3 Oracle Business Intelligence Requirements

This chapter provides information you must know before installing Oracle Business Intelligence software. It contains the following sections:

Section 3.1, "System Requirements and Certification"
Section 3.2, "Additional Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Installer Requirements"
Section 3.3, "Create Database Schemas Using the Repository Creation Utility (RCU)"

3.1 System Requirements and Certification

Refer to the system requirements and certification documentation for information about hardware and software requirements, platforms, databases, and other information. Both of these documents are available on Oracle Technology Network (OTN).

The system requirements document covers information such as hardware and software requirements, minimum disk space and memory requirements, and required system libraries, packages, or patches:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/ias/files/fusion_requirements.htm

The certification document covers supported installation types, platforms, operating systems, databases, JDKs, and third-party products:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/ias/files/fusion_certification.html

3.2 Additional Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Installer Requirements

Before performing any installation, you should read the system requirements and certification documentation to ensure that your environment meets the minimum installation requirements for the products you are installing.

This topic defines the additional requirements that must be met before following any of the installation scenarios outlined in Chapter 2, "Recommended Installation Scenarios for Oracle Business Intelligence."

Before you can run Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Installer, you must first create required Oracle Business Intelligence schemas in an unhardened database. You use a tool called the Repository Creation Utility (RCU) to create these schemas with the appropriate permissions and data. Section 3.3, "Create Database Schemas Using the Repository Creation Utility (RCU)" describes this process.
Before you begin using RCU, you should review the "Repository Creation Utility (RCU) Requirements" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware System Requirements document:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/ias/files/fusion_requirements.htm

This section contains important information about your system and component-specific database requirements that should be met before you run RCU.

3.3 Create Database Schemas Using the Repository Creation Utility (RCU)

The Repository Creation Utility (RCU) is a graphical tool for creating and managing Oracle Fusion Middleware database schemas in your database.

Note:

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle Real-Time Decisions, and Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher support Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, and IBM DB2 databases only. For more information, refer to the System Requirements and Prerequisites document.

The topics in this section relate to the RCU:

Section 3.3.1, "Database Schemas Created by RCU"
Section 3.3.2, "Database Privileges Granted to Oracle Business Intelligence Users"
Section 3.3.3, "Obtaining RCU"
Section 3.3.4, "Running RCU to Create Oracle Business Intelligence Database Schema"

3.3.1 Database Schemas Created by RCU

Before installing Oracle Business Intelligence, use RCU to create the Metadata Services (MDS) and Business Intelligence Platform (BIPLATFORM) schemas in your database.

To create the MDS and BIPLATFORM schemas, you must possess the DBA privilege and logged in as SYSDBA (for example, as user SYS).

When you run RCU, you are creating databases schemas and tablespaces using CREATE ANY SCHEMA, ALTER ANY SCHEMA, CREATE TABLE, CREATE TABLESPACE, and so on. RCU updates the schema_version_registry by writing entries to the system.schema_version_registry$ system table.

Each Oracle Business Intelligence system (BI domain) requires its own set of database schemas. Two or more systems cannot share the same set of schemas, although they can share the same database. Therefore, you must run RCU and install the required schemas before installing each distinct Oracle Business Intelligence system (BI domain). For example, if you plan to install two Oracle Business Intelligence systems, you must run RCU and install the required schemas twice, or once for each system.

This requirement does not apply when you scale out an Oracle Business Intelligence system. In a scaled out (clustered) system, you only run RCU and install the database schemas once, before installing the primary node of the Oracle Business Intelligence cluster (the BI domain for the cluster gets created at that time). Additional Oracle Business Intelligence nodes that you install during the scale-out process become members of that domain and, therefore, use the same set of schemas.

3.3.2 Database Privileges Granted to Oracle Business Intelligence Users

The following privileges are granted to users created by RCU:

resource
connect
create sequence

For information about the use of RCU, refer to "Repository Creation Utility Overview" in Oracle® Fusion Middleware Repository Creation Utility User's Guide.

3.3.3 Obtaining RCU

RCU is available either on its own installation CD-ROM in the bin directory, or in a ZIP file on Oracle Technology Network (OTN):

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/middleware/htdocs/111110_fmw.html

Scroll down to the "Required Additional Software" table and download the RCU package for your operating system and Oracle Business Intelligence version. For example, if you plan to install Oracle Business Intelligence Release 11g Release 1 11.1.1.3.0 on Linux, download RCU 11.1.1.3.0 for Linux.

After downloading the .zip file, extract the contents to a directory of your choice; this is referred to as the RCU_HOME directory.

Note:

On Windows systems, ensure that you do not unzip the RCU .zip file to a directory name containing spaces.

RCU is available only on 32-bit Linux and Windows platforms. Either the Linux RCU or Windows RCU may be used to create schemas on any supported database platform.

3.3.4 Running RCU to Create Oracle Business Intelligence Database Schema

You can run RCU locally (from the CD-ROM or your RCU_HOME) or remotely. In situations where the application administrator is not allowed to install components in the database server, RCU can be started directly from the CD.

Run RCU using the procedure shown in Table 3-1.

Table 3-1 Steps to Run RCU and Create the Oracle Business Intelligence Schemas

Step	Action	Notes
1	Do one of the following: If you downloaded and extracted the RCU .zip file, access the `bin` directory in the `RCU_HOME`. If you have the RCU CD-ROM, insert the CD-ROM into your computer and access the `bin` directory.
2	Start RCU: Linux and UNIX: `./rcu` Windows: `rcu.bat`
3	Welcome Screen Click Next.
4	Create Repository Screen Select Create. Click Next.
5	Database Connection Details Screen Select the type of database on your system. This is the database in which you create the Oracle Business Intelligence schemas. Provide the necessary credentials for RCU to be able to connect to your database. Click Next. The Checking Prerequisites screen opens. After the checking is complete with no errors, click OK to dismiss the screen.
6	Select Components Screen Near the top of the screen, select Create a New Prefix. The default prefix is DEV. You can provide another prefix, if preferred. Click the Business Intelligence component group by clicking the plus sign (+) next to it. Then, click Business Intelligence Platform so that a check appears next to it. This action automatically selects the Metadata Services (MDS) schema (under the AS Common Schemas group), which is also required by Oracle Business Intelligence. Click Next. The Checking Prerequisites screen opens. After the checking is complete with no errors, click OK to dismiss the screen.	Do not click the Oracle AS Repository Components check box, as this configures RCU to install many other schemas that are not required by Oracle Business Intelligence. Make a note of these schema names and the prefix value from this screen. You need them to configure your products later in the installation process. Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Installer automatically creates schema names in the format `prefix_schemaname`. The value for `prefix` must be the same for the Metadata Services (MDS) and Business Intelligence Platform (BIPLATFORM) schemas. For example, if you provide the prefix `BI`, Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Installer creates the schema names `BI_BIPLATFORM` and `BI_MDS`.
7	Schema Passwords Screen Select Use same password for all schemas. Provide and confirm a password for the schemas.	Oracle strongly recommends selecting the Use same password for all schemas option and entering a password for the Metadata Services (MDS) and Business Intelligence Platform (BIPLATFORM) schemas to share. If you do not select the Use same password for all schemas option and provide a single password for both schemas to share, issues might occur with your Oracle Business Intelligence installation.
8	Map Tablespaces Screen Click Next. The Creating Tablespaces screen opens. After the tablespaces are created with no errors, click OK to dismiss the screen.
9	Summary Screen Click Create. The Create screen opens. After the schemas are created with no errors, click OK to dismiss the screen.
10	Completion Summary Screen Click Close.