BI Beans 9.0.4 - How to get it Working

Question

Hello ... Hoping this is not an old boring issue, i hereby give some advice on how to get the Oracle 9iR2 database with OLAP option and BI Beans to work.
I had dificulties with this subject for two weeks now, I asked for help on all forums and I thank everyone for their patience.
Here goes:
1. Install Oracle 9iR2 (9.2.0.1) Enterprise edition.
2. Download and apply the 9.2.0.6 patch, available on metalink.
3. Follow carefully the pre and post install instructions for the patch, in the readme file.
3. Install Oracle 10g(9.0.4) JDeveloper just by unpacking the contents of the zip (available on OTN) in a folder (D:\OraDS let's say).
4. Install the Oracle 9.0.4 BI Beans, using the Universal installer and specifying a new Oracle Home exactely in the folder where Jdeveloper was installed (d:\OraDS).
5. Install the BIBDEMO schema by running
bibdemo.bat %ORACLE_HOME%\oradata\Database_name
6. Run the test to check if everything's allright
d:\OraDS\bibeans\bi_checkconfig\bi_checkconfig.bat -h hostname -po port -sid sid -u user -p password -qusing BIBDEMO/BIBDEMO as user/pass. If metadata retrieval is successful, then you have a running BIBDEMO schema.
OK ... now, assuming you have some business intelligence problem of your own, you might want to create your own schema. This is where I ran into another load of problems.
My advice is to sudy the contents of the sql files in the bibdemo schema and do exactely the same stuff for your own.
You will find it easy to create dimensions and cubes using the wizard.
BUT, if you do anything wrong, not only your metadata won't work, but it will also ruin BIBDEMO.
After creating your own objects, you have to run
exec cwm2_olap_metadata_refresh.mr_refresh;
commit;
If you run bi_checkconfig you will see the metadata unable to be retrieved. In JDev it will result in strange errors like <<Although it successfully connected to the database, the metadata couldn't be retrieved>> ... or something, or simply in not being able to see your measure folders when you try to make a presentation or graph.
Also, cube viewer will again show the "infamous bell error", although it works for the BIBDEMO ANALYTIC CUBE after completing the 6 steps I described.
The fact is that all the errors are not product related, but simply the result of creating incorrect OLAP objects and refreshing the metadata using an user that has OLAP_DBA role, thus spoiling all metadata, including BIBDEMO's.
I spent some time studying their schema, and I found something very interesting, which I thing is a mistake. All my tables (and also the fact table) had primary/foreign keys of the NUMBER type. I transformed all the primary keys in my tables in VARCHAR2, ran the metadata refresh procedure again, and everything worked. Don't forget to create a measure folder and add your own measure there, and after that ... way you go. You will see them in JDev, and you will be able to do all kinds of graphs or crosstabs with amazing ease. Pretty slow though, I reccomend at least 512MB of RAM, an strong processors.
Please advice me if I was wrong with turning the keys from NUMBER to VARCHAR, perhaps there was another way around, but I don't know. Also, if there are any instructions, post them here.
Thanks.

Answer 1

I remember this being an issue with 92041 but was supposed to be fixed in 9205 and I think we tested it worked okay. So, it could be that 9206 has reintroduced the problem? I would recommend logging a bug with Oracle Support because you should be able to create dimension keys based on numberic keys.
Hope this helps
Business Intelligence Beans Product Management Team
Oracle Corporation