OBIEE 10G/11G - The (Web|Presentation) Catalog (Webcat)

Saw Object

About

The Web Catalog becomes in 11g the Presentation Catalog. Be careful not to confuse with the Old Presentation Catalog term of the Presentation Layer from the repository in 10g …

The Oracle BI Presentation Catalog stores BI Presentation Service object such as:

  • folders,
  • shortcuts,
  • from 11G

    KPIs,

  • from 11G

    Oracle BI Publisher objects (such as reports and templates).

in a directory structure of individual files.

This object are generally created with the BI Presentation Services Dashboard.

Each object is composed of two files:

  • its own file. For example, an analysis called Analysis 1 would be stored in a file named Analysis1.
  • a attributes file. For example, the analysis called Analysis1 would have a corresponding attributes file named Analysis1.atr.

The attributes file contains:

  • the object's full name,
  • access control list (ACL),
  • description,
  • and so on.

To access an object in the catalog, users must have appropriate ACL entries for that object. All objects in the catalog use ACL entries.

In 11g, the Everyone group has been replaced with the AuthenticatedUser role

Directory structure

When opening a webcatalog, you will always find the following folders

  • The shared folder— Contains content that is shared among catalog users. Dashboards that are shared across users are saved in a Dashboards subfolder under a common subfolder under the /Shared Folders folder.
  • The system folder — Contains administrative elements of Presentation Services. Some of these elements are distributed with the product, and others are set up by the administrator, such as privileges.
  • The users folder — Contains content that catalog users with the appropriate permissions have saved to their personal folders, such as individual analyses. Includes a Subject Area Contents folder where you save objects such as calculated items and groups.

from 11.9:

/users/<user>/_delivers
/users/<user>/_portal
/users/<user>/_filters
/users/<user>/_selections
/users/<user>/_savedcolumns
/users/<user>/_thumbnails
/users/<user>/_internals

Structure of a web catalog

A way to classify queries used in an analytic application is to group them according to their function:

  • analyses that appear on dashboards,
  • analyses that are navigation targets,
  • analyses that provide dimensional sets,
  • analyses that serve as triggers, and dashboard prompts.

It makes sense to structure the web catalog to reflect these five classifications. With a top level folder for each subject area, the web cat folder structure looks like this:

Obiee Catalog

Samplesales demo data set makes a difference between column prompt (to filter a column) and other prompt purpose.

Catalog Administration Tool

Web

Obiee Managecatalog

Oracle BI Presentation Service provides a pure browser-based administration tool to administer a Web Catalog.

Administrators can:

  • control which users can access what dashboards
  • set user privileges
  • create and manage groups and roles
  • change group membership lists
  • re-name or delete catalog folders
  • and saved analyses,
  • and view and manage sessions.

Catalog Manager GUI

The installation of OBIEE provides also a desktop tool: the catalog manager

Runcat client

The runcat utility is a command line tool.

Management

Location

The webcatalog is located:

  • on 10G: OracleBIData/web/catalog/
  • on 11G: ORACLE_INSTANCE/bifoundation/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/catalog/
  • on 12c: ORACLE_HOME\user_projects\domains\bi\bidata\service_instances\ssi\metadata\content\catalog where ssi is a service instance

Archive / Unarchive or Copy (Promotion)

See OBIPS - Webcat Object Copying and Archiving

Rename an Object

There are two ways to rename an object:

  • Rename without reference updates — Renames the object and preserves the references to the original name that other catalog objects might have.
  • Rename with reference updates — Renames the object and changes references that other objects might have to the new name (that is, original name references are not preserved). You must open the catalog in offline mode.

Do not rename the “My Dashboard” dashboards in the Users folder (displayed as _portal in Catalog Manager).

Repair

With runcat

runcat.sh -cmd repair -offlineRaw $CAT_PATH -outputFile $(pwd)/repair.log

Delete an object (or a dir)

With runcat

runcat.sh -cmd delete -path '/shared/shared' -offline $CAT_PATH

To delete a user or its content, see account managment

Only on 11g

A search engine can be configured to crawl and index the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog to be able to perform a full-text catalog search for objects and attachments. More … Configuring for Full-Text Catalog Search

Documentation / Reference





Discover More
Saw Object
OBI Presentation Service (Webcat) - User

User management for the presentation services (ie the webcat) The “system account” is the user that is used when opening the catalog in offline mode with the catalog manager or runcat (ie local access)...
Obiee 11g System Component Availibility After Guid Migration
OBIEE - (Upgrade|Refresh|Recover) GUID

A guid is the identifier of an object that is used mostly for security purpose. When a user want to access to the BI Presentation service portal (OBIPS), OBIPS will: take the login name of the user,...
Saw Object
OBIEE - BI Presentation Service (SAW/OBIPS)

AnswersInteractive DashboardsDelivers The Oracle BI Presentation Service Server: is a pure Web Environment visualize data from the Oracle BI Server through the creation of Interactive Dashboards...
Obiee11g Catalog Admin View
OBIEE - Catalog Manager

The catalog manager is an GUI administration tool to manage the webcat object. The file catalogmanager.exe is located: on 10g: BI_ORACLE_HOME\web\catalogmanager on 11g, For the first presentation...
Obiee Administration Tools Logon
OBIEE - How to connect remotely to the servers (BI, Presentation) ?

This article shows you how you can perform a remote connections with the OBIEE client tools Administration Tool and catalog manager to manage respectively : the BI Server and the web catalog Variable...
Obi Edition
OBIEE - Security (Level|Type)

security in Oracle BI can be classified broadly into the following three types. Data-level security Object-level security User-level security see Object-level security controls the visibility...
Saw Object
OBIEE - Web Services API (SOAP,WSDL)

OBIEE web services is an application programming interface (API) that implements SOAP from the presentation service layer. This API can be used to: start and manage web sessions retrieve results...
Saw Object
OBIEE 10G/11G - OBIPS - Privileges

Privileges control the rights that users have to access the features and functionality of Oracle BI Presentation Services. Users have the ability to access features and functions that are appropriate...
Obiee Caption Prompt
OBIEE 10G/11G - Translate the WebCat (Dashboard, page and report names)

To locate Oracle BI Presentation Catalog Captions (ie dashboard, page and report names (webcat metadata translation), you must : check the custom header checkbox for all column formulas that appears...
Obiee Catalog Manager Preference
OBIPS - Webcat Object Copying and Archiving

All copying a webcat object (Generally an answer or a dashboard) from the same environment or to another. To copy/paste an object, you can perform it in two different operations Archive/Unarchive...



Share this page:
Follow us:
Task Runner