OAC―Editions of Oracle Analytics Cloud

Figure 1.  Provisioning an OAC instance

Subjects of Learning OAC

• Describe the editions of Oracle Analytics Cloud
• Describe the solutions applicable for each OAC edition
• Identify the pre-requisites for OAC
• Explain the concept of a compute shape

Video 1. Create a Service with Oracle Analytics Cloud (YouTube link)

Oracle Analytics Cloud Products 

Oracle Analytics Cloud offers you three product options:^[4]

Differences Between Products

The main difference between Oracle Analytics Cloud, Oracle Analytics Cloud Subscription, and Oracle Analytics Cloud - Classic is the way you deploy and manage your services on Oracle Cloud.

• Editions
• Service Management
• Infrastructure

Editions

Several editions are currently available: Professional and Enterprise. The features available with each edition depend on the product option and regions accessible to you.  Read [4] for details especially for the availability of different products based on dates and regions.

Service Management

Service Management	Oracle Analytics Cloud	Oracle Analytics CloudSubscription	Oracle Analytics Cloud - Classic
Managed by You (Oracle User)			You manage the service lifecycle and configuration, and have SSH access to the compute node VM.
Oracle–Managed	Oracle provides you with lifecycle management and configuration. You can log service requests to Oracle Cloud support to request service updates.
Customer Responsibility
Manage users and roles
Create and size service
Create database cloud service
Administer database cloud service
Back up and restore services	Oracle schedules and manages backups	Oracle schedules and manages backups
Patch services	Oracle schedules and applies patches	Oracle schedules and applies patches
Patch operating system	Oracle schedules and applies patches	Oracle schedules and applies patches
Start and stop services
Pause and resume services
Monitor services	Oracle has direct access to diagnostic logs for troubleshooting issues	Oracle has direct access to diagnostic logs for troubleshooting issues

Infrastructure

Infrastructure	Oracle Analytics Cloud	Oracle Analytics CloudSubscription	Oracle Analytics Cloud - Classic
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (Gen 2)
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (Gen 1)
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management- Identity Domains	Available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (Gen 2) to new customers in some Oracle Cloud regions.
Oracle Identity Cloud Service
Load Balancer	An Oracle-managed load balancer is automatically created and configured for your service.	An Oracle-managed load balancer is automatically created and configured for your service.	When you enable Oracle Identity Cloud Service as the identity provider, an Oracle-managed load balancer is created and configured automatically for your service.
Cloud Storage Required	Uses Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage— A storage bucket is automatically created for your service.	Uses Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage— A storage bucket is automatically created for your service.	Uses Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage Classic — You can create the object storage container either before or while you set up your service.
Oracle Database Cloud Service Required			You must set up a database service for Oracle Analytics Cloud - Classic schemas and organize a back up schedule.
Size Deployment by Shape	Various Oracle Compute Unit (OCPU) sizing options.	Various Oracle Compute Unit (OCPU) sizing options.	Standard and high memory shapes. The list of available shapes may vary by region.
Size Deployment by Number of Users	Only on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (Gen 2).
Scale Up and Scale Down
Availability Domains	Each region has multiple isolated availability domains, with separate power and cooling. The availability domains within a region are interconnected using a low-latency network. When you create a service, you can select the region where you want to deploy the service and Oracle automatically selects an availability domain.	Each region has multiple isolated availability domains, with separate power and cooling. The availability domains within a region are interconnected using a low-latency network. When you create a service, you can select the region where you want to deploy the service and Oracle automatically selects an availability domain.

Oracle Analytics Cloud - Professional Edition

With Professional Edition, you can:

• Take control of your data
• Create processes for business analytics application and data collection
• Discover insights on the data that you provide
• Prepare data through interactive data flows
• Explore data through grammar-based visualization
• Coordinate business analytics within your department or organization
• Use the Oracle Analytics Day by Day mobile application

Oracle Analytics Cloud - Enterprise Edition

Enterprise Edition offers all the features in Professional Edition and in addition, you can:

• Build data models, reports, and analytic dashboards in an enterprise business intelligence environment
• Design and publish pixel-perfect reports from your enterprise data
• Migrate content from your existing on-premises environment
• Perform a sensitivity analysis to test various data scenarios
• Use the Oracle Analytics Day by Day mobile application
• Maintain live and optimized connectivity to on-premises data warehouses

References

1. Create Services with Oracle Analytics Cloud
2. Better Business Decisions with Oracle Business Analytics
3. "Best Practices for implementing Analytics Cloud" from Oracle University
4. What Is Oracle Analytics Cloud?

RDG—Oracle Analytics Cloud Remote Data Gateway

You can connect to remote on-premise data sources from Oracle Analytics Cloud. This enables you to deploy Oracle Analytics Cloud with large on-premise data sets without migrating the data to the cloud. Users can analyze the data in data visualizations, and in reporting dashboards and analyses.

Oracle Analytics Cloud Data Gateway (which supersedes Remote Data Connector) enables you to query on-premises data sources from Oracle Analytics Cloud.

Note that a new feature named private access channel (PAC) was also introduced for the Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) Gen 2 instances since 5.9.  Here are the high-level descriptions of of it:^[14]

Private Access Channel compliments and provides an alternative to Remote Data Gateway (RDG) for the private data sources it supports. Both PAC and RDG may be used within the same instance of OAC. There may be sources that PAC supports and RDG does not and vice-versa.

Figure 1.  Data Gateway Architecture (Source: [11]) . The callouts are

    1. Oracle Analytics Cloud issues and queues queries using Data Gateway queue.

    2. The agent looks for queries to process via long-polling.

    3. The agent executes the queries.

    4. The agent sends the query results to Oracle Analytics Cloud.

Data Gateway Architecture

Figure 1 shows a high-level diagram of the architecture for Data Gateway. 

Oracle Analytics Cloud communicates through a firewall with an on-premise database using HTTPS, with an agent installed in the on-premise environment that channels database queries between Oracle Analytics Cloud and the on-premise database. 

On-premise Environment

You install Data Gateway in a subnet that gives visibility to both Oracle Analytics Cloud and the target data sources. Your network needs to allow outgoing (egress) traffic from the node where Data Gateway is installed to the public internet on port 443 so that Data Gateway can communicate with Oracle Analytics Cloud. In addition, the network needs to allow outgoing (egress) traffic from the Data Gateway agent to the data source. 

For example, you might test the network by opening a browser on the node where Data Gateway is installed and connect to Oracle Analytics Cloud. You might also test the connection from the same node to the data source using a generic JDBC tool.

Data Gateway regularly communicates with Oracle Analytics Cloud to see whether Oracle Analytics Cloud has queries that need processing, a process known as long-polling. Data Gateway makes a long-running TLS-encrypted HTTP request to Oracle Analytics Cloud and waits until Oracle Analytics Cloud has a query to process. If there're no queries from Oracle Analytics Cloud after two minutes, Data Gateway terminates and re-issues the request in order to avoid the request being identified and terminated as an idle or stale connection by the network.

The HTTPS communication between Data Gateway and Oracle Analytics Cloud leverages the SSL certificate of your Oracle Analytics Cloud service instance. The same certificate is used to encrypt your browser connections to Oracle Analytics Cloud.

Data Gateway vs Remote Data Connector

Data Gateway replaces the Remote Data Connector utility that was used in earlier releases. Although you can still use Remote Data Connector, Oracle recommend that you use Data Gateway. Data Gateway has many advantages over Remote Data Connector:

• You can deploy multiple Data Gateway agents to query the same database. This provides failover and a highly-available architecture.
• In Remote Data Connector, the communication is initiated by Oracle Analytics Cloud. In Data Gateway, the communication is initiated by Data Gateway. As a result:
  • You don't need to install anything in a network demilitarized zone (DMZ).
  • You don't have to open ports for ingress traffic in the on-premises firewall.
  • You don't have to register your Oracle Analytics Cloud as a 'safe' domain.

Note that you cannot use Data Gateway and Remote Data Connector at the same time with your Oracle Analytics Cloud instance.

Server Deployment vs Personal Deployment

Data Gateway supports two kinds of deployment:

• Server Deployment
• You can use Oracle Universal Installer to install on Linux
• You can have multiple Data Gateway agents on each node (physical or virtual)
• You can edit Data Gateway properties in 
• <Installed location>/jetty/obiee_rdc_agent.properties
• Personal Deployment
• You can copy the binary files onto MacOS or Windows
• You can edit Data Gateway properties in 
• <Installed location>\obiee_rdc_agent.properties

High Availability

High Availability is supported for Data Gateway and Oracle recommends at least two Data Gateways per Oracle Analytics Cloud instance.  

How HA is supported?

• On the Oracle Analytics Cloud side, high availability is provided natively.
• On the Data Gateway side, you set up high availability by deploying two Data Gateways for each Oracle Analytics Cloud instance.
• However, all of these agents must be capable of servicing all remote queries (that is, you cannot configure one agent to service queries for one data source only, and another agent to service queries for a different data source).

Troubleshoot Data Gateway

Here's how to troubleshoot common setup issues with Data Gateway.

Issue reported	Do this
All issues	Check that you are on the correct version of Data Gateway that matches your version of Oracle Analytics Cloud. To check the version of the Data Gateway agent, on a server deployment, refer to the version in the file <installdirectory>/inventory/registry.xml.
Agent state change failed with error: Agent name or Oracle Analytics Cloud URL not specified or the Key pair not generated	Click Save, then Enable. If the problem persists, restart the application. If necessary, check your network.
Invalid Oracle Analytics Cloud URL (Data Gateway can't communicate with Oracle Analytics Cloud)	Check that you've enabled and configured Data Gateway in Oracle Analytics Cloud Console. Make sure you can reach the Oracle Analytics Cloud URL from the environment where Data Gateway is running. For example, on Linux you might use a traceroute command, such as sudo traceroute -T -p 443 <Fully qualified domain name of your Oracle Analytics Cloud instance>. Make sure there's nothing else blocking communication through the firewall. If you're using a proxy: Stop the Data Gateway agent. On the machine where you've installed Data Gateway, configure the Data Gateway properties: In a server deployment, edit this file: <Installed location>/jetty/obiee_rdc_agent.properties In a personal deployment, edit this file: <Installed location>\obiee_rdc_agent.properties Update the following properties with the details of your internet proxy host: proxyUserName proxyPassword proxyHost (for example, www-proxy.us.oracle.com) proxyPort (for example, 80) Start the Data Gateway agent.
Test fails in Console page Remote Data Connectivity	If the test fails, this means that the Data Gateway agent can't authenticate. Possible reasons include: The agent key hasn't been copied to the Remote Data Connectivity page in Oracle Analytics Cloud Console. The agent key has been regenerated in the agent, but the new key hasn't been copied to the Remote Data Connectivity page in Oracle Analytics Cloud Console. There's no suitable network route from the agent to Oracle Analytics Cloud.

Frequently Asked Questions about Data Gateway

Please check RDG Documentation on Data Gateway Frequently Asked Questions :

• What operating systems does Data Gateway support?
• What is the Data Gateway Architecture?
• What is the difference between Remote Data Connector and Data Gateway?
• Where do I install Data gateway?
• Can I deploy multiple Data Gateway agents?
• How do I configure High Availability for Data Gateway?
• Why is Data Gateway traffic egress only?
• How does Data Gateway manage SSL certificates?
• How do I size Data Gateway?
• Where is Data Gateway running? Do I install it on a virtual machine (VM)?
• Can I use Data Gateway and Remote Data Connector with my Oracle Analytics Cloud instance at the same time?
• How is Data Gateway network traffic secured?
• Can Data Gateway limit queries that affect performance or security?
• Data Gateway doesn't limit the query row size. The query row size limit is determined by the number of Oracle Compute Units (OCPUs) that your Oracle Analytics Cloud service has.
• What is the timeout setting for Data Gateway?
• Data Gateway uses the same query timeout as Oracle Analytics Cloud. See Limits Querying Data (Data Visualization Projects, Classic Analyses and Dashboards).

Deployment of Remote Data Gateway

Read the below articles for the step-by-step instructions on the installation and deployment of remote data gateway (RDG) for Oracle Analytics Cloud:

Installing Oracle Analytics Cloud Remote Data Gateway
Preparing Linux for Oracle Remote Data Gateway
Deploying Oracle Analytics Cloud Remote Data Gateway in a Private Subnet
Deploying Oracle Analytics Cloud Remote Data Gateway in a Public Subnet
Deploying Oracle Analytics Cloud Remote Data Gateway On Premise
Deploying Oracle Analytics Cloud Remote Data Gateway using Local Peering Gateways

Deploying Oracle Analytics Cloud Remote Data Gateway in a Remote Private Subnet 

Completing the Deployment of Remote Data Gateway for Oracle Analytics Cloud

If you have subscribed to My Oracle Support, you can also check the below articles for more information:

• NOTE:2590606.1 - OAC: How To Increase Logging For Remote Data Gateway Agent in OAC
• NOTE:2574387.1 - Guidance For Using Remote Data Gateway (RDG) on Environments Upgraded From Oracle Analytics Cloud 105.2 and Lower
• NOTE:2631494.1 - OAC: Test From Remote Data Gateway(RDG) Agent Config page fails with "Invalid OAC URL" Error
• NOTES:2653783.1  - OAC RDG 5.5 : RDG Agent Configuration With Proxy Authentication Errors Out While Connecting To OAC
• NOTES:2815638.1 - All Dashboard Reports Using RPD Failed With Error: Invalid Oracle URL specified

References

1. Troubleshooting Data Gateway
2. Installing Oracle Analytics Cloud Remote Data Gateway
3. Completing the Deployment of Remote Data Gateway for Oracle Analytics Cloud
4. OAC: Test From Remote Data Gateway(RDG) Agent Config page fails with "Invalid OAC URL" Error (Doc ID 2631494.1)
5. OAC RDG 5.5 : RDG Agent Configuration With Proxy Authentication Errors Out While Connecting To OAC (Doc ID 2653783.1)
6. Configuring Oracle Analytics Cloud
7. Configure and Register Data Gateway for Data Visualization
8. Give Data Sources Access to Analytics Cloud Instances
9. Cache Management in Oracle Analytics Cloud 5.4 Onwards
10. Best Practices from Oracle Development's A‑Team
11. Connect to On-premise Data Sources
12. Connecting to Private Data Sources using Oracle Analytics Cloud Private Access Channel
• Private Access Channel compliments and provides an alternative to Remote Data Gateway (RDG) for the private data sources it supports. Both PAC and RDG may be used within the same instance of OAC.
13. Preparing Network Gateways for Private Oracle Analytics Cloud Data Sources
14. Connect to Private Data Sources Through a Private Access Channel
15. Oracle Analytics Managing Security for Oracle Analytics Server, 5.9.0 (pdf)
16. Troubleshooting Private Access Channel Connectivity for Oracle Analytics Cloud
17. Oracle Analytics Cloud supported Data Sources
18. Connecting to Oracle Analytics Cloud Private Endpoint with VPN / FastConnect
19. Manage Service Access and Security
20. Prerequisites for a Private Access Channel (PAC)

OAC―Working with Oracle BI Administration Tool

Video 1.  Create Simple Repository in OBIEE 12C

  

Video 2.  Working with Oracle BI Administration Tool

Administrators can upload data models built with Oracle BI Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC). After uploading a data model file (.rpd) to the cloud, content authors can then build data visualizations, dashboards and analyses in the usual way.^[1]

In this article, we will cover below three topics:

1. Use the Administration Tool to view and modify the BI Repository
2. Describe the different layers of the BI Repository
3. Upload Data Models from a File (.rpd) Using OAC Console

To cover these topics, we will begin with Oracle BI Administration Tool in OBIEE (watch video 1&2); then we will switch to OAC to discuss how to upload a data model file (.rpd or BI repository) from OBIEE to the cloud.^[1]

Figure 1.  Physical / Business Model and Mapping / Presentation (3 layers in BI Repository)

Figure 2.  How Administration Tool interacts with Repository and Oracle BI Server

Oracle BI Repository (OBIEE)

To view and edit the different layers of repository (see Figure 1), you use the Oracle BI Administration Tool.  The Administration Tool client is a Windows application that you can use to create and edit your Oracle BI repository.^[10,11] The Administration Tool can connect directly to the repository in offline mode, or it can connect to the repository through the Oracle BI Server. Some options are only available in online mode. See Using Online and Offline Repository Modes.

In Figure 2, it shows how the Oracle BI Administration Tool interacts with Oracle BI Server, data sources, and the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) repository.   The Oracle BI repository contains the metadata that defines which columns you can include in analyses, and the source of that data. The repository is organized into subject areas, which contain folders with the columns.

Figure 3.  Import Metadata for the Physical Layer ― Select Data Source

Figure 4.  Mapping between the business model (or logical schemas) and the physical schemas

Tiers

Layers in the Oracle BI Repository define the objects and their relationships.  An Oracle BI Repository has the following layers  (see Figure 1):

1. Physical
• Defines the objects and relationships that the Oracle BI Server needs to write native queries against each physical data source.
• Include metadata representation of the physical data sources (Note that no data are included)
• You create this layer by importing tables, cubes, and flat files from your data sources.
• You can use Import Metadata from the File menu and setup data sources with appropriate connection information (see Figure 3).
• Separating the logical behavior of the application from the physical model:
• Provides the ability to federate multiple physical sources to the same logical object, enabling aggregate navigation and partitioning, as well as, dimension conformance and isolation from changes in the physical sources. 
• Enables the creation of portable Oracle BI Applications.
2. Business Model and Mapping
• Specifies the mapping between the business model and the physical schemas.
• Determines the analytic behavior seen by users, and defines the superset of objects and relationships available to users. 
• Hides the complexity of the source data models.
• At run time, the Oracle BI Server 
• Evaluates Logical SQL requests against the business model
• Uses the mappings to determine the best set of physical tables, files, and cubes for generating the necessary physical queries. 
• The mappings often contain calculations and transformations, and might combine multiple physical tables.
• In each logical schema
• There is an extra folder named "Sources" which point to the physical schemas that the logical schema is coming from.
• You can have multiple physical schemas (i.e. CUSTOMERS & COUNTRIES) in the Sources folder (see Figure 4).
• Each column in business model maps to one or more columns in the Physical layer.
3. Presentation 
• The users view of the business model 
• Adds a level of abstraction over the Business Model and Mapping layer
• Provides a way to present customized, secure, role based views of a business model to users. 
• The repository in presentation layer is organized into subject areas.  After you upload BI repository to the cloud (see the section below for more details), new subject areas will be shown in Analyses of OAC (see Figure 5&6).

Figure 5.  Creating a new Analysis

Figure 6.  Select Subject Area

Business Intelligence (BI) Repository

You use Oracle BI Administration Tool to view and modify the repository.  After finish, you can save the metadata into a data model file (the RPD file). Administrators can then upload data models built with OBIEE to Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) instead of using Data Modeler to build them from scratch.

The business intelligence (BI) repository contains the metadata that defines which columns you can include in analyses, and the source of that data. The repository is organized into subject areas:

• Which contain folders with the columns (see Figure 7)
• For example, Region column is in the Geography folder which, in turn, is in SampleApp subject area
• Have one fact folder and a number of dimension folders. 
• Folders can have subfolders.

When you create an analysis (see Figure 5), you do:

• Select a subject area (see Figure 6) which contains columns related to a specific business object or business area. 
• For example, SampleApp (see Figure 7).
• Then open folders within the subject area to find the columns to include in your analysis.
• For example, you can open the Geography folder and select the columns within it.
• You can watch video 3 for more details.

Figure 7.  Selecting  Region column within the Geography folder

Video 3.  Get Started with Analyses and Dashboards in OAC

Get Your Data Model File Ready

Before you upload data model file to Oracle Analytics Cloud, take some time to ready your data model for the cloud:^[2]

1. Verify that you’re using Oracle BI Enterprise Edition 11.1.1.7 or later.
2. Validate the data model file (the RPD file).
• Run consistency checks using Consistency Check Manager in Oracle BI Administration Tool.
3. Verify that the data model file includes connection details to Oracle Database Cloud Service.
• Review the connection pool settings from Oracle BI Administration Tool:
• Data source name must contain the full connect string for the Oracle Database Cloud Service where data is stored.
• You can’t specify a net service name here.
• Call interface must be Oracle Call Interface (OCI).
• If your data model file connects to multiple Oracle Database Cloud Service instances, ensure that the settings for each connection pool are correct.
4. Disable subject areas that you don't want to expose or that don't have a working connection.
• If connection information is missing, users see the message Fetch subject areas failed error when they view subject areas in Oracle Analytics Cloud.
5. Back up your Oracle Analytics Cloud service, including the current data model, in case you need to restore this version.

When the data model is ready, you can upload it to Oracle Analytics Cloud.

Figure 8.  Replace Data Model 

Upload Data Models from a File (.rpd) Using Console

When you upload data models from OBIEE, you delete existing data model information in Oracle Analytics Cloud and replace it with content in the data model file (.rpd). The data models you upload become available to content authors as subject areas.

You can also upload data model files from a file (.rpd) using Console in OAC:^[3]

1. Verify the data model file (.rpd) and associated database connections.
2. In Oracle Analytics Cloud, click Console.
3. Select Service Administration - Manage Snapshots.
4. Take a snapshot of the current data model in case you need to restore this version (watch this video).
5. Click Replace Data Model (see Figure 8).
6. Click Browse and select the data model file (.rpd) that you want to upload.
7. Enter the password for the file.
8. Click OK.
9. Go to the Home page, click Data, and then Data Sets to see the data models that you uploaded, available as subject areas.
10. Optional: If the data model file includes permissions and data filters, create matching application roles in Oracle Analytics Cloud for the data security to work in the cloud.
• Create application roles with exactly the same names as those defined in Oracle BI Administration Tool.
• Assign users (and user roles) to the application roles as required.

References

1. Upload Data Models from Oracle BI Enterprise Edition
2. Get Your Data Model File Ready
3. Upload Data Models from a File (.rpd) Using Console
4. Fusion Middleware Metadata Repository Builder's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition
5. OBIEE 12C: BI Repository (RPD) (YouTube)
6. Create Simple Repository in OBIEE 12C (YouTube)
7. Top FAQs for Data Modeler (Enterprise Data Models)
8. Create Analyses (Oracle Analytics Cloud)
9. Cache Management in Oracle Analytics Cloud 5.4 Onwards
10. Oracle Analytics Client Tools (downloads)
11. Working with the Developer Client Tool for Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) with ADW in a Proxy-enabled Network
• Download Developer Client Tool for OAC from here. It is recommended that the Client Tool version match or be higher than the OAC version.
12. Click here for more A-Team Oracle Analytics (OAC) Blogs.
13. Oracle Analytics Managing Security for Oracle Analytics Server, 5.9.0