Generate Metadata Dictionary in OBIEE 10g

Generating Metadata dictionary is one of the added advantage in OBIEE.  This allows the End User know about the added information of each column like data type, length, nullable and etc., 

A metadata dictionary is a static set of XML documents. Each XML document describes a metadata object, such as a column, including its properties and relationships with other metadata objects.

Here we are going to know how to generate metadata in OBIEE 10g.

In this post I have taken samplesales repository to generate its corresponding metadata dictionary. I am suggesting you people to take which repository you really need to generate metadata dictionary.

Step1: 

Open BI Administration Tool in Offline Mode -> Select 'Tools' Menu -> From dropdown option Select 'Utilities'

Below is the sample screenshot:

Step2:

Once we clicked Utilities, It will show the Utilities Window. From there select 'Generate Metadata Dictionary' and click 'Execute'

Step3:

Create a folder called 'Metadata in D: Drive and choose that folder in the choose Directory Screen

Step4:

Once we selected the target folder and clicked 'OK' with the above screen, It will generate the metadata dictionary folder in the name of repository. This process will take time depend upon the repository size. Once it is created metadata dictionary folder we will get confirmation dialog box like below:

Step5: 

Now go the D:\Metadata folder. There we can see the samplesales folder which is generated just before. Copy the 'samplesales' folder to the below location;

C:\OracleBI\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\applications\analytics\analytics\dictionary

Note: Commonly the dictionary folder will not be available in the analytics folder. So create 'dictionary' folder into the analytics folder and copy samplelsales folder into that folder.

Step6:

Now open the instanceconfig.xml file from the location C:\OralceBIData\web\Config. Once we opened the file add the below code inside into the <ServerInstance> tag.

<SubjectAreaMetadata>

<DictionaryURLPrefix>/analytics/dictionary/</DictionaryURLPrefix>

</SubjectAreaMetadata>

Step7:

Now restart the following BI Services to apply the changes.

1. Start OC4j

2. Oracle BI Server

3. Oracle BI Presentation Server

After the service restarted, Login into the BI Presentation services. We can see the metadata dictionary beside to subject area /columns. It is shown in the red rectangle in the below screenshot:

Step8:

Click on the 'Metadata Dictionary' symbol. Refer above screen to see the detail. It will display the screen like below. Using this we could know the information about all tables, columns and its details.

Note: Security Changes

Like all other report privileges we can restrict the users who needs to be accessed about this Metadata Dictionary by changing the privileges in Administration -> Access -> Acces to Metadata Dictionary in Presentation Services Administration settings.

Cheers!

Bose