Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Manual Install for OC4J instance

Manual install in BI Publisher means you deploy a BI Publisher EAR file by using your J2EE application server utility and configure the BI Publisher repository.

Why Manual Install?

There are several cases where you want to consider the manual installation.

  • You already have OC4J server up and running. No need to install the whole suite. Instead want to install or reinstall only the BI Publisher Enterprise server.
  • You already have Oracle BI EE installed and want to re-install only the BI Publisher part of the whole BI EE suite.
  • You already have an existing BI Publisher environment and need to upgrade it to the latest version.
  • You want to create another BI Publisher server instance on the same OC4J server so that you can have multiple BI Publisher server environments on a same machine for testing, etc.

There might be some other reasons but these are the most common requirements that I’ve seen at the BI Publisher projects. Also, I would recommend to install manually at least once so that you can get familiar with this manual process and get to know what is happening during the installation therefore you can better manage your application environment.

How to Deploy BI Publisher to OC4J instance?

First you need to find a BI Publisher EAR file. This can be found in the installation media. Note that there are two BI Publisher EAR files, one is located under ‘oc4j’ folder and anther is under ‘generic’. In order to deploy for the OC4J instance you need the one under the ‘oc4j’ folder.

e.g. D:\BI_Media\Windows\Server_Ancillary\Oracle_Business_Intelligence_Publisher\oc4j

You can deploy either from Oracle Enterprise Manager (web UI) or command line. Since Enterprise Manager has its own web UI and offers more administration tasks I’d recommend to deploy with Enterprise Manager.

You can start Enterprise Manager from your browser by adding ‘em’ after your hostname and port number. So it should be something like:

http://hostname:port/em (e.g. http://bip-server:9704/em)

Enterprise Manager (EM) UI

EM

You can click ‘Application’ link and click ‘Deploy’ link in the next page.

EM2

You need to select ‘xmlpserver.ear’ file location. Note that you must select the one under ‘oc4j’ folder, not the one under ‘generic’ folder.

In the next page you can specify Application name and Context Root.

EM4

Click ‘Next’ button and again click ‘Deploy’ button in the next page to start the deployment.

After the deployment has been completed you will see the completion message. At this point your BI Publisher has been deployed on your OC4J instance. But there is one configuration you need to do before you access to BI Publisher Enterprise UI page, which is to setup your BI Publisher repository path.

Configure BI Publisher Repository Path

The BI Publisher deployment creates a configuration file with a default setting for the BI Publisher repository path. So you need to modify this value to suit to your environment. You can find this configuration file under:

%OC4J_HOME%\j2ee\home\applications\xmlpserver\xmlpserver\WEB-INF

e.g. C:\OracleBI\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\applications\xmlpserver\xmlpserver\WEB-INF

Before:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xmlpConfig xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/xmlp">
<resource>
    <file path="${oracle.home}/xdo/repository"/>
</resource>
</xmlpConfig>

After Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xmlpConfig xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/xmlp">
  <resource>
    <file path="C:\OracleBI\xmlp\XMLP"/>
  </resource>
</xmlpConfig>

If you don’t know where is your BI Publisher repository you can copy a sample repository from the installation media. There is a folder named ‘XMLP’ and you can find sub folders such as ‘Reports’, ‘Admin’, etc. That’s the BI Publisher repository. So you can copy the entire folder and paste it to the location where you want to store the repository.

Once you have updated the configuration file you need to restart the OC4J server. After that you can now access to the new BI Publisher Enterprise server instance.

I’ll cover the Manual Install for Oracle WebLogic Server next time. Stay tuned!

9 comments:

  1. Hi -

    I am using your this approach to deploy BI Publisher and getting following error...

    Error
    Deployment failed: Nested exception
    Resolution:

    Base Exception:
    java.rmi.RemoteException
    deploy failed!: ; nested exception is:
    oracle.oc4j.admin.internal.DeployerException: Unknown assembly root-tag attribute: version. deploy failed!: ; nested exception is:
    oracle.oc4j.admin.internal.DeployerException: Unknown assembly root-tag attribute: version


    I am using Oracle application server 10.1.2.0.2

    Here is the approach I've taken so far

    1) Install Oracle enterprise manager 10g r2
    2) Upgrade it to 10g R4

    With OEM install you also get oracle application server installed and I am trying to deploy J2EE using this app server.

    Any suggestion why am I getting this error?


    Here is the approach I

    ReplyDelete
  2. The AS needs to be 10.1.3 or later. If you still see the error, you might want to file SR, or go to http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=245

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks...

    Is there an upgrade path available for Oracle application server sersion 10.1.2.0.2 to 10.1.3?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, you can upgrade to 10.1.3.

    ReplyDelete
  5. While deploying .ear file in Oracle application server 10g, i am getting following error

    Error:
    Deployment failed: Nested exception
    Resolution:

    Base Exception:
    java.rmi.RemoteException
    deploy failed: ;nested exception is:
    oracle.oc4j.admin.internal.DeployerExceptionLError initializing ejb-module;Exception Error loading class 'xxxxx':
    java.lang.NoClassDefFoundErrorLorg/apache/log4j/Logger.deploy failed:;nested Exception is:
    oracle.oc4j.admin.internal.DeployerExceptionLError initializing ejb-module;Exception Error loading class 'xxxxx':
    java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError:org/apache/log4j/Logger


    I use eclipse IDE with web server .



    Thanks for the help in advance

    ReplyDelete
  6. eVERYTING WAS GOING WELL UNTIL I LOGGED IN AND GOT THIS ERROR? Any ideas what could cause this or what file i need to edit. I have not changed the password.

    oracle.apps.xdo.servlet.resources.ResourceNotFoundException: ${oracle.home}/xdo/repository/Admin/Security/principals.xml

    thanks

    ReplyDelete
  7. Scott, looks you didn't configure the BI Publisher repository path correctly after the deployment. It's described above, take a look and try again. make sure you restart the OC4J.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Kanichiro,

    How can i avoid BI Publisher to shutdown when i logoff from my session on the linux server using which i had started the BIP server.

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  9. 1) use VNC or other X terminal service to login to the system, then start it up with the script. That way, you don't need to close the session when you log off.
    OR
    2) Use '&' so that it will run as a back-end process

    ReplyDelete