How to Know On Premise RPD File Name and Location?

If you want create new Subject Areas in OBIEE for use in OTBI/OBIA then you have to modify the metadata repository file. To do that you need to know the latest copy of the RPD file and the location of the same.

How to find the latest copy and location?

Log on to BIDomain EM. Here is the link to know the domain details. So if your BIDomain is deployed on http://yourcompany.com:xxxx then EM would be http://yourcompany.com:xxxx/em.

Enter your user id and Password

Once you log on this is you will see. If you don't see this click on Oracle logo.

Expand Business Intelligence Node and select coreapplication. Once you have done this the screen should look like this.

Then click on Deployment and Repository tab. Under BI Server Repository Section you will see Default RPD. In this case the RPD file name is OracleBIApps_BI0008. Note that this is a shared repository and shared path is /u01/app/oracle/fusion/instance/BIShared/OracleBIServerComponent/coreapplication_obis1/repository. If you log in to that path from UNIX box you may find that the RPD file names are not matching with default RPD file mentioned in EM. There is a MOS document OBIEE 11g: How is the Repository File Updated in a Clustered Environment and How To Identify the Latest Repository File in the Publishing Directory [ID 1484831.1]. This document explains why the file names under this folder are different.

So if the RPD file does not match with the file names under shared folder then how will someone get the exact file name?? There is also a MOS document How To View User Permissions in the RPD for Fusion Applications Business Intelligence [ID 1408832.1]. Under this document there is a section called Download the current copy of your RPD file.  There it has been specified the exact location of the rpd file as /APPLTOP/instance/BIInstance/bifoundation/OracleBIServerComponent/coreapplication_obis1/repository. But I could not find the path to be valid one. Generally APPL_TOP is set to /u01/app/oracle/fusion/fusionapps/applications. But inside APPL_TOP this path does not exist. I believe this path would BASEPATH/instance/BIInstance/bifoundation/OracleBIServerComponent/coreapplication_obis1/repository.  Where BASEPATH is the mount point of Fusion Apps.I don't know whether this is typo or our system environment is set like this. Anyway Oracle has to confirm this....

So if I go to the BASEPATH/instance/BIInstance/bifoundation/OracleBIServerComponent/coreapplication_obis1/repository  and do ls -ltr I could see this

Here I could see the OracleBIApps_BI0008.rpd file. Similarly you can follow this and get your latest copy of the RPD file and start modifying.

In the next series I will explain how to verify the connection and the database details to which OTBI report connects.

Keep reading................

Cheers