23 Moving Oracle Business Intelligence Between Environments

This chapter describes how to move Oracle Business Intelligence between environments. You can move Oracle Business Intelligence from a test to a production environment or to a new environment, as follows:

• Moving Between Environments

• Moving to a New Environment

• Upgrading from 11g to 12c

• Migrating the Whole Server

Moving Between Environments

Moving from a test to a production environment applies solely to metadata (content, data model and authorization).

To move from a test environment to a production environment you would typically develop and test applications in a test environment and then roll out the test applications (and optionally test data), in the production environment on the same operating system. This can also include moving from a single to a multiple computer environment.

Assumptions

• You must have file system (offline) permissions.
• Commands can be run offline only.
• Command is read-only for export (source system is unchanged).

Prerequisites

• Uses WLST scripting.

  See Using the WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST).

• BI deployments A and B service instances exist in different domains.
• Changes will have been made to BI deployment A service instance.
• Admintool (datamodel), Answers (catalog), Fusion Middleware Control (security), or WLST. These tools are only required if you want to make changes to metadata.
• Command is read-only.

To move from a test to a production environment:

The following options are available:

• export all

  You might use this option for example, if all users and datasources are the same between two systems.

• export without user folder content

  You might use this option as part of user acceptance testing, where test users have different content but access to the same data sources (although with different data access)

• export without connection pool credentials

  You might use this option if all you need to do is to move upgraded metadata from one system to another after it has been tested (no users in common, different datasource security).

To support these options the export command has optional parameters to export user folder content, or connection pool credentials as follows:

exportServiceInstance(domainHome, serviceInstanceKey, workDir, exportDir, applicationName=None, applicationDesc=None, applicationVersion=None, includeCatalogRuntimeInfo=false, includeCredentials=None)

1. (Optional) If you want to preserve existing user production Service Instance folders, use the runcat archive command against production to save user folders.
2. Run the exportServiceInstance command to export the TEST service instance to a BAR file (with or without User folders and connection credentials).

   For example:

   exportServiceInstance('/u01/Oracle/Middleware/Oracle_Home/user_projects/domains/bi', 'ssi', '/u01/workDir', '/u01/exportDir', applicationName=None, applicationDesc=None, applicationVersion=None, includeCatalogRuntimeInfo=false, includeCredentials=None)
   

   This example exports service instance with key ssi, to /u01/exportDir/ssi.bar.

3. Run the importServiceInstance command to import the exported TEST BAR file into the PROD service instance.

   importServiceInstance('/u01/Oracle/Middleware/Oracle_Home/user_projects/domains/bi','ssi','/u01/exportDir/ssi.bar')
   

   This example imports the BAR file /u01/exportDir/ssi.bar into the service instance with key ssi.

4. If you used the runcat archive command in step 1, you can now use the runcat unarchive command to put production user folders back in place.

Post Conditions:

• PROD Service Instance metadata will be replaced with TEST metadata.
• To restate, any content created directly in PROD Service Instance will be replaced or lost.
• No configuration is changed on domain hosting PROD Service Instance
• No metadata or configuration is changed on domain hosting TEST Service Instance.

Moving to a New Environment

You can move (or migrate) Oracle Business Intelligence to a new environment by re-creating an existing Oracle BI system in a different location to the one in which it was originally installed. The objective is to re-create an identical deployment on different hardware.

You might want to move to a new environment for the following reasons:

• To move the system as a whole onto more powerful hardware.

• To move to a different operating system.

• To move into a different physical location.

  For information about migrating to a new environment, see Metadata Repository Builder's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.

Upgrading from 11g to 12c

You can upgrade an 11g deployment by migrating 11g metadata to a new 12c deployment.

The process is an out-of-place upgrade that requires a 12c domain to be created as the target. You first create an export bundle from a read-only 11g certified release, and then use it to reconfigure a new 12c domain.

For information about migrating and upgrading, see Upgrading Oracle Business Intelligence.

Migrating the Whole Server

Oracle Business Intelligence supports whole server migration, in which a WebLogic Server instance is migrated to a different physical computer upon failure, either manually or automatically.

See Whole Server Migration in Administering Clusters for Oracle WebLogic Server and Configuring Server Migration for an Enterprise Deployment in Enterprise Deployment Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence.