OBIEE 11.1.1.7- New Features

OBIEE 11.1.1.7 has been released by Oracle and they included more than two hundred enhancements, designed to add new functionality for improved performance and deliver an enhanced end user experience.

The major features and enhancements are listed down based on my reading and collection from various online portals and articles.

Check it out!!!

1. New UI Features:

a. New graphs: Performance Tile, Waterfall, and 100 percent stacked bar

b.Breadcrumbs:

• A feature taken from Endeca
• Breadcrumbs have been added to help users understand their current location within Oracle BI content and the path that they have used to navigate Oracle BI content.
• Breadcrumbs display at the bottom of the page, and users can click a breadcrumb or the breadcrumb overflow button to navigate to a specific location on their breadcrumb trail.

c. Enhancement to Dashboards - This release provides the following enhancements to dashboards:

• The ability to create custom print layouts for high-fidelity printing of dashboard pages (i.e. automatic creation BI Publisher reports or by integration with BI Publisher).
• The new default style is FusionFX(instead of "BLAF : Browser Look and Feel")
• The Freeze Column option under the Column Properties menu is newly added feature in OBIEE11.1.1.7. This option allows you to freeze a column at an edge (top or left) of a dashboard layout.
• The newly added option listed down allow us to control the position and size of columns and sections: 

o    Size option in the Additional Formatting Options area of the "Section Properties dialog" and the "Column Properties dialog"

o    Page Size option in the "Dashboard Properties dialog

• The entire dashboard or a single dashboard page can be exported to Microsoft Excel 2007+ or Powerpoint 2007+
  
• The newly added option listed down allow us to replace an analysis on a dashboard and to return to a dashboard from the Analysis editor:

o    The Replace analysis in <dashboard name> option was added to the Save As dialog.

This option displays when the user is viewing a dashboard, clicks an embedded analysisAnalyze or Edit link, edits the analysis, and selects Save As to rename and save the analysis. The Replace analysis in <dashboard name> option allows the designer to choose to include the modified analysis on the dashboard.

o    The Return to <dashboard name> option was added to the Analysis editor.

This option displays in the Analysis editor when the user is viewing a dashboard and clicks an embedded analysisAnalyze or Edit link. The designer can click this option to easily move from the Analysis editor to the dashboard.

d. Enhancements to Graphs

• 3 new graph types:  Waterfall graph, Stacked graph and 100% Stacked graph (the latter two are subtypes of Bar and Area graphs)
• A waterfall graph lets you visualize how a value increases or decreases sequentially and cumulatively. An initial value is summed with subsequent values (both negative and positive changes or deltas) to arrive at an end value, focusing your attention on how each measure contributes to the whole.
• Stacked graph as a new subtype to the area graph. A stacked graph is useful for comparing the proportional contributions within a category. A stacked graph displays the relative value that each part contributes to the whole.
• 100% stacked graph as subtypes to the bar graph and the area graph. A 100% stacked graph, like the stacked graph subtype, lets you compare the parts to the whole. But while the stacked graph shows cumulative total in the units of the measure, the 100% stacked graph always shows units as percentages of the total, and the axis scale is always zero to 100 percent.
• Zoom to data range. This option lets the system evaluate the range of values on an axis, and choose appropriate minimum and maximum values for the scale. This is useful when graphing a set of large values that are all within a small percentage of each other.
• Hide sliders in graph views that listen to master-detail events. For graphs in master-detail relationships, if you want to simplify the appearance of an analysis or dashboard, you can hide the slider that is created to accommodate detail columns.

e. Enhancements to Views

Visualization Suggestion Engine: suggests to the user a chart type best suited for the display of current data and the analysis task they wish to perform. An algorithmic engine evaluates data types and the cardinality of the result set to recommend the most optimal visualization.

For tables, pivot tables, and advanced trellises:

• The ability to ◦specify the method to be used to browse data — either scrolling or paging controls
• Resize rows and columns
• Row count. If your table or pivot table view contains a grand total or subtotal on the row edge, the display totals, that is the grand total and subtotals, are now included in the Rows per Page count for content paging. In prior releases, if you had the Rows per Page count set to 10 for example, the table or pivot table would display more than 10 records if display totals were shown in the view results
• For right-click interactions, the ability to specify whether the Hide Columns interaction is available at runtime
• A new view type named performance tile. This view type displays a single aggregate measure value in a manner that is both visually simple and prominent
• Action links in trellis views. In simple trellis views, action links can now be used on inner graphs per unit, including the context of the outer edges. Action links can also be used in legends and in axis labels. In advanced trellis views, action links can be used in microcharts, where the microchart functions as a single unit (such as an aggregate number), including the context of the outer edges.

For map views,

• you can now vary the width of a line by measure to accentuate a feature
• You can link a map view as a detail in a master-detail relationship
• Auto Correct option for Map views (as errors in Map views can occur for various reasons). If the issue appears to be related to missing layers, maps, or styles, then it might be possible to correct the map by replacing the missing map view components with similar items that exist in the spatial metadata
• Legend and formatting highlighting
• Null suppression at view and analysis levels. You can set null suppression options at the view level (which overrides the analysis level) for data views including: table, pivot table, trellis (both simple and advanced), graph, gauge, and funnel views when the entire row or column contains nulls
• Ability to include or exclude calculated items and groups at the view level for columns and column headers. Specifically, two new options have been added: Include Custom Member and Exclude
  Custom Member  

f. Enhancements to Prompts

• This release includes an enhancement to the SQL Results prompt option. If you are working with double columns, you can now write the SQL statement so that filtering is done on code values rather than display values
• An enhancement to the prompt constraint option. The prompts designer can now limit a column prompt value list by more than one column
• This release includes enhancements to the parameters for prompted links

g. Enhancement to Favorites

• This release provides the capability to organize your favorites from the Category Tree area and the Selected Category area in the Manage Favorites dialog.
• In previous releases, you could organize favorites from the Category Tree area, only

2. New Integration Features:

• Integration of Oracle BI EE with Essbase - Essbase functionality is closely integrated with Oracle BI EE.
• Integration with Oracle Endeca - BI Publisher now supports integration with Oracle Endeca as a data source for reports.
• Integration of Oracle BI EE with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System - With this release, Oracle BI EE is integrated with Enterprise Performance Management Workspace.

3. New BI Mobile Features / Enhancements
With this new feature, you can access on your iPad more data, even within dense dashboards : without the restrictions of the smaller form factor.

• You expand an individual view by double-tapping on it. The individual view then displays within the full screen of the iPad. Double-tap on a view renders it in full-screen mode.
• The following new graph types are supported with BI Mobile: Performance tiles, Waterfall graphs, 100% stacked graph, Stacked graph
• In analyses with fixed headers, you can use a single-finger drag gesture to scroll through data in all directions
• It is now possible to change between landscape and portrait orientation while viewing Oracle BI content
• You can see the navigation path you have taken while moving through the catalog as a trail of breadcrumbs (near the top of the screen by the Back arrow). In this way, you can see your current location and how you got there, then decide whether to use the Back arrow to navigate in reverse, or to use the Home icon to quickly return to the Home screen
• The Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile Security Toolkit provides the ability to generate a signed version of the Oracle BI Mobile HD application. The toolkit includes the instructions and necessary content to build this application making use of Apple's Xcode and the IOS SDKs. The Oracle BI Mobile Security Toolkit will be updated on a regular basis in order to synchronize with the Oracle BI Mobile HD application available on the Apple App store.