OBIEE 11g – Full Text Catalog Search for OBIEE 11g contents with Secure Enterprise Search

OBIEE 11g provides an enhanced search capability via integration with Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) 11.1.2. It differs from the standard built in OBIEE search in that it provides a means of doing full catalog search on all objects in the web catalog. This feature is referred as "BI Search" or "full-text catalog search."

This blog is an attempt to explore option of full-text catalog search. I am trying to answer questions such as

What does it offer more?

What is SES (Secure Enterprise Search)?

What additional configuration required?

This blog is based on the oracle technical note no 1387186.1

BI Search

BI Search uses SES to index the BI catalog and finds details normally not viewable via standard search.  Items indexed include analyses/answers reports, iBots, prompts, actions, dashboards, KPIs and author, modified date, name, catalog path, prompts, popularity, logical names, etc.

For example, BI Search can retrieve all dashboards created by a certain author or modified on a certain date.  It can also find all dashboards that have specific data on them and specifically filtered on organization or can find Net Income reports for specific year and organization filter.  

Installation and Configuration

Installation

BI Search is not installed automatically with OBIEE 11g and installer must complete some installation and configuration tasks to use the feature.

Install Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) 11.1.2 – free download from OTN website

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/search/oses/downloads/index.html

Configuration Steps

The following list describes the steps for configuring the full-text catalog search:

Step 1: Assigning Privileges for Crawling and Indexing

The process of crawling and indexing the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog is initiated from the search engine. However, the catalog cannot be crawled and indexed unless a user with administrator privileges gives the appropriate privileges to the BISystem role.

Step 2: Ensuring that Secure Enterprise Search is Available

Once installed check if it is available at http://host:port/search/admin/control/login.jsp

Step 3: Configuring Identity Management for Full-Text Catalog Search

Optional if using Identity Management

Step 4: Creating the Data Source for Full-Text Catalog Search

This is to done via SSE Administration

Step 5: Editing the Schedule for Full-Text Catalog Search

Step 6: Specifying the Look and Feel of Search Results

Step 7: Enabling Incremental Crawls for Full-Text Catalog Search

Step 8: Configuring Properties for Full-Text Catalog Search Manually

Step 9: Allowing Users to Access the Full-Text Catalog Search

Full Text Catalog Search

Procedure to search for BI objects is as follows

Display the search page by clicking the Secure Enterprise Search for Oracle BI menu on the Oracle BI EE Home page, if one is available. Otherwise, in a new browser window, enter the URL for the Oracle Secure Enterprise Search page. If you are unsure of the URL, then contact the administrator.

Click Login and enter your login information for Oracle BI EE.

In the box, enter the text for which you want to search. For example, to find analyses that include the Sales measure column, enter sales in the box.

Note that above the box are a list of links the provide groups that can help limit the search results.

Click Search.

It is very useful and powerful search feature for OBIEE users and developers.