Display dynamica default date value in dashboard prompt

I found this worth blogging for because it is fairly common that people want to put a default value on date dashboard prompts as current date or yesterday or any other dates that changes dynamically. So in this blog, I will just focus on setting current date as default in the date dashboard prompt.Unlike column filters where we can enter 'current_date' in the SQL expression of the 'Add' tab of the filter property, we can't really do the same in dashboard...

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Understanding Complex Join and Physical Join in OBIEE

What is the difference between complex join and physical join? The easiest way to understand the basic is to remember that physical join is used in Physical layer and complex join is used in BMM layer. However, just knowing that isn't going to be enough to build solid skills on OBIEE development. In order to gain more insight on how it really works in OBIEE, we need to know more about these 2 types of joins. First, let's look at complex join: The...

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How to use Dynamic Variable in OBIEE

What is dynamic variable? According to OBIEE Admin guide, it is basically a variable that dynamically holds its value depending on the way it is defined. In this blog, I am going to talk about how to create dynamic variables and also how to apply them. The goal is for the beginners to get a good understanding of dynamic variable so that they will be able to apply them when situation calls for it.Let's start with creating a very simple dynamic variable....

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Filter based on the repetition of records in the column

Recently, I just came across a requirement that I think is worth blogging for beginner who's trying to manipulate the report data based on the the repetition of the data. Take a look at the following report:You see, not every order number has only one corresponding document number. So how can I filter this report so that it only gives me back those order numbers that have more than 1 document number? Because there is no out of the box filter operator...

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reporting against multiple transactional datasources

Recently, I came across a requirement that the users want to query against the transactional database using OBIEE. In our case, they literally want to pull data directly (meaning no ETL, no staging area in between) from the cash register of the retail stores nationwide. The databases of these stores are all sitting on different servers although they all have the same data structure. The goal is to be able to report these store data in 1 subject...

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The myth of OBIEE performance tuning

It is very common for people to think that when reports run for excessive amount of time, there is configurations or performance tunings that need to be done or enhanced witin OBIEE. It is as if OBIEE has the magic key to faster and better performance. At the surface level, the configurations and reports are done in OBIEE, it is natural for most people to think that the problem needs to be solved in OBIEE as well. That is fair.However, when looking at reports with poor performance, there could be a lot of reasons behind it. OBIEE in essence creates...

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Calculating the variances between the column sections in Pivot table

In the below report, we have a very standard pivot view which separates time based measures by dates in columns, and then applies a subtotal at column section level. Now what if instead of doing totaling on the 2 dates' measure, I want to apply variance between the two as indicated below?The main challenge here is that all the values for different dates are all coming from the same table columns, it only appears to be different physical columns...

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The fundamental understanding of Oracle Business Intelligence

There has been many times when during the interview I have asked or been asked the question "Could you explain to me what is OBIEE and what does it do?" This sounds like a really basic question that anybody can start with, which can also lead to so many different topics depending on the answers. I think this is worth blogging for specially after having had so many interviews or project related discussions with other professionals that have missed the point when speaking of OBIEE or even the topic of 'business intelligence' in general.One of the...

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