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

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 picture is described in the document text

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

the picture is described in the document text

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 EE 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:

Under Catalog, select Oracle BI Publisher - File System as the Catalog Type.
Enter the absolute Path.
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 EE 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 EE (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

The general properties region includes the following settings:

System Temporary Directory
Report Scalable Threshold
Database Fetch Size

The System Temporary Directory

This setting is optional. As long as the disk drive where BI Publisher is deployed has enough space to run BI Publisher, it is not required.

About Temporary Files

BI Publisher creates the following types of temporary and cache files:

Temporary files:

Temporary files created by the formatting engines (FO processor, PDF Form Processor, PDF generators and so on)
Data Files

These files are removed after the reports generate successfully.

Dynamic image files for HTML output:

Dynamic charts
Embedded images in RTF templates

Cache files:

Data cache
LOV (List of Values) cache
Document Cache
XSL Cache from RTF templates

Setting the System Temporary Directory

If you do not specify a temporary directory here, temporary files and dynamic image files are generated under {bip_deployment_directory}/xdo/tmp. Cache files are generated under {bip_deployment_directory}/xdo/cache.

When you configure a System Temporary Directory using this field, for example: "/disk1/BIP_Temp", the BI Publisher server automatically creates the following directories:

/disk1/BIP_Temp/xdo
/disk1/BIP_Temp/xdo/tmp
/disk1/BIP_Temp/xdo/cache

Temporary files are generated under /disk1/BIP_Temp/xdo/tmp.

Cache files are generated under /disk1/BIP_Temp/xdo/cache.

Dynamic image files are still created in the {bip_deployment_directory}/xdo/tmp directory and are not affected by this configuration.

Whenever the BI Publisher server is restarted, any files under /disk1/BIP_Temp/xdo are removed.

Sizing the System Temporary Directory

Sizing requirements will depend on how big your generated data files and reports are, how many reports enabled cache, and the number of concurrent users. If you need to process 1 GB of data and then to generate a report that is 1 GB, the temp disk should have more than 2 GB of disk space for a single report run. If you require ten concurrent report runs of similarly sized reports, then more than 20 GB of disk space is required. In addition, if you need to cache the data and reports for these ten users, you will need additional 20 GB of disk space. Note that cache is per user.

Setting the Report Scalable Threshold

This property specifies 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).

Setting the Database Fetch Size

This property specifies 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 Data Modeling 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.