New Features in Presentation Services:

Visual Analyzer: A brand new powerful visualization application in OBIEE Suite. VA

provides greater flexibility to Rapidly create rich analyses through drag-and-drop
configuration of new visual grammar. Using VA we can build the reports from the sources
OBIEE repository and also from external content.
Views Enhancements: New context menu (Right Click) on all graphs & other views to
sort, drill.
New Heat Matrix view type to represent the two-dimensional data. This is well suited
for analyzing large amounts of data and identifying outliers.
New Data Format properties Scale for % (x 100): Specify whether to multiply data
by a 100 to display it as a percentage when setting the properties of a column

New Features in BI Server:

Logical Level Sequence Numbers for Time Dimensions for faster time series
calculations. And to improve the query time.
DISPLAY, SORTKEY Syntax Supported in the SQL ORDER BY Expression
Oracle Database FAN & Connection Failover Supported by Oracle BI Server
Generate Fragmented Aggregates in Aggregate Persistence
Following New Command Line utilities are added
o Download Repository

o Upload Repository

o List Connection Pool

o Update Connection Pool

o Rename Application Role

o Delete Application Role

o Rename Users

o Delete Users

o List Repository Variables

o Update Repository Variables

New Features in Administration:

 Installation: Much faster and straight forward. And mostly, the configurations & folders
directories are simple and clean.
NO more OPMN, all services including OBI System & Java services are managed by
WebLogic.
Migrating from OBIEE 11g to 12c: We can migrate the Oracle BI 11g metadata to 12c
is a two step process, and is carried out by using the BI Migration Script (migration-
tool.sh). The catalog and WebLogic Security configurations needs to be
reconfigured/migrated like in OBIEE 11g.
BAR (BI Archive file): A new archive format which contains OBIEE Catalog, RPD and
Security packaged in one file. The file will be created in current environment and
imported in Target environment. The BAR file creation process has following options
while creating it.
o export all: To export everything including users and data sources are the same
between two systems.
o export without user folder content: Migrating the Catalog without the Users
Folders.
o export without connection pool credentials: Migrating the upgraded RPD from
one environment to another without connection Pool information. When Imported
the BAR in Target environment, The RPD will be updated the new changed by
not changing the Target System Connection Pool Information.
o Syntax:

Creating the BAR File from Current Environment:

exportServiceInstance(domainHome, serviceInstanceKey, workDir,
exportDir, applicationName=None, applicationDesc=None,
applicationVersion=None, includeCatalogRuntimeInfo=false,
includeCredentials=None)
Importing the BAR file in Target environment:
importServiceInstance(domainHome, serviceInstanceKey, barfile)

New Features in Security:

BISystemUser and BISystem Removed, No need to have BISystemUser in LDAP. The

system user concept is now deemed virtual and is represented by the credential
oracle.bi.system/system.user, for which the values are securely randomly generated by
the Configuration Assistant.
User GUIDs Removed: user GUIDs have been removed to make administration easier.
GUIDs are replaced with user names. There is no longer any need to refresh GUIDs as
part of lifecycle operations
Database Security Store: Policy & Credential store is configured in database instead of
the file System-jazn & etc.
 Easier SSL Configuration: Configuring SSL is much easier than earlier versions.

Overall this is a great release after OBIEE 11g from Oracle. Best version to start exploring and
do great analysis.

Stay tuned for more interesting articles on OBIEE 12c here.