B Frequently Asked Questions
This appendix provides answers to common questions asked by administrators responsible for configuring and managing, backing up and restoring content, and indexing data in Oracle Analytics Server.
Top FAQs to Configure and Manage Oracle Analytics Server
The top FAQs for configuring and managing Oracle Analytics Server are identified in this topic.
Can I see how many users are currently signed in?
Yes. Display the Home page , click Console, and then click Sessions and Query Cache. See Monitor Users Who Are Signed In.
Can I see the SQL generated by an analysis and analyze the log?
Yes. Display the Home page, click Console, and then click Sessions and Query Cache. See Analyze SQL Queries and Logs.
Can I change the default logo and dashboard style for the whole deployment?
Yes. When logged in as Administrator, navigate to the Classic Home page, click the user profile icon, click Administration, and then click Manage Themes. Create a new theme including dashboard properties such as logo, branding, page colors, and link colors, and click Active. This new style is applied for all new browser sessions.
Top FAQs to Back Up and Restore User Content
The top FAQs for backing up and restoring user content are identified in this topic.
What do I need to back up?
You should regularly back up the content that users create to a file called a snapshot. User content includes catalog content such as reports, dashboards, data visualization projects, and pixel perfect reports, datasets, data flows, data models, security roles, and so on.
If something goes wrong with your content or service, you can revert to the content you saved in a snapshot. Snapshots are also useful if you want to move or share content.
To back up user content, see Export Snapshots.
To restore user content, see Import Snapshots.
Top FAQs to Index Content and Data
The top FAQs for indexing semantic models and catalog content are identified in this topic.
What can I index?
Administrators can choose to index:
- Semantic models - Subject area, dimensions names and values, and measure names and values. You must be an administrator to modify the semantic model indexing preferences.
- Catalog content - Workbooks, analyses, dashboards, and reports. You must be an administrator to modify the catalog indexing preferences.
- File-based datasets - You can index a file-based dataset so that specified users can build visualizations with a dataset's data. Or you can certify a file-based dataset so that the specified users can search for its data from the home page. Any user can set a file-based dataset to index or certify the dataset.
What is a certified dataset?
Any user can upload a spreadsheet to create a dataset, and uploaded spreadsheets can be of varying quality. When a user certifies a shared dataset, it means that the user is confirming that the dataset contains good, reliable data that other users can search for from the home page. When you and users who've been granted access to datasets search from the home page, the data in a certified dataset is ranked high in the search results.
How often should I schedule a crawl?
The index updates automatically as users add or modify catalog content. By default, the catalog and semantic model crawl run once per day. In some cases you might want to change this default after importing a BAR file, if automatic indexing didn't run, or if your data updates occur less frequently (for example, monthly).
Can I index content in languages other than English?
Yes. You can index content in 28 languages.
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Semantic models and catalog content - You can generate indexes for multiple languages at the same time. Go to the Search Index page and Ctl-click to select one or more of the 28 available languages. For example, if your company's headquarters are in the United States and you have offices in Italy, you might select English and italiano to create indexes in both English and Italian. See Configure Search Indexing.
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Datasets - You can index a dataset for a single language at a time. Go to the Inspect dialog for the dataset and select one of the 28 available languages. See Index a Dataset.
Note:
If your data is in English and your index language is English, you can't search for the data in a different language such as French. For example, if your data includes English product names (such as chair, desk, matches), you can't search using French product names (such as chaise, bureau, alumettes).
Are there considerations when indexing subject areas with large tables?
You can index any size table, but big tables take longer to index. For large subject areas that have many tables or large tables, consider indexing only the columns your users need to search for.
Because index files are compact, it's rare to exceed the storage space that Oracle Analytics reserves for indexing.
How are search results ordered?
Search results are listed in this order:
- Semantic model (semantic layer)
- Certified datasets
- Personal datasets
- Catalog items (workbooks, analyses, dashboards, and reports)
Should I use Don't Index to secure my catalog items?
No. Oracle doesn't recommend setting the Crawl Status field to Don't Index as a way of hiding a catalog item from users. Users won't see the item in search results or on the home page, but are still able to access the item. Instead, use permissions to apply the proper security to the item.
How do I build an index most effectively?
For best results only index the subject areas, dimensions, catalog items, and certify datasets that users need to find. Indexing all items yields too many search results. Oracle recommends that you deselect all semantic model and catalog items and then select only the items that the user needs. You can then add items to the index as needed.
Why are there many select distinct queries on the database during indexing?
This is most likely because the semantic model's indexing option is set to Index. When you set this option to Index, the metadata and values are indexed, which means that during indexing the select distinct queries are run to fetch the data values for all of the columns in all of the subject areas that are configured for indexing.
If this system overhead isn't acceptable or if users don't need the additional functionality to visualize data values from the search bar on the Home page, then go to the Console, click Search Index, and set the indexing option to Index Metadata Only. Setting this option to Index Metadata Only indexes dimension and measure names, only, and doesn't run select distinct queries.