OBIEE 11g: Getting Started - Part I

A few weeks ago I procured some nifty hardware. Slowly but surely I've begun to build out certain VMs. Currently, this one computer serves as 4:

* Host - Ubuntu 10.10
* Guest - Ubuntu 10.10 - running my wiki, subversion and other documentation type things.
* Guest - Windows XP - Work. This is a VM specific to my current client.
* Guest - Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 (Carthage) 64bit. This is my OBIEE 11g playground I'm trying to build out. I have installed the 11gR2 database. I have run the repository creation utility (rcu) that installs the metadata for WebLogic and finally I have installed and (mostly) configured OBIEE 11g.

I'm barely using 10 GB of my 24 available. I so happy.

Anyway, I've configured my database to automatically startup/shutdown when the VM is started/shutdown. I followed Dr. Hall's guide here. Now I'm in the process of getting WebLogic configured to do the same thing automagically. (I should never have shut it down once I got it running...)

Believe it or not, I'm reading the documentation. 11g is a drastic change from 10g, especially with the integration of WebLogic. It's a downright beast.

I still don't know the difference between the Administration Console and Enterprise Manager. But I'm hacking away, as usual.

Since I'm trying to automate this whole thing, I don't necessarily want to use either of those tools. I want to start up the server and have everything running. Here's where I'm at now:



How did I get there you ask?

I opened up a shell and then navigated to:

/obiee/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/bin

In that directory you will find startWebLogic.sh

[oracle@obiee ~]$./startWebLogic.sh

You'll be prompted for a username and password; weblogic is the username and whatever you entered for the password upon installation.

From the Administration Console, I go to bifoundation_domain -> Environment -> Servers



Click on the Control tab, select bi_server1 and select Start:



Awesome. What's a freaking Node Manager?

Here's the text for easier reading:

* For server bi_server1, the Node Manager associated with machine localhost.localdomain is not reachable.
* All of the servers selected are currently in a state which is incompatible with this operation or are not associated with a running Node Manager or you are not authorized to perform the action requested. No action will be performed.

Great...I need to start something else?

Back to the docs.

That took me down a rabbit hole ending up at the wlst (web logic scripting tool and all the examples are in windows).

I looked around the file system for config or log directories to see if I could spot something. Somehow I ended up in:

/obiee/wlserver_10.3/server/bin

Makes sense right?

In there, 2 files: setWLSEnv.sh and startNodeManager.sh

Run setWLSENv.sh first and you get this:

[oracle@obiee bin]$ ./setWLSEnv.sh 
CLASSPATH=/obiee/patch_wls1033/profiles/default/sys_manifest_classpath/weblogic_patch.jar:
/obiee/jrockit_160_17_R28.0.0-679/lib/tools.jar:/obiee/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic_sp.jar:
/obiee/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic.jar:
/obiee/modules/features/weblogic.server.modules_10.3.3.0.jar:
/obiee/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/webservices.jar:
/obiee/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1/lib/ant-all.jar:
/obiee/modules/net.sf.antcontrib_1.1.0.0_1-0b2/lib/ant-contrib.jar:

PATH=/obiee/wlserver_10.3/server/bin:
/obiee/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1/bin:
/obiee/jrockit_160_17_R28.0.0-679/jre/bin:
/obiee/jrockit_160_17_R28.0.0-679/bin:
/usr/kerberos/bin:
/usr/local/bin:
/usr/bin:
/bin:
/usr/X11R6/bin:
/home/oracle/bin

Your environment has been set.

Now run startNodeManager.sh (too much output, you don't get to see it).

Finally, back to the Administration Console, select bi_server1 again and click on Start:



Much better message this time.

And now I wait...

A minute or 2 later:



Voila!

Or so I thought. I navigated to Answers and was greeted with the wonderful 500 - Internal Server Error



I'll worry about that one tomorrow. It's a start though.