or Powerpoint Format"
Section 1.4.2, "Metadata Dictionary XML Files Must Be Opened in Microsoft Internet Explorer"
Section 1.4.3, "Presentation Services Privileges Need Descriptions"
If an analysis includes a treemap view, you cannot properly export the results to Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel, or Microsoft Powerpoint unless Oracle BI EE was installed with the correct version of the Java Development Kit (JDK).
To work around this issue, install JDK 1.8.0.60 on the Oracle BI server machine. The JDK version must be 8u60 Build b10 or later. You must install JDK before you install Oracle BI EE.
If you generate a metadata dictionary using a repository, then you must use Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 or later to open the generated XML files. If you open one of the generated XML files in a different browser (for example, Firefox or Chrome), then the browser displays an error message similar to the following one:
Error: XML Parsing Error: not well-formed. Location: <File location>\NameIndex.xml Line Number 86, Column 276.
This issue can also affect how the metadata dictionary is displayed in analyses in Oracle BI EE.
The privileges listed in Table 1-1 are displayed in the Presentation Services, Manage Privileges page. Descriptions of these privileges also need to be included in table D-1 "Privileges and Default Settings for the Oracle Business Intelligence Infrastructure" in Appendix D "Managing Security for Dashboards and Analyses" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Security Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
Table 1-1 Presentation Services Privileges Descriptions Needed
| Component | Privilege | Description | Default Role Granted |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Home and Header |
Access Administration Menu |
Reserved for a future release. |
NA |
|
Home and Header |
Access User & Role Admin |
Reserved for a future release. |
NA |
|
Home and Header |
Access Modeler |
Reserved for a future release. |
NA |
|
Home and Header |
Access Data Loader |
Reserved for a future release. |
NA |
|
View Analyzer |
Add/Edit Analyzer View |
Reserved for a future release. |
NA |
|
Answers |
Upload Images |
This privilege enables you to upload custom images using the UI wherever an image is selected. |
BI Content Author |
|
Admin: Catalog |
Change Log Configuration |
This privilege enables you to modify the log levels using the UI. |
BI Service Administrator |
|
SOAP |
Access UserPersonalizationService Service |
The Oracle BI User Personalization web service is an application programming interface (API) that implements various APIs to manage user specific favorites and recent items. |
BI Service Administrator |
This section describes issues and workarounds for Oracle BI Publisher.
When an Oracle BI Publisher report using BI Publisher Template (.xpt) includes a bar chart and if Time is represented along the x-axis, then the x-axis labels are not displayed properly. The first label entry is skipped and the first bar data appears "glued" to the y-axis. This issue is caused by a limitation in the data visualization libraries that Oracle BI Publisher uses to generate the chart.
To work around this issue:
In the data model SQL query for the report, use the TO_CHAR method on the date/time fields to change the data type of the field from "Date" to "String."
Open the report in the Layout Editor.
Select the chart and expand the Properties pane.
Turn off the Time Series setting and clear the settings for Day, Month, Year, and Time formats.
Save the layout changes.
If you create a data model and then navigate out of the data model editor without saving it, a "draft" or "temporary" data model entry may display in the Recents section of the Home page. These entries cannot be manually deleted, but are automatically deleted after 24 hours.