Oracle have now released the first
version Oracle Analytics Server (OAS), 5.5.
This is essentially the next version of OBIEE, but it is now functionally
in-line with Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC).
Apart from a small number of cloud-only features, such as the Day by Day
mobile app and natural language generation, OAS and OAC are basically the same
product.
There will be no new releases of
OBIEE. All OBIEE functionality is in OAS, along with new features introduced in
OAC.
Note at present OAS is only available
for Linux x64, other platforms are not available yet.
Also, the repository database must
be Oracle, you cannot use the RCU to create your repositories in any other database
type – SQL Server, MySQL etc. Oracle DB
versions 11.2 thru 19c can be used, although not Autonomous Cloud variants – we
couldn’t find a way to get the RCU connection to accept the secure wallets
required for these.
Oracle’s stance is that OAC will
still get new features first, with OAS being updated less frequently, perhaps
once or twice a year. No one knows what the impact will be of the future version
differences between OAC and OAS, but right now (Feb 2020), all content –
catalog, RPD, security, etc, can be moved between the two.
In the last few days we’ve taken a
bar file snapshot from a production OAC and successfully imported it into OAS –
the only additional task required was to import into OAS the secure wallet file
for our Autonomous Data Warehouse connection.
The following two URLs take you to
the documentation and download sites for OAS:
Installation is very similar to an
OBIEE 12c installation – anyone who has installed OBIEE 12c will recognize most
of the steps – java JDK, Fusion Middleware, OAS binaries, RCU and finally OAS
configuration.
There are some minor differences –
such as a required patch if migrating from OBIEE to OAS – this is included on
the download page. Also, the Essbase and Real-Time Decisions options have been
removed and are no longer part of the OAS/OAC product.
There are a few points to note about
the download page, especially for those not familiar with OBIEE 12c.
The five components required are listed,
however:
The Java developers Kit link takes
you do the general JDK version 8 download page, from here you need to download
the correct version for your environment, ideally the most up to date version,
which is not 8u191 as mentioned above. At time of writing it’s 8u241
The documentation tab will take you
to instructions for installing your java file if you’re unsure.
The link to download ‘Oracle
Weblogic Server 12c (12.2.1.4) Generic’ takes you to a download page with a
number of options, the page above does mention which one you need, just the
bottom link for ‘Fusion Middleware Infrastructure Installer’, ignore the other
three links on this page.
The other three download links for
Patch 30657796, Oracle Analytic Server and the BI Client are all straight
download links.
The five files you
will download, along with their sizes are:
jdk-8u241-linux-x64.tar.gz 190 MB
fmw_12.2.1.4.0_infrastructure_Disk1_1of1.zip 1.5 GB
p30657796_122140_Generic.zip 64 KB
Oracle_Analytics_Server_5.5.0.jar 3.7 GB
OAS-5.5.0-bi_client-win64.zip 1.5 GB
Enjoy!
