OBIEE 11g Release 11.1.1.7 – Recommended Visualizations Feature for Creating Views

In OBIEE 11g Release 11.1.1.7, it offers an option to choose a recommended view type based on the data in analysis and optionally, what analysis want to use it for e.g. analyze trends etc.  User can choose a suggested "Best Visualization" as well as a "Recommended Subtype". Or user can instead choose the "Recommended Visualization" option, for which user specify his intent for the new view.

In short the option provide list of suggested view types ordered with the best option at the top followed by recommended one, user can choose the preferred view type from the list.

Is it useful? Is it going to help reporter to get information out of data? What algorithm is used to come up with recommended and best visualization?  There are number of questions. This is an attempt to explain this feature in detail and try to answer some of the questions raised above. 

 

Recommended Visualization

OBIEE provides recommendation functionality whenever users create a view. This feature delivers a ranked list of view-type suggestions in a dialog as shown.  

The recommended visualizations feature works by gathering information on your inputs for a view, such as number of dimensions, number of members, and so on. Each possible view receives a score based on predefined set of rules (which is not accessible for user or designer). Certain view types are excluded as possibilities based on their scores. With scores above a certain level, the recommended visualizations feature then builds an ordered list of view recommendations.

It also then determines the optimal layout for each possible view. It groups them in different categories such as Analyzing Trends, Comparing Values, Comparing Values and Their Parts, Comparing Explicit Values, Comparing Percentages and Discovering Patterns and Outliers.  User can choose the desire to illustrate with the view by selecting right sub-menu mentioned above.

Best Visualization

User can skip the step of choosing from a ranking of recommended views and choose the Best Visualization option from Create View menu. This will create the best view immediately by ignoring list of recommendations.

In a simple request with two dimensions (Year and Office) and two facts (Revenue and Billed Quantity)

The best visualization suggested and recommended visualization for a simple request above are shown below.

I cannot comment on the intelligence put in algorithm but I would use this option which will curtail my view generation process as the selected view is being created automatically within a second. 

I hope you find this information useful.