Oracle Magazine - November/December 2011

gence domain. An instance corresponds to a collection of servers, presentation servers, and other system components within an Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11 g system.

The ServerConfigurationMBean actually performs the repository upload. It is one of several MBeans within the Oracle BI Systems Management API that handle a variety of administrative tasks, such as managing the query cache, managing e-mail configurations, adding components to and removing them from the cluster, and configuring security.

To make use of these particular JMX MBeans, you can either invoke their methods manually from the System MBean Browser graphical interface or call them from within a Java application. The latter is what actually happens when you use the Oracle Enterprise Manager console to manage your instance. To implement these same functions from a script, you use WebLogic Scripting Tool.

SCRIP TING THE ORACLE BI S YSTEMS
MANAGEMENT API

WebLogic Scripting Tool is a command-line tool for performing administration functions and viewing the configuration state of an Oracle WebLogic Server domain. You can use WebLogic Scripting Tool “online,” typing commands for immediate execution, or “offline,” writing a script for later execution in batch form. You write scripts in a language called Jython, which is an implementation of the Python language in Java. WebLogic Scripting Tool is installed automatically as part of the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11 g initial setup.

The following example shows how to use WebLogic Scripting Tool, along with the JMX Administration MBeans identified earlier, to perform the repository upload task.

5. Use a text editor on the server hosting Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11 g to create the WebLogic Scripting Tool script in Listing 1, available with the online version of this article at bit.ly/nv4n7U.

6. Save the script as RPDUpload.py, and copy it to a temporary directory such as c:\temp on the server.

7. To create a test repository to upload,
copy the SampleAppLite.rpd file (which
you can usually find at ORACLE_HOME/
instances/instance1/bifoundation/
coreapplication_obis1/repository/
SampleAppLite.rpd) to the same tempo-
rary directory on the server. Rename this
file SampleAppLite_test.rpd.

wlst c:\temp\ RPDUpload.py localhost 7001 weblogic welcome1 c:\temp\SampleAppLite_test.rpd Admin123

9. The script will run and output comments at various stages of the process.

To check that your new repository uploaded successfully, use your Web browser to navigate to the Oracle Enterprise Manager site at http://<host>:7001/em. Log in using the same Oracle WebLogic Server administration username and password as above, and then use the navigation tree on the left-hand side of the screen to navigate to Business Intelligence -> coreapplication. Using the tabs on the right-hand side of the screen, click Deployment and then Repository, and check that your new repository is listed as the default online repository for your domain.

RESTARTING COMPONENTS AND
COMPLETING THE TASK
Looking at the repository in Oracle Enterprise
Manager, you may notice the warning
message “Restart to apply recent changes.”
Oracle Enterprise Manager displays this
message when you need to restart one or
more system components after a configura-
tion change. You can perform the restart
by clicking the Restart All button on the
Capacity Management -> Availability tab, or
you can modify your WebLogic Scripting Tool
script by moving the final exit() command
to the end of the script and adding the lines
shown in Listing 2, available with the online
version of this article at bit.ly/nv4n7U.

IN SUMMARY

Performing system administration tasks for an enterprisewide distributed Oracle BI system can involve making changes to many components spread over multiple servers. The Oracle BI Systems Management API, part of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11 g, together with WebLogic Scripting Tool, provides a handy command-line environment for managing and propagating changes either interactively or through Jython-based scripts. Use the Oracle BI Systems Management API when you need to deploy repositories, catalogs, or other metadata as part of a systems rollout or when you need to script changes across several environments in a controlled and repeatable manner. 

Mark Rittman is an
Oracle ACE Director,
cofounder of Rittman
Mead Consulting, and
an executive board
member of the Oracle
Development Tools User Group. He writes for the
Rittman Mead blog at rittmanmead.com/blog.