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Troubleshooting a BO Edge on Red Hat Linux Oracle driver Issue

August 29th, 2010

So BOE 3.1 SP2 Edge CMS would not start after a database driver upgrade to solve an LDAP imcompatibility on a Red hat installation

1) checked the tnsnames.ora

Status: OK

2) Checked my Connectivity through sqlplus

Status: OK

3) Checked the CMS Setup

[bobj@server bobje]$ ./cmsdbsetup.sh

err: ERROR Failed to get cluster name. (STU00165)

err: Error description: Database access error. Reason Loading shared object failed. First tried to load library clntsh and failed because of error: [clntsh: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory]. Second tried to load library libclntsh.so and failed because of error: [libclntsh.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64].

4) Checked the LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the profile of the bobj account

drwxr-x— 58 oracle oinstall 4096 Aug 27 13:51 OraHome10gr2_32bit

$ cd

$ vi .bash_profile

Status: OK

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/lib:

5) Tried changing to 32 bit libary path

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/lib32:

Status: libclntsh.so file was not there

6) Reset the rights for Read and Execute

chmod -R 755 lib32

Status: OK

7) Checked the file that BOE is looking for and it shows as a 64 bit file

libclntsh.so.10.1: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

This should be showing as the following as BOE requires 32 bit database drivers

libclntsh.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

Status: Issue

The current issue prohibits the BusinessObjects system from running on the server. Database driver to be setup correctly

So BusinessObjects 3.1 SP2 Edge CMS would not start after an Oracle database driver upgrade to solve an LDAP imcompatibility on a Red hat installation

1) checked the tnsnames.ora

Status: OK

2) Checked my Connectivity through sqlplus

Status: OK

3) Checked the CMS Setup

[bobj@server bobje]$ ./cmsdbsetup.sh

err: ERROR Failed to get cluster name. (STU00165)

err: Error description: Database access error. Reason Loading shared object failed. First tried to load library clntsh and failed because of error: [clntsh: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory]. Second tried to load library libclntsh.so and failed because of error: [libclntsh.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64].

4) Checked the LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the profile of the bobj account

drwxr-x— 58 oracle oinstall 4096 Aug 27 13:51 OraHome10gr2_32bit

$ cd

$ vi .bash_profile

Status: OK

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/lib:

5) Tried changing to 32 bit libary path

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/lib32:

Status: libclntsh.so file was not there

6) Reset the rights for Read and Execute

chmod -R 755 lib32

Status: OK

7) Checked the file that BOE is looking for and it shows as a 64 bit file

libclntsh.so.10.1: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

This should be showing as the following as BOE requires 32 bit database drivers

libclntsh.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

Status: Issue

The current issue prohibits the BusinessObjects system from running on the server. Database driver to be setup correctly

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Posted in Business Objects, BusinessObjects, Linux, Oracle, Uncategorized

SAPPHIRE

May 28th, 2010

My Highlights
- Met with new product managers of Webi Intelligence and BI On-Demand
- Everyone I met had a challenge with BOE that we could assist with
- Other BOE parters were ready to talk about collaboration
- Got to see my sister who lives nearby
- Great feedback at my presentation on Data Quality

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: BusinessObjects Presentations web intelligence

April 16th ASUG Meeting

April 14th, 2010

Busy Spring on tour. I will be speaking a the Dallas / OK ASUG meeting in Plano BusinessObjects Installation Concepts.

Address is
SMU – Plano Campus
5236 Tennyson Parkway
Plano, Texas 75024
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Just spoke at the Central Texas conference in March in San Antonio on Xceslius Project Management and will be speaking in May at SAPPHIRE in Orlando on Web Intelligence Data Tracking techniques.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: asug BusinessObjects Installation

What I Do

March 22nd, 2010

What we do: Some asked recently for what was going on related to our tools. Here is a summary
At a 50K foot level we have 5 tools

1) Report Launch allows you to embed Crystal and Webi reports from any application without needing the SDK.

2) Dashboard Launch (You will have to see this). Caches webi content and many other things for really fast dashboards. SAP certified too

3) Admin Launch – bleeding edge web based BOE administration tool that you can train to do what you need it to do for you (beta just started).

4) Audit Launch : Export extends BOE auditing for advanced analysis by syncing CMC attributes into an extended audit database. Audit Launch Import syncs security from 3rd party apps into BOE

5) Activity Launch – allows you to create business activity monitoring events into report schedules and trach when a batch of schedules completes so you can continue the notification or event process

All of our software is 100& web based on Java SDK so it runs on Windows, Unix, and Linux

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Posted in Business Intelligence, Business Objects, Business Objects SDK, BusinessObjects, Report Launch, Uncategorized, bursting

Tags: BusinessObjects Report SDK

BI Tool Selection

February 6th, 2010

When a company thinks that a BI system will benefit their ability to access and analyze data, a great door of opportunity is opened. Through that door will come many vendors and products that may or may not be a match for your company’s needs and abilities. From the beginning, the success of a system is establishing the needs or requirements and the proposed benefits to the company. Without these, every product can be made to look like it fits and is “just what you are looking for.”

One thing to keep in mind is that these requirements are going to change throughout the life cycle of the design process as requirement-gathering processes uncover additional application issues. Benefits can be directly related to monetary issues (such as cost savings though eliminating unsuccessful spending) as well as non- monetary benefits (such as reducing the time it takes to analyze the last month’s sales trends).

How then does a company choose which product is right-one that will match the current needs and also support the requirements of future applications? There are some simple processes that can help in this decision. The first is to break the requirements into their separate entities. These entities will separate the kinds of questions that need to be asked of the products you are considering and identify your expectations of the application.

The primary classifications are simply by data related issues and by application functionality. While other factors exist (such as corporate relationships as well as vendor characteristics) and are influential, these should be viewed as external forces on the decision process. Other external forces, such as staffing requirements, should also be considered.

This topic will be continued…..

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Posted in Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse, Reports, Uncategorized

Split and Search

October 22nd, 2009

Presented at the GBN conference on a way to provide users the way to enter a comma delimited list of values into a prompt and then use a database function to split those values in order to return the list as a table that can be used in joins.

WHERE rs_tb_cms_groups.group_ID IN ( SELECT rs_tb_cms_groups.group_ID FROM @Prompt(‘Group
Name ‘,’A',{‘California’,'New York’},mono,constrained,not_persistent,))

If anyone wants the full article including the Oracle and SQL server code please contact Kevin McManus at answers@mcmanusconsulting.com

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Posted in Business Objects, Uncategorized, Universe Design, prompts

Whitepaper: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance

October 15th, 2009

No-one expects disaster but we can plan for it. As Business Intelligence becomes an integral part of an organizations decision making processes it becomes as operational as any other system to the proper functioning of the business. This dependence by the business means that the outage of the BI system will have a negative impact in critical areas such as finance, customer service, or deliver expectations.

As with other operations systems the BI systems should go through rigorous testing, quality assurance, provided failover, and tested against the disaster recovery needed for business continuance.

With the BusinessObjects Enterprise XI platform there is a close interdependence between the database and the file system files. Normally backups are handled by independent backup systems for the database and the files. This normally also means that there a different teams involved in the two backups. In addition to the confirmation that backups are being complete there needs to be a clear understanding of all team members on how to restore those backups to minimize the impact of the system restore.

- In the case where a single applications documents are accidentally deleted the restoration of the entire system would also erase any work done by all users.

- Backup is performed at 12 AM midnight and system crashes at 10 AM. You have the potential to lose
everything done in those 10 hours especially if you do a blank restore.

Using the list in the White Paper you can prepare by developing and testing an internal approach to the most common problems that result in the need for a restore, so that you can avoid the surprises of teams being unfamiliar with your BOE systems.

http://www.gogbn.org/irj/go/km/docs/gbnfiles/GBNSASIGWhitepaper-DisasterRecoveryOct09.pdf

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Disaster Recovery Business Continuance BusinessObjects

Maximizing Business Objects

October 14th, 2009

Understand the full functionality of BusinessObjects Enterprise software and the significant return to be gained by sharing that functionality with your other Web applications. Using the BusinessObjects Enterprise SDK and Web services, you can easily integrate reports, dashboards, scheduling, and security management. You can also improve application performance by off-loading report processing and deliver business intelligence functionality without new software or custom development.

http://www.sap.com/community/showdetail.epx?itemID=14037

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: BusinessObjects SDK

Business Objects Bursting SDK: Publication Nation

June 16th, 2009

A common request in reporting is the ability to break apart a large report into parts and send each part to a recipient based on his/her area of responsibility. For example, a patient census report may be broken apart by care unit and each part sent to the supervisor of that unit. This process is called bursting.

Bursting in Business Objects Enterprise is accomplished by a combination of two technologies, Profiles and Publications, and in the current BOE version 3.1, has been improved with the introduction of single-pass bursting. Single-past bursting optimizes the report bursting process by retrieving the entire report’s data in one pass as opposed to executing a retrieve for each “burst.”

Let’s talk about Profiles. Profiles define how data should be limited for a given BOE user or group. In the profile, you are able to specify each user or group (aka “principal”), and a filter for that group. A filter is report platform specific: You define a filter for Crystal reports, and a separate filter for Webi reports. The idea behind a Profile existing independently of a Publication, strictly used to define the bursting process, is that the same Profile can be used over and over again, thereby saving time in configuration. Combined, BOE Profiles and Publications provide a flexible and efficient way to deliver personalized report content to your users. Stay tuned for Part 2 of Business Objects Bursting or visit us online at McManus Software.