OBIEE Interview Questions Continued Part 2

Assume we are still talking about OBIEE version 10.1.3.4 until Oracle comes with an OBIEE 11g GA date.

Hope you did go through part1 of OBIEE Interview Questions. Lets dive into Part2 now.

53. What are parameterized nested loop joins (PNLP)? Where are they used? Can you configure a PNLP in your physical or logical layer?

54. You are running a dashboard report and check whether it is using cache? What are the different caches that can be used to serve its customer faster? (remember we are not talking about cache in BI Server only) How does a dashboard request gets served from all available caches?

55. Is it better to cache a fact table or dimension table or both in the BI Server level? Why? (Forget other caches from above question)

56. You recently changed the columns of your presentation catalog as your manager wants to enforce naming standards for all customer facing apps. What happens to all the dashboard requests written prior ot this change? Do they function properly or do they appear broken? If ‘Yes, they will function’ How does they work? ‘If Not, reports appears broken’ what can you do to fix this?  Give examples.

57. What are the different hierarchy types available in OBIEE? When would you use them?

58. How do you create radio buttons on your OBIEE dashboard?

59. Can you create a Master Detail Report in OBIEE and how would you do it?

60. How do you deal with a situation like this when data is coming from a snowflaked data warehouse.

Fact  >—— Dimenion 1 >———-< Dimension 2 >————< Dimension 3

Dimension 1 and Dimension 2 is a M:M relationship and the same for Dimension 2 and Dimension3.

61. How do you resolve a M:M relationship other than using a bridge table?

62. Lets say that you have three tables joined to each other which have been set to be cacheable at physical layer with Table 1 set at cache persistence time 45 min, Table 2 with 60 min and Table 3 with 30 min. You ran your answers request at 9 AM and again at 9:15 AM and again at 9:45 AM. Is the result set the same for all these 3 runs at different times? If so, Why? If Not, why not? There are transactions going on and data is being updated in these tables almost every 10 min.

63. Lets say you are on your local box with a rpd and want to make sure that it can be edited only in offline mode. How can you accomplish this? Is this possible? What settings would you change?

64. Assume there is no MUDE in your environment. Three developers have been working on three seperate projects and they have developed their rpds. As a Server Admin, you were asked to promote these three rpds. What are the next steps for you as an admin to take care of to move them to QA and production? Are there any OBIEE tools that can be handy with this situation?

65. How do you get this type of interaction in your dashboard report? When clicked on a report column, I want multiple options for drill down. Remember that I did not create any hierarchies in my rpd.

66. Lets say that you want to include a prompt to your dashboard with Start Date, End Date and some measures and dimension attributes. You want to use ‘SQL Results’ feature to automatically populate Start Date and End Date with Start Date as trunc(sysdate – 1) and End Date as trunc(sysdate). What would you do? Will you encounter any errors? How do you rectify this problem?

67. How many business models can a presentation catalog refer to? How many presentation catalogues be created from a single business model?

68. How can we create nested presentation folders (nested presentation tables) in your presentation catalog? Lets say we have ‘Facts’ all lumped together in one folder and sub divide these facts as Facts – Logical and Facts – Strategic  folders? How would you create this nested structure in presentation catalog?

69. What are logical keys? Why would you need to create them? Does the physical key gets automatically converted to logical key when the table is moved from physical layer to business model?

70. Lets say you have a report with 4 dimensional attributes and 2 fact measures in the report. Whats the default sort behavior of OBIEE when you try to run the report? On what column/columns does it sort? How do you know this?

71. In the above scenario, Is it better to have atleast one column defined in your criteria manually or just leave it without any sort criteria mentioned? Whats the difference in performance?

Until next time, Kudos to all OBIEE evangelists out there

Always, remember that these are just for your reference and to play around with the tool for different scenarios and get to know the maneuvers available with this tool. Always, practice these scenarios and thats the only way you could register them in your permanent memory of your brain 🙂

Appreciate your feedback on this poll.