obiee mobile app designer tutorial

Oracle Mobile App Designer (BIMAD) is an OBI EE extension, based on BI Publisher (former XML Publisher) which allows developers to make highly interactive reports (so called applications) which can be viewed on almost any HTML5-compliant mobile device.
Unfortunately, BIMAD is not installed during typical OBIEE installation and requires additional installation and configuration. This post covers this process.
If you need information how to start using BIMAD, please read this post.
Installation process involves the following steps:

Download BIMAD patch

Install BIMAD patch

Configure OBIEE instance

Configure BIMAD publishing directory

BIMAD patch downloading

BIMAD is distributed as a patch for existing OBIEE instance. Therefore the only place where it can be obtained is My Oracle Support. As a prerequisite your OBIEE instance need to be at least 11.1.1.7.131017 version. You should search for it as usual (you can find a detailed description of the process at this post). Currently, the latest BIMAD patch is 18794832.

BIMAD patch installation

The first step is to stop your OBIEE system. You can use scripts from this post.

Then set environment variable ORACLEHOME pointing to Oracle BI1 directory of OBIEE installation. At my server OBIEE is installed at /u01/oracle/Middleware directory

Apply the patch using opatch utility.

Verify that patch was applied successfully using opatch lsinventory -patch command. You should see that patch 18794832 exists.

OBIEE instance configuration

This step requires X11 forwarding. Configure it if it is not done yet.
Change directory to $ORACLEHOME/common/bin and run config.sh script.

Select Extend an Existing Weblogic domain and click Next.

Select bifoundation domain domain and click Next.

Select Extend my domain using an existing template and then select $ORACLEHOME/common/templates/applications/oracle.bimadtemplate11.1.1.jar template.

Skip all steps to the Summary step with Next button.

Review Configuration Summary page and press Extend button.

Domain extension process takes a few seconds. When it is finished press Done button.

Start the Admin server.

Change directory to $ORACLE HOME/bifoundation/install and execute the following command:

$ORACLE_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh addMADCodeGrants.py t3://localhost:7001 weblogic

Here weblogic is an administrator's username. You'll be asked to enter the password of user weblogic. If everything is ok, you'll see an appropriate message. Now change directory to the directory where the patch was unzipped (/tmp/18794832 in my case) and then go to subdirectory files/bimad/repository/Admin. Copy all three directories to <MIDDLEWARE_HOME>/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/config/bipublisher/repository/Admin directory. <MIDDLEWARE_HOME> is the place where OBIEE installed. In my case it's /u01/oracle/Middleware. Now it's time to edit a few configuration files. The first one is usercontextmap.xml. Open file <MIDDLEWARE_HOME>/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/config/bupublisher/repository/Admin/Security/usercontextmap.xml Locate section securityModel="ORACLE_AS_JPS" of the file. Add <USER_BIPS_LOCALE>Locale<USER_BIPS_LOCALE> between opening and closing tags. Save the file. The second file to edit is instanceconfig.xml. It is located at <MIDDLEWARE_HOME>/instances/instance1/config/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/coreapplication_obips1/instanceconfig.xml You need to insert new tags between <ServerInstance> and </ServerInstance> tags. The easiest way to do it is to insert new text right before the closing tag. Add new tags:

          <AdvancedReporting>     <EnableMAD>true</EnableMAD> </AdvancedReporting>

Start all OBIEE components.

Configure BIMAD publishing directory

Log in to OBIEE using user with administrator rights. Navigate to Catalog, select Shared Folders and then select Create -> Folder

Give to this folder any name you like.

Make sure the folder was created under Shared Folders, not My Folders.

Open configuration file <MIDDLEWAREHOME>/userprojects/domains/bifoundation_domain/config/bipublisher/repository/Admin/Configuration/xmlp-server-config.xml

Add

<property name="APPS_LIBRARY_FOLDER_LOCAL" value="/folder_name"/>

in my case

<property name="APPS_LIBRARY_FOLDER_LOCAL" value="/BIMAD"/>

Restart all components. Log in to OBIEE and make sure you have a new Mobile App create option.

Don't hesitate to leave a comment or two. :)

OBIEE specialist since 2007 and Oracle Discoverer before. DWH architect, BI enthusiast, blogger. Lazy cats owner. All opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.