Oracle BI EE Component Characteristics

Configuring High Availability for Oracle Business Intelligence and EPM 15-3 Figure 15–1 Oracle BI EE Single Instance Architecture Note that the port numbers shown in Figure 15–1 are the default port numbers for a simple installation with one component of each component type on a single machine. When you use Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control to scale out, you can choose a port number range. See Using Fusion Middleware Control to Scale System Components.

15.1.1.1 Oracle BI EE Component Characteristics

The following sections provide more information about the characteristics of the Oracle BI EE components. This information can help you better understand Oracle BI EE high availability requirements. The following list summarizes the functionality of the Oracle BI EE system components. 9703 9705 SMTP Server for Delivers Oracle BI Scheduler Scheduler Job Manager Oracle BI Server Secondary Cluster Controller Server Primary Cluster Controller Server Data Sources Web Container: BI Presentation Services Plug-in Java Servlet HTTP Web Server Java EE Server WebLogic Oracle BI Web Client HTTPs SAW Protocol SAW Protocol SaSch Protocol ODBC or Native Database Protocol ODBC or Native Database Protocol Sch Protocol 9710 Oracle BI Presentation Catalog Oracle BI Repository Oracle BI Presentation Services 9810 9700 9810 9705 9708 9706 BI JavaHost Security Service Actions Services Presentation Catalog Manager Oracle BI Administration Tool HTTPs HTTPs BI Publisher SQL ODBC 9701 9706 9700 15-4 Oracle Fusion Middleware High Availability Guide ■ Oracle BI Presentation Services Presentation Services: This is a C++ process that generates the user interface pages and renders result sets on behalf of the Oracle BI Scheduler. You can configure multiple Presentation Services processes, which share the load. No session replication takes place between the Presentation Services processes. Presentation Services is almost stateless. The only significant state is the client authentication. If Oracle Business Intelligence is configured to use single sign on for authentication purposes, then users do not have to reauthenticate after a failover. For all other authentication schemes, when failover occurs, clients will have to reauthenticate. The client sees an interruption of service and is redirected to a login page. ■ Oracle Business Intelligence Server BI Server: This is a C++ process that does the data manipulation and aggregates data from data sources. You can configure multiple BI Server processes, which share the load. No session replication takes place between the BI Server processes. The BI Server does not maintain user session state. For high availability deployments, query results are cached in the global cache. ■ JavaHost: This is a Java process that includes resource-intensive graph and PDF rendering. You can configure multiple JavaHost processes, which share the load. No session replication takes place between the JavaHost processes. The JavaHost is a stateless process. ■ Cluster Controller: This is a C++ process which manages the population of BI Servers and Oracle BI Schedulers. ■ Oracle Business Intelligence Scheduler Oracle BI Scheduler: This is a C++ process that runs jobs according to a timed schedule. Jobs may be agents created in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog, or jobs created by the job manager. The following list summarizes the functionality of the Oracle BI EE Java components: ■ Oracle BI Presentation Services plug-in servlet: Presentation Services runs as a process, not as a Web server, and does not communicate using any Web server plug-in API. The Oracle BI Presentation Services Plug-in forwards HTTP requests to Presentation Services. The HTTP requests are requests from the browser-based user interface, or SOAP requests. ■ Web services: – Action execution service: Executes actions on behalf of Presentation Services and Oracle BI Scheduler. Actions may be invocations of third party web services, or invocations of user supplied Java code executed as EJBs. – Action registry web service: Provides a list of actions. – Action location service: Provides an indirection level so that actions can be developed in a customer test environment, and then deployed to a production environment without every action definition having to be changed to point to production sources. – Web services for SOA: Provides a web service interface to the contents of the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog. The tree of objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog is exposed as a tree of web services, defined by a WSIL tree with WSDL leaves. – Security web service: Provides standards-based authentication and population services. Configuring High Availability for Oracle Business Intelligence and EPM 15-5

15.1.1.1.1 Process Lifecycle OPMN controls each Oracle BI EE system component. To

start and stop, use the Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control Oracle BI EE administration pages. Each Oracle BI EE Java component is hosted by a managed Oracle WebLogic Server and controlled using the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console. Each of the managed Oracle WebLogic Servers is monitored and, if necessary, restarted by the local WebLogic Node Manager.

15.1.1.1.2 External Dependencies Oracle BI EE requires the following:

■ An SMTP mail server ■ An LDAP provider, such as Oracle Internet Directory ■ External web services to support actions configured by the user The following clients depend on Oracle BI EE: ■ ADF Desktop Integration: ADF uses both Presentation Services web services and direct invocation of BI Server via the ODBCJDBC port. This is the only case where the Oracle BI Server is invoked directly, without going through Presentation Services. ■ BI Publisher: Uses Presentation Services web services. ■ BPEL: Uses web services for SOA web services and WSIL browsing servlet.

15.1.1.1.3 Configuration Artifacts Oracle BI EE provides three different configuration

methods: ■ Central configuration is provided by BI EE pages in Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. Using these pages, additional instances can be provisioned, providing high availability and scalability. Key configuration values can also be centrally administered, ensuring that all instances have consistent configuration values. ■ Configuration of local system components. Local configuration is only required when making advanced configuration changes. ■ Configuration of local Java components. As with configuration of system components, local configuration is only required for advanced options. Central Configuration Oracle BI EE provides a central configuration mechanism, which is exposed in the Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. Centrally managed configuration covers: ■ Changes in the number of components. ■ Listening port ranges. Ports used by each component are automatically assigned from this range. ■ Basic SSL configuration: SSL can be enabled for BI EE components using the System MBean browser. ■ Mail server configuration Note: See Ensuring That Shared Network Files Are Accessible in Windows Environments if you run OPMN processes using a named user. 15-6 Oracle Fusion Middleware High Availability Guide ■ Principal tuning options ■ Location of shared files. Advanced configuration can be done locally by directly editing the local configuration files. When a central configuration is committed, only the configuration options that are set by central configuration are distributed to the local machines. Configuration of Local System Components Each running system component sees a combination of shared and component-specific configuration files. The shared configuration files, such as ClusterConfig.xml, will be under this directory: ORACLE_INSTANCE configOracleBIApplicationcoreapplication The component-specific configuration files will be under: ORACLE_INSTANCE configComponentTypeComponentInstanceName For example: ORACLE_INSTANCE configOracleBIPresentationServicesComponent coreapplication_obips1 Since each component sees local files, they are not dependent on access to files held centrally on the Administration Server. The centrally managed configuration values are distributed to these local configuration files when central configuration is committed. These centrally managed configuration values are marked in the local files by comments warning the user not to edit them locally. The remaining values are available for local editing. The rpd file contains references to data sources. Typically development environments use a different database for the fact tables than production environments. When the rpd file moves from a development to production environment, you must use the BI Administration Tool to edit the rpd file and change the data source references. Local Java Component Configuration Java components are configured in the WebLogic directory tree at: DOMAIN_HOME configfmwconfigbiinstancescoreapplication

15.1.1.1.4 Deployment Artifacts In general, Oracle BI EE deploys Java applications in

nostage mode. WebLogic Server explodes the .ear file, putting it into a private temp directory. An exception to this is MapViewer, which has configuration requirements which can only be performed in a pre-exploded deployment directory. All the Managed Server applications excluding administration applications such as the Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control and central configuration application deploy to the whole Oracle BI EE cluster, not to individually named systems. For information on the location of the log files when the Oracle BI EE system components are deployed, see Section 15.1.1.1.5, Log File Locations.

15.1.1.1.5 Log File Locations

Table 15–1 shows the log files for the Oracle BI EE system components. You can access all of these log files from the Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. Configuring High Availability for Oracle Business Intelligence and EPM 15-7

15.1.2 Oracle BI EE High Availability Concepts