Remove System Wide Default Change in OBIEE 11g

Hello! Today we are gonna see if we can remove the system wide default change in OBIEE 11g.I am using OBI 11.1.1.6 on Windows 7 - 32 bits with IE8.

Have a look at the Testing Subject Area and the column CUST_ID.
Go to Column Properties and hide it. Save it as system wise default as shown in snap below. 
Look at the column before/after modification.












Go to 
C:\OBIEE11g\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1\catalog\SampleAppLite\root\system\metadata

You will find 2 files being created (.txt /.atr) with the subject area name Testing+Subject+Area







Just remember - System wide default file is subject area specific. It means if we do the system wide changes for columns belonging to Testing Subject Area then all those changes will be incorporated in the same file testing+subject+area. Similarly if we do the same for the columns in Sample Sales Lite subject area then those changes would be found in text file of sample+sales+lite as shown in the snap above.

Let's make change in one more column of Testing Subject Area system wide.
This time it is CUST_EMAIL. I have changed its column heading to Customer Email.













So if I open the text file testing+subject+area , I am sure that i would find those 2 changes. Let's see.











Take the backup of this file. 

Now we are going to remove those 2 files - testing+subject+area (.txt and .atr) and restart the BI services

Clear the browser cache,login to the system and reload the metadata files.

You will find that both the changes will have been restored back. See the snap. 

I actually wanted to restore only 1 change ( visibility of column CUST_ID ) but it seems its not possible - You have to remove the entire file and so all the changes of that particular subject area would get restored. This is the limitation but no issues - I can now save the system wise default setting for the column CUST_EMAIL only. 

Thanks - This was just an experiment. You may find some more and interesting results if you try to play around with this option. Good luck.





2 comments:

Shiva Rajagopal said...

Thank you so much for this very clear explanation of this complex topic..... Folks must be so pleased with this new workaround....

Ash said...

Excellent explanation!!!