OBIEE is not dead, just has a new name

With just one more holiday to get through before back to work, there’s just enough time to catch up with the latest blogs we read this month.

Also happening this month were the speaker announcements for UKOUG, and unfortunately I didn’t make the cut. With so many submissions for a limited number of slots, I know it’s hard for them to decide, I have been there before on the Kscope selection panel, and there is always someone who is going to be disappointed – this time it was me.

I could speculate that it’s because my topic was not what they wanted this time, or because OBIEE is not their focus, or my submission was poor, or the sponsors took up lots of spaces, or the conference wanted more newbie speakers (or the same ones we normally see), or I annoyed the selection panel chair! Unfortunately that’s all I can do – speculate.

So, how do I go forward from here?

In some ways it’s good to have been rejected, because the memberships fee, travel cost, hotel bill, loss of client billing, buying special equipment and software, all add up. I was wondering why I was paying so much to give away my knowledge for free?

Then there’s the time saved, not having to work so hard to prepare the presentation.

But I guess the biggest benefit is that I reminded to constantly review the market and make sure I adapt to where it’s going – no doubt that the Analytics space is evolving and I need to evolve with it. There isn’t even an Analytics track on Super Sunday – Just Apex, Database and fusion.

For the main event there is still an Analytics track, featuring Cloud (of course), Data warehousing (Good Old DW), Visualizations (New stuff) and what they call Advanced Analytics (Not sure which session this is). There is little mention of last years trendy word (BIG DATA), and only a few mentions of data lakes, but we are still seeing lots of the Cloud word and Data Viz. My biggest concern is there are only 2 (yes TWO) session that mention OBIEE. Down on last year.

I still think the conference will be good, and worthwhile going if you can get your company to pay, but if I was going I think I would have trouble knowing which session to attend – the tracks conflict with each other, so I would find it difficult to decide whether to go to Apex, Database or Analytics sessions!

One speaker I would have liked to have seen is Daan Bakboord, and to quote his blurb

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

So I will take his advice and guess that in the future companies will still need Oracle Business Intelligence, some in the cloud, some cloudless, some with visualisations, some without, some advanced, some basic. Oracle Business Intelligence will still need great database design, some customisations, and most importantly, will still need integrating into the client. We may use new toys, new functions, new apps etc, but we will still be doing “Business Intelligence implementations”, and hopefully with great Oracle products, like OBIEE.

Hopefully all needing experts like me to be right on the cutting edge, and also fully up to speed with the current tech (i.e. OBIEE 11g/12c on site).

Anyway, start here, and learn!

Blogs of the week

1. Installing Oracle Data Integrator Cloud Service (ODICS)

Travis Brannan names Part 1 of this blog series , “Creating the Database and Java Cloud Service”. and goes through:

Creating the database
Creating the Java Cloud Service

2. Art of BI: OBIEE 12c RCU Installation – Invalid Credentials Error

Sherry Milad writes that this blog is to guide you through getting around an error you may face during the OBIEE 12c RCU Installation on a Windows 2012 R2 environment.

3. OAC Backup Issue

Robert Gideon writes about a backup issue with OAC and how to get round it!

4. Look and Feel – Feel Free to Go Crazy

Jeff Smith asks and answers: How can I make SQL Developer look…different?

5. Real Time Business Intelligence with Oracle Technologies

Iñigo Hernáez recommends going through the previous blog post first, then covers:

Traditional and Real Time BI
Case Study Overview
Solutions Design and Development
On Premise
Azure
Power BI Cloud
Scenario Analysis and Conclusions

6. Code Based Access Control, #securecoding #oracle #plsql #MultipleSchemas

Robert Lockard tells us to download the code here. Then says, This example depends on the HR Demo schema being loaded. We will be building on this example over the next several months to present a full blown application that includes many of the secure coding features I have been talking about.

7. Join Elimination Bug

Jonathan Lewis says, “A few years ago a bug relating to join elimination showed up in a comment to a post I’d done about the need to keep on testing and learining. The bug was visible in version 11.2.0.2 and, with a script to replay it, I’d found that it had disappeared by 11.2.0.4.Today I had a reason to rediscover the script, and decided to test it against 12.2.0.1 – and found that the bug was still present.”

8. Something Going Up Is Not Always Good

Stephen Few starts off by saying, “Even though our unique ability to deal with complexity propelled humans to the top of the evolutionary heap, we still crave simplistic (i.e., overly simple) explanations. I promote the value of simplicity in my work, but never simplicity that sacrifices truth. Simple things can and should be explained simply. Complex things can and should be explained as simply as possible, but never in a way that disregards or misrepresents their complexity.” Read on!

9. Oracle Big Data Cloud Service CE: Working with Hive, Spark and Zeppelin 0.7

Gokhan Atil points us towards his previous blog post and looks at working with Hive, Spark and Zeppelin 0.7

10. Auto enabling APPROX_* function in the Oracle Database

Brendan Tierney opens his blog by saying:

“With the releases of 12.1 and 12.2 of Oracle Database we have seen some new functions that perform approximate calculations. These include: