Oracle Reporting and Star Schemas in OBIEE

The CData ODBC Driver for Oracle is a standard database driver that can integrate real-time access to Oracle data into your data warehouse or directly into your reporting tool. This article shows how to bypass the data warehouse and import operational Oracle data into Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE).

See the knowledge base for ODBC integrations with ETL tools like Informatica PowerCenter. For an ETL solution into Oracle Warehouse Builder, use the driver with the Oracle ODBC Gateway to Access Oracle Data as a Remote Oracle Database.

Connect to Oracle as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

To connect to Oracle, you'll first need to update your PATH variable and ensure it contains a folder location that includes the native DLLs. The native DLLs can be found in the lib folder inside the installation directory. Once you've done this, set the following to connect:

• Port: The port used to connect to the server hosting the Oracle database.
• User: The user Id provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
• Password: The password provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
• Service Name: The service name of the Oracle database.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Import Oracle Metadata

Follow the steps below to use the OBIEE Client Tools to import Oracle metadata into an OBIEE repository. You can then integrate Oracle data into your business models.

1. Open the Administration Tool and click File -> New Repository.

2. In the Connection Type menu, select ODBC 3.5 and select the CData DSN.
3. Select the metadata types you want to import under the Relational Sources option and then select Oracle tables. 👁 Tables to be imported into the repository. (Salesforce is shown.)
   

You can now create star schemas based on Oracle tables: 👁 Fact and dimension tables. (Salesforce is shown.)