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Why is Oracle’s OBIEE 12c Important?

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Last week, Oracle released version 12c of OBIEE (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition). There are several features that are new to 12c, among which is the UI which has now been updated to become more modern compared to the prior 11g interface. The most interesting feature that has been added is the new Data Visualization capability, something that has been available on Oracle’s BI Cloud Service offering for quite some time but hasn’t made it to the on-prem product until now. I’ve been told you have to pay a special license fee to get that additional Data Visualization component if you are currently on OBIEE 11g and wish to upgrade to 12c (on production).

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The addition of the Data Visualization capability to OBIEE is significant, and here is why:


1. Ease of Use and Advanced Visualizations: OBIEE is not a new software. If you look at the history of the product, it has been on the market since the late 90s as a product developed by nQuire. Ever since it has been continuously evolving over the years. It was part of Siebel’s offering and called Siebel Analytics and later acquired by Oracle and named OBIEE. This proves how robust the foundation of this platform is to not only survive but continue to evolve and adjust to the latest trends in analytical technologies. For example, the foundation has been the basis for Oracle’s BI Cloud Service. (But this is not the point of my blog). With the new Data Visualization features, OBIEE is getting a boost when competing with products like Tableau’s and QlickView’s. The Data Visualization component is so easy to use yet offers rich and modern visualizations that can scale to plot large numbers of data points. For example, a business user can select a few columns to analyze and ask the tool to visualize the data in the best visualization that the tool finds suitable. Data can be quickly overlapped on a geographical map. The “brushing” feature makes it easier to discover trends in the data for example by selecting outliers in one visual and have the rest of the dashboard visuals narrowed down simultaneously. And all this is doable as self service by business users without the need to engage IT.

2. Data Upload and Mashup by Business Users: The Data Visualization component of OBIEE 12c is important not just because of its new visualizations and ease of use, but also because it now offers business users a way to upload their own data and report on it together with data from other users or even along with enterprise data. This is what is referred to as data mashup. You no longer need to involve IT in creating an ETL process to upload new data sets. Reporting requirements are continuously changing in organizations, and therefore having a way to explore and try things out on their own is a huge advantage to business users.
For example, an analyst at an insurance provider can go to the FEMA website to download disaster events data such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes and mash that data up against the company’s insurance policies. The uploaded FEMA data can then be overlapped on the same map that has corporate data. Or an analyst in the agriculture industry can download precipitation data from the National Weather Website to upload this via Oracle Data Visualization and mash it up against the company’s produce output to have a better understanding of the impact of precipitation on crops and field operations.

A complete list of the new features of OBIEE 12c is available by referring to Oracle Document 2070474.1.

Thoughts on “Why is Oracle’s OBIEE 12c Important?”

  1. Mazen Manasseh Post author

    Yes by saying Data Visualization it refers to the same thing as Visual Analyzer.

  2. hi,
    I am a beginner in obiee 12c, in fact I want to integrate google maps in obiee 12c, so I created a spacile database and I add it to the server of mapviewr and I add the google map layer, but I do not know how to add this code java script code to create a foi layer using the MapViewer Javascript API,

    this is the code :

    Map Cache Server/Map Client

    var mapview;
    var nearestCitiesTheme;

    function showMap()
    {
    var baseURL = “http://”+document.location.host+”/mapviewer”;
    var mapCenterLon = -122.45;
    var mapCenterLat = 37.7706;
    var mapZoom = 3;
    var mpoint = MVSdoGeometry.createPoint(mapCenterLon,mapCenterLat,8307);
    mapview = new MVMapView(document.getElementById(“map”), baseURL);
    mapview.addMapTileLayer(new MVMapTileLayer(“mvdemo.demo_map”));
    mapview.setCenter(mpoint);
    mapview.setZoomLevel(mapZoom);

    var customersTheme = new MVThemeBasedFOI(‘themebasedfoi1′,’mvdemo.customers’) ;

    customersTheme.setBringToTopOnMouseOver(true);

    customersTheme.attachEventListener(MVEvent.MOUSE_CLICK, foiClick);
    mapview.addThemeBasedFOI(customersTheme);

    mapview.display();
    }

    function foiClick(pointOfClick,foi)
    {
    alert(“Locating all cities within 50 mile radius.”);

    if(nearestCitiesTheme)
    {
    mapview.removeThemeBasedFOI(nearestCitiesTheme);
    }

    nearestCitiesTheme = new MVThemeBasedFOI(‘cities-theme’, ‘mvdemo.cities_near_customer’);

    //set the binding variable for this theme.
    var x = foi.x; // :1
    var y = foi.y; // :2
    var distanceParam = “distance=50 unit=mile”; // :3

    nearestCitiesTheme.setQueryParameters(x,y, distanceParam);

    nearestCitiesTheme.setBringToTopOnMouseOver(true);
    mapview.addThemeBasedFOI(nearestCitiesTheme);
    }

    Oracle Maps example – finding cities closest to a customer

  3. Mazen Manasseh Post author

    With OBIEE you typically use the map view when creating an analysis in OBIEE and use the new map layer and display your anaylsis data on it in different geormetries. You likley won’t need to script it as the analysis view of type “map” takes care of rendering the data on your custom defined map, as long as you have a data element to tie to the map such as (city, state, country, long/lat coordinates, etc…). Here is a link to the Oracle doc on creating map views:
    https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/12212/biee/BIEUG/GUID-843DD4CA-B575-4752-82DE-831768C1215D.htm#biee0119

    Now if the native OBIEE map viewing features are not enough for your situation, you want to then use Map Builder to define your own FOI features. Here is a link that talks about that:
    https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12839_01/web.1111/e10145/vis_omaps.htm#JIMPV9822

  4. thanks you,
    In fact i want to add a google map layer in obiee 12c, so i create the map google map on the obiee server and i can display it on this server, cons on the server analytics it shows me The MAPVIEWER-09001, it does not show the map create .il tells me that the layer does not exist.Although it exists on the server

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Mazen Manasseh, Director of Business Analytics

Mazen is a Director of Business Analytics at Perficient and an accomplished professional services leader with 20 years of being a customer advocate. An analytics solutions delivery expert in functional domains covering Supply Chain, Financials, HCM, Projects and Customer Experience. Being a thought leader in the business analytics space, he conducted numerous business training sessions and spoke at technology conferences around analytics and machine learning.

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