OBIEE 10g/11G - Web catalog (webcat)

The Oracle BI Presentation Catalog stores the content that users create in a directory structure of individual files. This content includes folders, shortcuts, Oracle BI EE objects (such as analyses, filters, prompts, and dashboards), and Oracle BI Publisher objects (such as reports and templates).

Each object is composed of two files:

• Own file: For example, an analysis called Analysis 1 would be stored in a file named Analysis1.
• Attributes file: For example, the analysis called Analysis1 would have a corresponding attributes file named Analysis1.atr.

The attributes file contains:

• the object's full name,
• access control list (ACL),
• description,
• and so on.

To access an object in the catalog, users must have appropriate ACL entries for that object. All objects in the catalog use ACL entries.

The webcatalog is located:

• On 10G: OracleBIData/web/catalog/
• On 11G: $ORACLE_INSTANCE/bifoundation/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/catalog/

Directory structure

When opening a webcatalog, you will always find the following folders

• The shared folder— Contains content that is shared among catalog users. Dashboards that are shared across users are saved in a Dashboards subfolder under a common subfolder under the /Shared Folders folder.
• The system folder — Contains administrative elements of Presentation Services. Some of these elements are distributed with the product, and others are set up by the administrator, such as privileges.
• The users folder — Contains content that catalog users with the appropriate permissions have saved to their personal folders, such as individual analyses. Includes a Subject Area Contents folder where you save objects such as calculated items and groups.

Catalog Manager

The catalog manager is an administration tool to manage the webcat (answer, dashboard, prompt) of BI Presentation Service.

The file catalogmanager.exe is located:

• on 10g: BI_ORACLE_HOME\web\catalogmanager
• on 11g, For the first presentation service in the instance (ie coreapplication_obips1 in place of coreapplication_obipsn) :

OS	Path
Windows	ORACLE_INSTANCE\bifoundation\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1\catalogmanager\runcat.cmd
Linux	ORACLE_INSTANCE/bifoundation/OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent/coreapplication_obips1/catalogmanager/runcat.sh

Online / Offline

Many of the operations that you can perform using Catalog Manager are available in both online mode and offline mode. A few operations are available in only one mode or the other. Generally, the operations available in:

• Online mode are read-only operations and write operations that do not affect the entire catalog, such as setting permissions for an object.
• Offline mode include most of the operations available in online mode and write functions that affect the entire catalog, such as searching for and replacing catalog text.

To manually create a new catalog:

1. Stop the service for Presentation Services.
   The Oracle BI Server and WebLogic Server must be running.
2. Specify a new location (one that does not exist) for the catalog on the Repository tab of the Deployment page in Fusion Middleware Control.
3. Ensure that the new location for the catalog is empty.
4. Save your changes and close the file.
5. Restart Presentation Services.