OBIEE 11g Installation FAQ

www.obieefans.com 


Intro:

Oracle has many decades of experience in delivering “difficult to install” applications, and in the case of OBI 11g it doesn’t disappoint.  While the RCU Configuration and Installation procedures are straightforward, the “devil is in the prerequisites”.  If your machine has a static IP, then the installation should be problem free, but if your machine uses DHCP – as is quite likely if you’re evaluating the product – then you may well find yourself tossing a few expletives in Oracle’s direction.

Q: Will OBIEE 11g work on Windows XP?

You’ll see warnings about a workstation class machine.  For example in the “Enterprise Manager”, under “Business Intelligence”, “coreapplication” you’ll see:

  WARNING: The Oracle BI Presentation Services server is running on a workstation class machine (Windows 2000 Workstation, Windows XP Professional, etc.).  Number of concurrent users may be severely limited by the operating system.

but it will work. 

Q: I’ve got a 2 GB laptop.  Can I install OBI 11g?

Well, you can, but the experience will not be a happy one.  Whereas OBI 10g was satisfied with (1.5-2) GB of memory, OBI 11g is a much more demanding mistress when it comes to hardware resources and will not perform with anything that could be called enthusiasm short of (3-4) GB – and even then you’ll do well to synchronize boot times with coffee breaks.

By way of comparison, with a 3 GB machine you can install and configure OBI 11g in an hour and 10 minutes, whereas with an otherwise identical 1.75 GB machine it takes almost four and a half hours.

Q: Can I run OBI 11g with IE 6?

No.  If you try to bring up Answers & Dashboards using IE 6, you’ll get a message saying it’s not supported and access will be denied.

Q: The “Quick Installation Guide” says to follow the instructions for DHCP hosts in the “Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide”, but that contains nothing on DHCP?

As you may well have noticed, the OBI 11g documentation has more than its fair share of broken links and incorrect references.  In the OBI 11g documentation references to DHCP occur in both the “Quick Installation Guide” and the “Installation Guide”.  In each guide section “4.1 Before You Install Oracle Business Intelligence” states:

  If you plan to install Oracle Business Intelligence on a computer that uses Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), you must perform additional configuration tasks before you install Oracle Business Intelligence.  See "Installing on DHCP Hosts" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide.

Unfortunately the “Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide” does not contain any references to DHCP.  Instead try:

  Oracle Fusion Middleware Quick Installation Guide for Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports and Discoverer 11g Release 1 (11.1.1)

section “3.6 Installing on DHCP Host” at:

  http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/install.1111/e12003.pdf

or

  Oracle Database Installation Guide 10g Release 2 (10.2) for Microsoft Windows (32-Bit)

section “2.4.1 Installing Oracle Database on DHCP Computers” at:

  http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/install.102/b14316/ reqs.htm#BABGCEAI 

Q: The installation goes okay until near the end when cc and ps fail to configure correctly?

You will probably be able to bring up the Admin Console and the Enterprise Manager, but not Answers & Dashboards or the Admin tool (note, just because all the components are marked as “up” in the Enterprise Manager doesn’t mean that OBI 11g will function correctly).

You’re probably using DHCP and have not got the correct setting in the hosts file (see the following entry for a workaround).

Q: I am trying to install OBI 11g and I can’t get beyond the Admin screen?

If the installer stops at the “Administrator User Details Screen” try installing a loopback adapter or adjusting the settings in your hosts file (see the previous entry for a workaround).

Q: When I run “Start BI Services” from the “Oracle Business Intelligence” menu, I get “Error 500--Internal Server Error” when the web browser opens?

Let’s call it a feature.  If you get the message “Error 500--Internal Server Error – From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1: – 10.5.1 500 Internal Server Error – The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request”, then just refresh the browser (F5), and the logon screen should appear.

Q: Answers keeps saying Unable to Sign In, but I’ve checked the logon and password?

Probably failed installation. try re-installing.