Hi Frens,

I am sorry that I engrossed myself in posting some complex stuff and left the Basics in between, so, here I am again with the Basics of OBIEE. In our previous posts we have covered Data Modelling, Basics, Connection Pool, Joins etc. So, lets start to build more on that and lets go through the Architecture of OBIEE.

The below diagram shows the basic architecture of OBIEE and its components:

Now, first of all lets understand the flow in which a request flows from Client to Data Source.

If a client runs a report, the request first goes to the Presentation Server and then it gets routed to the BI Server and then it gets further routed to the underlying  Database or the data source.

Client -> Presentation Server -> BI Server -> Data source

Now, the request is routed back through the similar route to the client. Which means, the data is fetched from the Data source and it gets routed to Presentation server through BI server and then to the client.

Client <- Presentation Server <- BI Server <- Data Source

The above flows provide a very basic idea of how the data is fetched and showed in a report in OBIEE.

Now, lets understand it more properly by dividing the above diag. into segments and then :

1) Client and User Interface

2) Presentation Server & Presentation Catalog

3) BI Server & Admin Tool

4) Datasource

Client & User Interface: This level has the UI of OBIEE which is accessible to the clients and users. The OBIEE UI has several components like OBIEE Answers, Interactive Dashboards etc.

• Oracle BI Answers is a powerful, ad hoc query and analysis tool that works against a logical view of information from multiple data sources in a pure Web environment.
• Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards are interactive Web pages that display personalized, role-based information to guide users to precise and effective decisions.
• BI Delivers is an alerting engine which gives users flexibility to schedule their reports and get them delivered to their handheld devices or interactive dashboards or any other delivery profile and helps in making quick business decisions.

In simpler terms we can say that, this is a web application which is accessible to the users for preparing their reports/dashboards and do Ad-Hoc reporting to cater the business needs.

We will continue with the other segments in the upcoming posts. Till that time if you have any questions or comments they are most welcome.

Keep posting…