BI Publisher Config Settings And Configuring Server Properties

Overview

This chapter covers server configuration settings under the System Maintenance region of the Administration page. It includes the following:

• Setting the Path to the Configuration Folder 
• Configuring the Catalog
• Setting General Properties
• Setting Caching Specifications
• Setting Retry Properties for Database Failover

Setting the Path to the Configuration Folder

The Configuration folder stores the files that contain your server configuration settings, for example, your data source connections, delivery server definitions, and scheduler settings.
The path to the Configuration folder is stored in the xmlp-server-config.xml configuration file.
When you install BI Publisher, this is automatically configured to

${xdo.server.config.dir}/repository

The environment variable ${xdo.server.config.dir} is used to store the path to the location of the xmlp-server-config.xml configuration file. By default both the BI Publisher configuration folder and the xmlp-server-config.xml file are installed to <DOMAIN_HOME>/config/bipublisher.
For example: /OBI_HOME/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/config/bipublisher

Configuring the Catalog

BI Publisher supports the following catalog types:

• Oracle BI Publisher - File System
  The Oracle BI Publisher file system option is for installations of BI Publisher that are not integrated with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
• Oracle BI Presentation Catalog
  If you install BI Publisher with the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, the catalog will be automatically configured to use the shared Oracle BI Presentation catalog.

Configuring the Oracle BI Publisher File System Catalog

Important: When using file systems such as NFS, Windows, or NAS for your repository, you must ensure that your file system is secured.

When you install BI Publisher, the catalog will be configured by default to:

${xdo.server.config.dir}/repository

To change the location for your repository, perform the following:

1. Under Catalog, select Oracle BI Publisher - File System as the Catalog Type.
2. Enter the absolute Path.
3. Apply your changes and restart your BI Publisher application.

Important: Note that because the repository is in the file system, the case sensitivity of folder and report names is determined by the platform on which you are running BI Publisher. For Windows-based environments, the repository object names will not be case sensitive. For Unix-based environments, the repository object names will be case sensitive.

Configuring BI Publisher to Use the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog

If you installed BI Publisher as part of the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition BI Publisher will be automatically configured to use the shared Oracle BI Presentation catalog.
For prerequisites and steps for manually integrating BI Publisher with Oracle BI Enterprise Edition, see Integration Reference for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.

Setting General Properties

• Report Scalable Threshold - sets the threshold at which data is cached on the disk. When the data volume is large, caching the data will save memory, but will result in slower processing. Enter a value in bytes. The default and general recommendation for this property is 10000000 (10 megabytes). 
• Database Fetch Size - sets the number of rows that are fetched from the database at a time when more rows are needed. This setting can be overridden at the data model level by setting the Database Fetch Size in the general properties of the data model (see Entering Data Model Properties, Oracle Fusion Middleware Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher). If neither value is set, the system default value of 300 is used.

Setting Server Caching Specifications

When BI Publisher processes a report, the data and the report document are stored in cache. Each item creates a separate cache file. Set the following properties to configure the size and expiration of this cache:

• Cache Expiration - enter the expiration period for the cache in minutes. The default is 30.
• Cache Size Limit - enter the maximum number of cached items to maintain regardless of the size of these items. The default is 1000.

When BI Publisher processes a report it stores the report definition in memory so that for subsequent requests for the same report the report definition can be retrieved from memory rather than from disk. Set the following property to configure this cache:

• Maximum Cached Report Definitions - enter the maximum number of report definitions to maintain in cache. The default is 50. This cache does not expire.

Note: Report-specific caching of data sets can be set as a report property. See Configuring Report Properties, Oracle Fusion Middleware Report Designer's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.

Setting Retry Properties for Database Failover

If BI Publisher fails to connect to a data source via the defined JDBC or JNDI connection, these properties control the number of retries that will be attempted before switching to the backup connection for the database.

• Number of Retries
  Default value is 6. Enter the number of times to attempt to make a connection before switching to the backup database.
• Retry Interval (seconds)
  Default value is 10 seconds. Enter the number of seconds to wait before retrying the connection.