Oracle9i™ Business Intelligence Beans

Release Notes

Release 2 (9.0.2)

April 2002

Part No. A96187-01

Oracle9i Business Intelligence Beans (hereinafter referred to as "BI Beans") is a set of standards-based JavaBeans™ that provides analysis-aware application building blocks designed for Oracle9i OLAP. Using Oracle9i JDeveloper and BI Beans, you can build Internet applications quickly and easily. These applications expose the advanced analytic features of the Oracle9i database to both casual information viewers and high-end users who require complete ad-hoc query and analysis functionality.

For installation instructions, see Installing Oracle9i Business Intelligence Beans, which is available from the BI Beans download page on Oracle Technology Network. To help you start working with BI Beans, consult the Help system (which includes links to tutorials) and the API reference. In addition, sample code is published on Oracle Technology Network to assist you in coding common application tasks.

Contents

Certification and System Requirements
General Issues and Workarounds
Administrative Issues and Workarounds
Migrating Beta Projects

1 Certification and System Requirements

Client tier (development)

Middle tier

Server tier

Client tier (end user)

2 General Issues and Workarounds

This section describes general issues and workarounds for BI Beans.

Tutorials

• There is an incorrect file name in Exercise 6. The file named saveAsJSP.jsp in the tutorial should be viewerJSP.jsp.

Crosstab

• In Netscape, vertical alignment of crosstabs in HTML-client applications does not work on cells that have drill or graphics images.

QueryBuilder/ Queries

• Adding two rank calculations to a single query can produce incorrect data.
• BI Beans does not support the interspersing of symmetric and asymmetric drill operations. That is, the AsymmetricDrilling property of a Query object should not be changed during that object's lifetime.
• If a Favorite includes a Condition that references a Custom Measure, the Query may fail if that Custom Measure has never been referenced. This does not happen, however, if the Custom Measure is included in the selection of Measures for the Query.
• If you add to a presentation a Favorite that filters descendants across all levels (for example, Top n Products based on Sales for All Levels), then when the user drills down, the descendants are unfiltered. This is different from the behavior that occurs if the ConditionStep was specified in the Query itself -- that is, directly rather than using a Favorite.
• In PreviewPanel, drag and drop does not always work (for example, when dragging multiple members).
• If you add a panel to QueryBuilder, then you must implement the getId() method to avoid a null pointer exception. This method must return a unique identifier for the custom panel that is being added to QueryBuilder. In the next release, this method will be abstract and an error will occur at compile time if it is not implemented.

CalcBuilder/ Calculations

• Calculations do not have default formatting. You must specify default formatting in the presentation, using the number formatting dialogs.

Connections

• The MetadataManager and Connection beans are not "thread-safe." It is the application developer's responsibility to synchronize access to shared MetadataManager and Connection instances across multiple threads.

BI Beans Catalog

• When you install the BI Beans Catalog, you must also set the following environment variables:
  JDEV_ORACLE_HOME -- The Oracle Home directory (where JDeveloper is installed).
  JAVA_HOME -- The location of the 1.3 JDK.
  JDBC_CLASSPATH -- The paths to classes12.jar and nls_charset12.jar, under the Oracle Home directory, as shown in the following examples.

  Windows example -- If the Oracle Home directory is d:\oracle9, then you enter the following: JDBC_CLASSPATH=d:\oracle9\jdbc\lib\classes12.jar;d:\oracle9\jdbc\lib\nls_charset12.jar

  UNIX example -- If the Oracle Home directory is /usr/oracle, then you enter the following: setenv JDBC_CLASSPATH /usr/oracle/jdbc/lib/classes12.jar:/usr/oracle/jdbc/lib/nls_charset12.jar

• When you apply privileges to a folder in the Explorer, they are not applied to any subfolders.
• When you import a folder into JDeveloper from a JDBC-stored BI Beans Catalog, the imported folder may not appear immediately in the System Navigator. This happens when the BIDesigner node is expanded and no other objects have been created. To display the imported folder, right-click BIDesigner and select Refresh Contents.
• Although you can include characters that are not supported by the file system in objects that you save into the Oracle database implementation of the BI Beans Catalog, doing so causes problems when the objects are imported from the database into the local file system. The list of such characters includes: \ / : * ? < > |.
• An object that was saved into a folder by one user will not be visible to a second user if the two users are viewing the folder at the same time. To make the object visible to the second user, that user must log out of the application and log back in. The object will also be visible to the second user if the application calls the refresh method on the root folder.
• If you are having performance issues copying objects to and from the BI Beans Catalog, Oracle Corporation recommends that you use the Oracle9i OCI drivers instead of the Thin JDBC drivers, as described in the iDS Installation Guide.

JDeveloper

• Pressing Ctrl + Delete or pressing the Delete button temporarily removes objects from the the System Navigator. The objects reappear the next time you start JDeveloper or after you right-click BIDesigner and choose Refresh Contents. To delete objects permanently from the System Navigator, choose Erase From Disk from the File menu.
• If a process with an open OLAPI session is terminated without closing the connection, then the connection will be left open on the server. If too many connections are left open, eventually new connections cannot be established. The open inactive sessions can be removed by restarting Oracle OLAP or killing the sessions individually from Oracle Enterprise Manager.
• If you run a JSP or servlet application from inside JDeveloper, then you must terminate the OC4J instance before you can run it a second time. Use the Run Manager to terminate OC4J. To open the Run Manager, choose Run Manager from the View menu.
• Web DAV is unable to upload BI Designer folders to a remote repository. It correctly handles files that are in the folders but fails on the folders themselves.
• You must adjust project settings to ensure that the correct ORB is used when a frame is added to a new project. Right-click on the project and choose Project Settings. In the Project Settings dialog box, select Runner in the navigation tree, then type the following in the Java Options box:

  -Dorg.omg.CORBA.ORBClass=com.inprise.vbroker.orb.ORB;-Dorg.omg.CORBA.ORBSingletonClass=com.inprise.vbroker.orb.ORB

Deployment

• Java applet deployments are not supported for this release. However, you can use Java™ Web Start to deploy a BI Beans Java-client application, as described in the following outline:
  1. Configure your web server for Java Web Start, as described in the Java Web Start developers guide.
  2. Use JDeveloper to deploy your Java-client application, as usual. In the deployment profile, you must:
     • Deploy the application as a JAR file.
     • Include the following libraries: BIBEANS Runtime, BC4J Runtime, and Oracle JDBC.
  3. You must sign the application JAR file.
  4. Generate the .jnlp file (the configuration file for Java Web Start) for the application, then set all permissions for the <security> element.
  5. Copy the signed JAR file and the JNLP file to your web server.
  6. Create an HTML page that opens the JNLP file.
• Only generated JSP applications support static data sources.
• When you deploy a servlet application that uses background threads for user login, then you must ensure that the VM option -Doc4j.userThreads is set to true.
• If you wish to deploy your application manually, rather than use the standard JDeveloper deployment mechanism, then you must copy a number of BI JAR files to your production server. For the list of required JAR files, right-click on your project and choose Project Settings. In the Project Settings dialog box, select Libraries in the navigation tree, then click BIBEANS Runtime in the Available Libraries list and choose Edit. Click Edit for the Class Path field to display the Edit Class Path dialog box, which shows the list of required JAR files and their locations. Copy the JAR files to a directory that is under the classpath of your deployed application. You must also copy the runtime JAR files for BC4J to your production server. Similarly, runtime JAR files are required if you are deploying a JSP or UIX-based application and if you are using OCI drivers for database connections.

Servlet applications

• When you create or deploy a servlet application that uses background threads for user login, then you must ensure that the VM option -Doc4j.userThreads is set to true. In a deployment environment, which uses a standard OC4J installation, you must always ensure that this option is set correctly. In the current design environment, this option is set for you when you create a BI Beans generated servlet application. However, if you are working with a servlet that was created in an earlier version, then you might need to set this option.
• In a deployed servlet application running in Netscape Communicator 4.7x, resizing pages using the Explorer tree inside of frames does not produce any action. This situation happens only when Netscape's cache is full or set to 0. To fix this problem, the end user must refresh the page.
• When you are using the JSP Wizard, if you want to put an ExplorerDetail tag and an ExplorerTree tag on the same page, you must leave the explorerDetailPage field blank and specify the explorerDetailId manually. This workaround also applies to the searchPage and searchToolId fields.
• The generated servlet application does not support static data sources. If you specify a static data source, then the end user will not be able to log in.

3 Administration Issues and Workarounds

• BI Beans now uses JDBC to connect to Oracle9i OLAP instead of Oracle Naming Services (ONS).

4 Migrating Beta Projects

Numerous changes have been made to the BI Beans API in order to improve the product. To migrate projects created with BI Beans Beta software to the production release, you must perform the following tasks:

• Create a new BIDesigner.
• Create new Oracle9i OLAP connections.
• Copy object definitions from the old project to the new project.
• Compile the project and correct any errors that result from changes to the BI Beans API. Note that rules-based cell formatting for crosstabs and tables is lost when you migrate.

Copyright © 2002 Oracle Corporation. All Rights Reserved.	Oracle is a registered trademark and Oracle9i is a trademark or registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.