OBIEE SmartView Part 1 – Creating your first OBIEE SV Report

I’m going to keep the title simple, OBIEE SmartView, and the main purpose of this part will be using SmartView to create analytical reports. Please feel free to ask questions.

Creating a SmartView OBIEE Connection

The version of SmartView I’m currently using: 11.1.2.5.216 which is the latest version when posting this article. You can download this version here: Patch 19858481

To create a SmartView connection for OBIEE, go to the SmartView ribbon, then click Panel, then click Private Connections. At the bottom, click create new connection and you will see a popup screen. You have two choices, SmartView HTTP Provider or Oracle BI EE. Obviously, go choose Oracle BI EE, then enter URL http://host:port/analytics/jbips

Replace host and port with your server configurations.

After that, you’ll be asked to save your connection.

If you just click next ok with the default, you’ll get the following error.

 

 

 

It’s actually the colon as you can see. Remove the colon or with the port so that it goes through.

There you go, you just saved your connection.

Click connect and fill in your username and password so we can begin the next steps.

Creating your first SmartView OBIEE Report!

Once you logged in, you can go to Catalog Root which is the first folder. Click on it so that you see Create New View button. Click Create New View.

 

Once you click create new view, we’ll use Sample Sales Lite to test our application. You might have noticed I also have Sample Basic from Essbase. I might go through that next week if time allows.

Expand Sample Sales Lite folder and right click on Per Name Year. Add as filters so that you get this screen.

Then select is in like the above screen and then click on …

Now select 2010 and use > to get it over the other side like the below screen. *Note on the bug where you can see all the icons. I’ve already raised a request to get this fixed.

Now go back to Design layout tab screen then drag over Per Name Month on Rows and Product on Columns and finally Revenue on Measures.

Well, your first report is done! Click OK and you should get this. Sexy eh?

Coming from Hyperion background, this native Excel Pivot Table Report is so much sexier than SmartView with Hyperion.

Modifying the SmartView OBIEE Report

Let say we also would like to analyze Office details in the Pivot Table. On the OBIEE ribbon, you have quite a few choices.

Click on View Designer to get the designer view screen. Let’s drag Office to Rows, Products from Columns to Rows and Per Name Month to Columns.

Once you click ok, you will update the Pivot Table.

Can we get another year of data into this? Of course, go back to designer view and in define filters, click on … and add 2009.

Adding Some Excel Pivot Formatting

So, let’s also formatting. Go to Design and play around a bit. I personally chose a blue banded rows table. You can also choose different layouts from the Design ribbon. This is just standard Excel 2010 features. I’m sure 2013 will even look better.

Publishing Your SmartView Answer Report

So once you’re ready for saving, you can save this to your personal folder or a shared folder in the OBIEE Catalog. In the OBIEE ribbon, click on Publish View and Choose your desired folder. I’m saving this to My Folders.

That’s it for today.