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What is Open Source Code?

Open source code is software that has been written by a person or a company and copyrighted, but is also licensed to include a large user population, who is able to make changes and fix bugs in the code. As users need different applications from their open source software, they can change it to fit their demands without facing the repercussions of copyright infringement. There are a couple of different licenses that designate code as open source and users must adhere to the guidelines put forth by these licenses in order to use and modify the software.

Open Source Licenses

There is a variety of licenses that have been approved by the Open Source Initiative or OSI. Two common licenses are the Berkeley License and the GNU General Public License (GPL). The Berkeley License allows users to take the source code and make changes to it before releasing it again under a separate propriety license. With the Berkeley License, the original creators of the code would have to be acknowledged publicly when the new software is released. With GPL, if derivative software is created using the original code, it has to be made available as a GPL product, allowing other users access to the new code and allowing other users to modify it for their needs.

Freeware vs. Open Source

Open source is different from freeware, in that the actual code is made available to users, not just the software. Freeware is software that you can download for free for a trial period or permanently, but has to be used as is without any modifications. There is some very reliable freeware that can be downloaded permanently, but freeware is also used by commercial software providers to entice buyers to buy their product after the trial period is up.

Because they have ability to make changes to the code in open source, users can customize their business intelligence software to best serve their company. Users also have access, the majority of the time, to upgrades and applications that other users have developed, in addition to any bug fixes. This means that there is no waiting on the parent company to come out with an upgrade or develop add-ons.

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You can categorize your Oracle General Ledger accounts into specific group account numbers. The group account number is used during data extraction as well as front-end reporting. The GROUP_ACCT_NUM field in the GL Account dimension table W_GL_ACCOUNT_D denotes the nature the nature of the General Ledger accounts (for example, cash account, payroll account). Refer to the GROUP_ACCOUNT_NUM column in the file_group_acct_names.csv file for values you can use. For a list of the Group Account Number domain values, see Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse Data Model Reference. The mappings to General Ledger Accounts Numbers are important for both Profitability analysis and General Ledger analysis (for example, Balance Sheets).

The logic for assigning the accounts is located in the file_group_acct_codes_ora.csv file. The table below shows an example configuration of the file_group_acct_codes_ora.csv file.

Basically we specified the Financial Statement Item configuration through a CSV (comma separated value) file.
This is an example of the Financial Statement Item configuration file.
The Financial statement item configuration is part of the configuration steps required for the Finance module. It needs to be constructed by the user before the ETL program starts running.

In this CSV file, the user specify the GL accounts, and the nature (which we call Financial Statement Item) of the GL accounts.

The nature is indicated by the values in Financial Statement Item column.

If consecutive GL accounts have the same nature, you can specify them in ranges as shown above.
There are 6 possible domain values for the Financial Statement Item: they are AP, AR, Revenue, TAX, COGS, and Others.
The 6 possible values corresponds to our 6 base fact tables: IA_AP_XACTS, IA_AR_XACTS, IA_GL_REVENUE, IA_TAX_XACTS, IA_GL_COGS, and IA_GL_OTHERS.

The set of books is an accounting entity. It may be an Oracle specific term. A company can use one single set of books or multiple set of books to keep track of its accounting.
When defining a set of books in Oracle, the user specified the chart of account to be used to organize its GL accounts, and a common currency to keep all the transaction amount in.
For instance, Siebel US may use a set of book called ‘US Set of Books’ to keep track of its accounting entries, Siebel Europe may use a different set of book to keep track of its accounting entries.

The set of books ID is basically the numeric ID of that set of books in the OLTP system.
In the above example, accounts 1000 to 1100 for set of books 100 are assigned to AP. Accounts 1200 to 1300 are assigned to AR.

A GL account can be assigned to only one Financial statement item.

We have another configuration file similar to the Financial Statement Item Configuration file. It is called the Group Account Number configuration file. It allows the user to configure the GL accounts at a more detail level than Financial Statement Item.

This is an example of the Group Account Number Configuration file.
This configuration is mainly used during the PLP process when we want to aggregate records from the Base fact tables to the Base Aggregate tables.

The base fact tables stores records at GL account level whereas the base aggregate tables stores summarized records at Group Account Number level.

The group account number is also used in the Siebel Analytics RPD to define metrics definition. For instance, I can have a metric called ‘Sales and Marketing Cost’. The underlying definition of that metric would be, the total amount of all transactions charging to any accounts with Group Account Number ‘SM COST’. In this case all transactions charging to accounts between 4000 to 4100.

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Typically for demonstration purpose, you could get a 4 gb PC/LAPTOP with enough disk space (150 GB) and get the entire BI Apps installed and configured. You can install 10g Database, OBIEE, BI Apps, Informatica and then configure the DAC and run the ETL all on the same windows box.

For real implementation you would preferably use linux/unix/solaris boxes for your installation. In this situation where you have to install on Linux, there are components which can be installed only on Windows and then the files need to be FTP’d over to the linux box.

At minimum, you will need to find a windows PC to install the following

• JDK
• OBIEE
• BI Apps
• Informatica client components

If you are going to install the above on the windows, you might install the server components on the windows machine so that it provides you an extra play area for local testing and troubleshooting.

In this article, I will just cover the high level step to install on windows.

• Install Database
  • Download 10g database and install on windows
  • Create olapdb, infadb,dacdb users
  • Grant grant dba, connect, resource to olapdb,infadb,dacdb
• Download JDK 1.5* (there is some bug with JDK 1.6)
• Download OBIEE for windows
• Download obiee bi apps (available for only windows)
• Download informatica for Windows
• Once downloads are done
  · Install OBIEE on windows
  · Install OBIEE Apps on windows
• · Install Informatica Client and Server
• Download and install JDK on linux
• Download and install OBIEE on linux
• Download Informatica for Linux
  • Unzip disk1 and disk2
  • Run install.sh from disk1
  • Run install.sh from disk2 (sp5 patch)
• Copy the DAC, oracle_bi_dw_base.rep and the source and lookup directories from OBIEE/dwrep/informatica directory on window to server in the appropriate informatica directory on the linux server. On windows you can assemble all the needed files into a new folder, zip them up and ftp to linux.
• Start Informatica services
• Launch the informatica repository console (admin)
• Restore the repository oracle_bi_dw_base.rep
• Launch the DAC client
• Create new configuration for the Datawarehouse
• Create the datawarehouse tables
• Configure Informatica workflow manager
• Configure DAC server

This is just the Mt Everest view for the complete install and initial config. Once this is done you will need to launch the DAC Client, setup the containers, map the domain values, parameters for the required Analytics and finally run the ETL.

In a later post I will try to cover some more details on the DAC configuration but thats it for now.

I frequently provide remote assistance to lot of clients for installation and configuration of entire BI apps. If you need similar help just shoot me an email at njethwa@gmail.com

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The good thing is Oracle provides the repository for DBI content (which I think they have discontinued promoting it). Using this repository and the OBIEE BI Apps repository we can merge them two and provide a single point of entry for almost all of their Analytics requirements.

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If yes, then how are you distributing the dashboards to your team?

The chances are that you are probably sending the entire bulky Excel file as attachment to your team, right?

Wouldn’t it be convenient to export the Excel dashboard to PDF and then just email the PDF?

Here are the steps to build a true Access Based Dashboard that has PDF and HTML export ability.

And the best thing is, you can put it on the webserver and then just provide the Dashboard URL to your team so they can interact with the dashboard in real time.

Export Excel Dashboard to PDF

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