OBIA Interview Questions

OBIA Interview Questions And Answers

Q1) What is Guided Navigation?

Ans: Guided navigation is a feature of Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards that enables the content and layout of Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard to change dynamically based on changes in the information being analyzed. Specifically, sections in a dashboard page can be set up and only appear when there is interesting information about the data.

Q2) Explain the Architecture of OBIEE and what each component does.

Ans: OBIEE Consists of Presentation Services(Web), Oracle BI (Analytics Engine) Server. The client (Answers) constructs sql and passes it to the Analytic Engine and then the Oracle BI (Analytic Engine) parses the physical sql to the Datasources and retrieves the data back to the Engine and presents it to the presentation Services.

Q3) How to get SQL from Obiee for reports?

Ans: There are many ways to get the SQL

Modify the request and click Advanced in that you get XML code and the actual SQL.

In the catalog Manager click Tools –>Create Report. In the Create Report Window –> Click Request SQL and save the sql to the physical path in your PC.

Enable the log level to 2 in the OBIEE Admin Tool from Mange-> Security and enable the log level to 2 by clicking properties for the user, then go to the NQQuery.log in BI_HOME/OracleBI/Server/Logs.You will find the SQL for that User.

By clicking Administration->Manage sessions-> view SQL

Q4) How will you sort in Reports in OBIEE Answers?

Ans: Click modify and then click sort (order by the icon) on the relevant column in the criteria pane.

Q5) How will you do different types of narrative Reports in OBIEE?

Ans: By clicking modify request and Narrative View and by giving @1 for the first column result and @2 for the 2nd column and so on and we can also give a heading for No Results by clicking the Narrative view.

Q6) How will you create Interactive Dashboards?

Ans: By clicking Administration and Manage dashboards and by adding a column selector also by using view selector etc. And by using prompts.

Q7) What is write-back in OBIEE?

Ans: In Reports of Answer you can give a column as updateable and then view the reports, this option is called write back.

Q8) How will you execute Direct SQL in OBIEE?

Ans: By clicking Direct Database Request below the subject area in Answers.

Q9) How will you create a report from two subject areas? 

Ans: From the Criteria Pane of the Report Created from First Subject Area come to the bottom of the page and click combine request. but the options are limited for combining like union etc.

Q10) How will you Port changes for dashboards, reports, and rpd from development to production?

Ans: For the rpd use the Merge option in Admin Tool and for dashboards and reports use Content Accelerator Framework.

Q11) What are the different types of variables in OBIEE? Explain

Ans: There are two types of variables in OBIEE.

Repository variable: This variable is for the whole repository.

Session variable: A session variable can be a system variable

Non-system variable: system variable uses NQ_SESSION. —- (system reserved variable).

examples of non-system variables are user-defined filters etc.

Q12) How will you enable or disable caching at the system level and table level?

Ans: In the NQSConfig.ini file use ENABLE under CACHE Section for System Level for tables. If you want to enable the cache at the table level, open the repository in offline mode(not the current working repository). this should be different from the current repository and click enable or disable the cache. right-click the table and properties and click the cache or deselect the cache. then merge the repository with the current working one.

Q13) How will you go about adding an additional column to the repository in the presentation layer?

Ans: Check whether the table is already existing if so add in the physical layer, then BMM and then the Presentation layer, then reload server metadata, then it will be visible to all users.

Q14) How will affect the changes for a report, if for certain users only the column heading in the report should be changed?

Ans: Using session variables for that user.

Q15) What is a table alias in Obiee? and where and how will you create it.

Ans: A table alias can be created by right-clicking the table in the physical layer and then clicking alias, Table alias is mostly used for creating self-joins.

Q16) Have you created a Hierarchy in Obiee? if so where and how?

Ans: Yes, we can create a hierarchy in the BMM Layer of Obiee in dimensions for the dimension tables. this can be done by right-clicking the dimension table and clicking create dimension and then we should manually define the hierarchy and its levels.

Q17) What is Level-Based Metrics? How will you create it?

Ans: Leval-base matrics means, having a measure pinned at a certain level of the dimension. Monthly Total Sales or Quarterly Sales are examples. To create a level-based measure, create a new logical column based on the original measure (like Sales in the example above). Drag and drop the new logical column to the appropriate level in the Dimension hierarchy (in the above example you will drag and drop it to Month in Time Dimension.

Q18) What is Authentication? How many types of authentication?

Ans: Authentication is the process by which a system verifies, using a user

• Operating system authentication
• External table authentication
• Database authentication
• LDAP authentication

Q19) What are the different types of security you have worked with in Obiee?

Ans: Object Level and data level

Q20) What is a bridge table?

Ans: If you want to connect two tables where there is no relationship you can use a third bridge table for connecting them which will have common columns in both tables, this is used in BMM Layer.

Q21) You come Morning to the office in. and all the users are complaining about the Obiee reporting system is very slow(dashboards). what is your approach to resolving the issue?

Ans: Mainly check NQServer.log and in Admin Tool -> click Session Manager. check if there is any bottleneck and accordingly resolve.

Q22) How will change the port of Obiee?

Ans: Changing its port in instanceconfig.xml

Q23) How does Analytics Process Your Request When You Create Your Requests?

Ans: Oracle BI server converts the logical SQL submitted by the client into optimized physical SQL which is then sent to the backend database. Also in between it performs various tasks like converting the user operations like user selections to form a logical SQL, checking and verifying credentials, breaking the request into threads (as Oracle BI is a multi-threaded server), processing the requests, managing the cached results, again converting the results received from the database into user presentable form etc.

Q24) What are Cluster Services in Obiee? why it’s used?

Ans: To Scale up the Performance by clustering and distributing the services across multiple Servers Cluster Services are used.

Q25) Can you Change the location of the OBIEE Repository?

Ans: Not in Standalone OBIEE Install. you can give a shared location in NQSCluster.ini if the OBIEE is clustered.

Q26) How many BI Services Nodes can be clustered together?

Ans: 16 BI Services Node can be clustered together.

Q27) Can you run multiple rpd’s in a Single OBIEE Instance?

Ans: No. you should create another instance in the same server, then it’s possible.

Q28) How will you implement security in Obiee, so that subjects areas accessed by one group are not accessed by another group?

Ans: Using Security Manager in OBIEE Admin Tool, by creating two user groups and allowing only part of the subject area for one group and other parts to the other user group.

Q29) What is SCD type 1 and 2?

Ans: SCD is slow-changing dimensions. in type 1 we replace the changed dimension with the old dimension. in type 2 we use surrogate keys and keep both the records(rows). The advantage of SCD2 is we keep the history of the old dimensions.

Q30) What is Star Schema and What is Snowflake Schema?

Ans: Star is one fact and many dimensions whereas Snowflake design is one fact and many dim’s and dim’s can have additional dim relations.

Q31) How to startup Obiee in Linux?

Ans: ./run-sa.sh start #starts obi server ./run-saw.sh start #start saw server ./run-sch.sh start #start scheduler