Usage Tracking for BI Server Hosting Multiple Repositories

Question

Hi all,
I've got my BI Server hosting two repositories:
[ REPOSITORY ]
DemoApp1 = DemoApp1.rpd, DEFAULT;
DemoApp2 = DemoApp2.rpd;
And started two Presentation Services connecting to these two repositories respectively, and two web front-ends at /analytics and /analytics2 to display the two different catalogs.
Next, I enabled usage tracking with direct insert to the following physical table:
PHYSICAL_TABLE_NAME = "OBIEEREP".""."OBIEEREP"."S_NQ_ACCT" ;
CONNECTION_POOL = "OBIEEREP"."Connection Pool" ;
Both repositories has the above physical table and connection pool defined. In DemoApp1.rpd, "OBIEEREP"."Connection Pool" points to a database OBIEEDB1, and in DemoApp2.rpd, it points to a database OBIEEDB2.
But then the problem occurs. All usage tracking data are inserted to OBIEEDB1 only, no matter which web front-end they are from. I tried removing the "DEFAULT" from NQSConfig.ini, but this doesn't help.
Is there any way to configure BI Server to insert usage tracking data from /analytics to OBIEEDB1, and those from /analytics2 to OBIEEDB2?
Thanks very much!!!
Edited by: Kaphenda on Jan 18, 2010 2:34 PM

Answer 1

HI Kaphenda,
That's probably just a side-effect of having two repositories. Keep in mind that having multiple repositories and multiple presentation servers is not support by Oracle, so they were not on the hook to modify the Usage Tracking algorithm to write to two different databases. It seems to me like they either didn't anticipate this scenario, or they didn't want to program for this scenario.
I don't think you have too many options in terms of making OBIEE insert the traffic logs into the appropriate database. However, once the data has been inserted, you can do just about anything you want to it in terms of ETL, triggers, materialized views, etc.
Here's what I would recommend:
1) Have the OBIEE usage tracking information logged into a neutral schema.
2) Write a materialized view in database 1: CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW S_NQ_ACCT AS SELECT * from S_NQ_ACCT@NEUTRAL_SERVER WHERE REPOSITORY_NAME = 'DemoApp1'
3) Write a materialized view in database 2: CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW S_NQ_ACCT AS SELECT * from S_NQ_ACCT@NEUTRAL_SERVER WHERE REPOSITORY_NAME = 'DemoApp2'
You can specify the refresh frequency of these materialized views to be as frequent as you want. The great thing about this strategy is that you get the best of all worlds. Each database has the traffic information broken down by their personal RPD. But the neutral schema can provide Global reporting across both repositories which can be very valuable itself.
Good luck and if you found this post useful, please award points!
Best regards,
-Joe
Edited by: Joe Bertram on Jan 18, 2010 9:59 AM