OBIEE 12C New Features

Many new features has been added in the OBIEE 12C including new views, new UI level functions, column properties, Powerful visual analyzer tool etc.,

• Let us see some of the new visualizations available in 12C:

• All Views are enhanced in such a way that we can 'right click' on all graphs & other views to sort, drill, keep the column or remove the column from the view.

• Under 'Column Properties'-->Data Format properties--> “Scale for % (x 100)” option is added that  Specifies whether to multiply data by a 100 to display it as a percentage when setting the properties of a column.

New View Added:

• A new View called 'Heat Matrix' view has been included which represents the two-dimensional data. This is well suited for analyzing large amounts of data and identifying outliers.

    You can find the values by 'Roll over' on the cells. Or you can make it as display always.

New UI 'R Analytics' Functions:

• One of the great advantage of OBIEE12C is availability of new set of functions related to 'R Analytics'  added in the 'edit formula' tab.
• 'R' is a programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics. The 'R' language is widely used among statisticians and data miners for developing statistical software and data analysis.
• To work with 'R Analytics' functions we have to setup 'R' in the environment.
• The 'R Analytics' function set includes

Cluster, Evaluate Script, Outlier, Regr, Trendline functions.

New Time series Function:

• A new time series function called 'Forecast' has been added.
  
  

Adding Your Own Data to Analyses:

• You can include dimensions and measures from external data sources in your analyses. The external data is loaded to the database, but is not part of the BI metadata catalog.
• You can create an analysis that include only data from an external source, or you can blend dimensions and measures from the external data source with dimensions and measures defined in the BI metadata catalog.
• The external data must be stored in a Microsoft Excel format spreadsheet file. You import the data from the spreadsheet file into the BI EE database as an external data source.
• You then add columns from the external data source to your analyses. When the data in spreadsheet file changes, you can refresh the BI EE database with the changes.

• Also we can add external data source like excel file through the 'Add Data Source' option available.

Visual Analyzer

• This is a completely new powerful visualization application introduced in OBIEE12C.
• VA provides greater flexibility to Rapidly create rich analyses through drag-and-drop configuration of new visual grammar.
• Using VA we can build the reports from the sources OBIEE repository and also from external content.

BI Server New Features

• Logical Level Sequence Numbers for Time Dimensions for faster time series calculations. And to improve the query time.
• DISPLAY, SORTKEY Syntax Supported in the SQL ORDER BY Expression
• Oracle Database FAN & Connection Failover Supported by Oracle BI Server

Following New Command Line utilities are added

• Download Repository
• Upload Repository
• List Connection Pool
• Update Connection Pool
• Rename Application Role
• Delete Application Role
• Rename Users
• Delete Users
• List Repository Variables
• Update Repository Variables

Generate Fragmented Aggregates in Aggregate Persistence

• The aggregate persistence functionality has been enhanced to generate fragmented aggregates from a manually written aggregate specification. You can generate fragmented aggregates by adding a Where clause to the Logical SQL query's Create statement.

New Features for Oracle BI System Administrators

• We can Invoke WLST from a Single Location
• Oracle Home location re-defined and there is no middleware home now.
• OPMN is no Longer available in Fusion Middleware
• Oracle Web Cache Not Part of Fusion Middleware
• Moving From Test To Production is Carried Out in a Different Way
• New Commands For Process Control
• Managing Metadata In Business Intelligence Archive Files(BAR File)
• Single Enterprise Install. No separate 'Software only' and 'Simple Install' is available.
• Simplified Configuration
• Managing System Component Instances Using Commands
• Collecting Diagnostic Bundles

Migration from OBIEE 11g to 12c

• We can migrate the Oracle BI 11g metadata to 12c is a two step process, and is carried out by using the BI Migration Script (migration-tool.sh).
• The catalog and WebLogic Security configurations needs to be reconfigured/migrated like in OBIEE 11g.

New Features in Oracle BI Security

• BISystemUser and BISystem are removed.
• User GUIDs Removed
• Database Security Store
• Easier SSL Configuration
• Migrating Catalog Groups to Application Roles

New Features for Oracle BI Publisher 12c

• Generate Explain Plan from SQL Data Set
• Best Practices Information