1. Implementation Guide
  2. Frequently Asked Questions

10 Frequently Asked Questions

The following issues may be encountered while implementing Retail Insights. The accompanying solutions will help you work through the issues.

Issue: Why am I getting the Login Denied error with the following message when I try to run a report using Oracle BI Presentation Services? 

ORACLE ERROR CODE: 1017, MESSAGE: ORA-01017: INVALID USERNAME/PASSWORD; LOGON DENIED

Solution: Ensure that the repository connection pool has the right login credentials in the Oracle BI Administration Tool and check the tnsnames.ora file.

Issue: I am getting the following error when I performed the "Update all Row Counts" task from the Oracle BI Administration tool. 

UNABLE TO CONNECT DATABASE USING CONNECTION POOL

Solution: Ensure the repository connection pool has the right login credentials in Oracle BI Administration tool or check the tnsnames.ora entry.

Issue: Why can't I see query activity at the individual user level in the NQQUERY.LOG file?

Solution: Check the logging level field in the user dialog box in the User tab. If the logging level is set to zero, the administrator may have disabled query logging. Contact the Oracle BI administrator to enable query logging.

Issue: Why is the data not loaded to the fact table, even though I have valid data in the staging table?

Solution: Data may be missing in the corresponding dimension table(s) or the transaction date is not in the active time period of the dimension.

Issue: Why is the data not loaded to the dimension table, even though I have valid data in staging table?

Solution: Parent data may be missing in the corresponding dimension table. This applies to dimensions with hierarchy.

Issue: Why is the data not loaded to the fact table, even though I have valid data in the fact staging tables and all the corresponding keys in the dimensions?

Solution: Check the effective start and end date values in the dimension tables. If any of these dimension's effective from date values is greater than the fact date value, those will not be loaded to the fact tables as those are the future dimension records.

Issue: Description of a subclass is changed from a to b in the source system but I cannot see both the records in Retail Insights after the loading process?

Solution: This type of change does not alter the relationship of subclass to any other level of the hierarchy above or below it. The record is simply updated to reflect the description change; as it is tracked as scd type 1 change. For more information, refer to the Oracle Retail Insights Operations Guide.

Issue: Why the load program performance is not improving even after using ODI multi-threading?

Solution: This can occur because of several reasons. Check the following settings:

  • The number of threads must be appropriate for the hardware and data volume.

  • The number of partitions on the intermediate temp table must be equal to or higher than the number of threads.

Issue: How do you execute the failed threads for multi-threading programs?

Solution: This can be done by using the batch log in the C_LOAD_DATES table. Table C_LOAD_DATES has a record for the execution status of each batch at thread number level. Same thread of a same batch cannot be executed twice unless the log record is deleted manually. This provides a possibility to re-execute only one thread for a case when only one thread fails and other threads complete successfully. To re-execute failed threads, the user can manually delete the threads that need to be executed and keep all other threads untouched in the C_LOAD_DATES table. Then the user can start the batch again. When the re-execution is done, the program will show errors in the UNIX console, but the threads that need to be re-executed should complete successfully. The error in the UNIX console is for the re-execution of the threads that completed successfully in the first execution, so it can be ignored.

Issue: While running the packages it is possible that there could be a scenario failure with error "Variable has no value" due to ODI out of memory.

Solution: If this error occurs, verify the values of the following two parameters are set as below (for more details refer to the Oracle Retail Insights Installation Guide) and regenerate the scenario that is failing.

  • ODI_INIT_HEAP=256M

  • ODI_MAX_HEAP=1024M

Issue: While loading data from files to RI staging tables by using Universal Adapter, there could be an error due to index (PK index) in unusable state.

Solution: This could be caused by duplicate records in the source file. Due to DIRECT load is used in the sqlldr, the PK index will be disabled when this type of error happens. The ender user can clean up the source data, re-enable the PK index on the target table (staging table), clean up records in the C_LOAD_DATES table, and then re-execute the program.