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Friday, June 19, 2009

ETL Server Setup: Major Installation Differences between BI Applications versions 7.9.5 and 7.9.6 on a Windows Environment

The most notable difference when setting up an ETL server by installing BI Apps 7.9.6 is the standalone DAC installer. The DAC download is 180MB and can be found on the Oracle website here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/ias/htdocs/101320bi.html

The BI Apps 7.9.6 file is only 320 MB now as it does not contain the DAC, and the new version of Informatica with this release, 8.6 Hotfix 4 clocks in at 2.1GB. All of these files can be downloaded from the above link.

The following order of operations should be taken when setting up the ETL server:

  1. Install BI Apps 7.9.6. This needs to be installed on a machine which already has the Oracle BI infrastructure installed, such as a development environment or the ETL server itself if you wish to have a copy of Oracle BI residing there. Similarly to other versions of the BI Apps, this will generate the DAC and Informatica repositories as well as the necessary files in the dwrep folder needed to complete the ETL Server installation. If BI Apps 7.9.6 is installed on a different server than the targeted ETL server, both the DAC and Informatica repository files as well as the dwrep folder will need to be copied over to the ETL server following installation.
  2. Install Informatica 8.6 with Hotfix 4. There are several notable differences with Informatica 8.6 and 8.1.1 installations. Most importantly among them is that the Informatica Repository Service and Integration Service are created after installation through the Admin Console rather than through the installer. This allows for greater flexibility during the install, and can save time if all the necessary database level permissions are not yet setup on your Informatica repository databases.
  3. Install Standalone DAC 10.1.3.4.1. The default installation folder is now ORA_HOME\bifoundation\DAC rather than the OracleBI\DAC folder. There are many great benefits to the standalone DAC installer, as it automates many of the setup steps required of prior DAC versions. The DAC 10.1.3.4.1 installer includes its own JDK, so no need to install this ahead of time. Of the many automated setup steps completed by the standalone DAC the most notable are: The DAC Installer copies the pmrep.exe and pmcmd.exe files from the Informatica server to client folder and sets them up for you in the PATH environment variable. The DAC also configures the INFA_DOMAINS_FILE environment variable for you, and sets the DAC_HOME and JAVA_HOME in the DAC config.bat file. When configuring the DAC you will need to specify the Domain Name and Integration Service name now under Setup > Informatica Servers.

    This posting of differences is not complete and is a brief summary of my installation experiences. If anyone has more to add please leave them in a comment. Happy installing!

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