Rate Card

I keep meaning to put the rate card on the Majendi website.

If anyone is interested this is what we charge. (all in GBP)


Senior Consultant - 800 plus expenses
Consultant - 750 (expenses included in home country, add on for Europe)
Junior Consultant- 250 plus expenses


What are the levels?

Senior Consultants have 4 years of Analytics / OBIEE expereince. They have at least 6 projects implementing new or upgrading systems. They can lead the reporting part of any Siebel Implementation and take personal responsibity to ensure the client is happy with the deployment. They will also have other skills, e.g. unix.

Consultants are qualified from Oracle University and have worked alongside the Senior consultants on large projects. They have been working on at least 3 projects and demonstrated a high skill level to the seniors.

Junior consultants are qualified from Oracle University but have only worked ont he internal Majendi project. They are not sent out alone, but always in an assisting role with a senior.

Where are we based?

UK -London
UK -Manchester
UK - Glasgow

Germany - Munich
Switzerland - Geneva

South Africa - All

We need more staff, more freelance consultants, and more partners with related skillsets, e.g. Senior Siebel experts, eBusiness Experts, etc.

What Projects do we work on?

The bigger the better. Leading Pharmaceuticals, National Telecoms providers, Military, National Transport Carriers, Global FMCG, National Postal Companies, Power Generator Providers, Very large Banks, Electronics manufacturers and many smaller companies and government organisations too.
Every single customer of ours will provide a positive reference.

Do we negotiate? Never. There is more work than we can shake a stick at. Maybe we should charge more.

If you are freelancing, make sure you are paid your worth. If not, come to Majendi. We are not an agency. Agencies have an important role in matching people to projects too, and we work with the best of them, e.g. SCOM, Aston Carter. We are specialist consultancy that knows OBIEE, and how companies can implement it.

More Groups Please

I have had lots of new members sign up to my OBIEE group on linked in, most of which have some relationship with the product.

I am rejecting anyone who is an agency recruiter or just a professional networker.

The next step will be to develop the OBI portal which will provide resources for OBIEE professionals. This is planned for mid March.

If you haven't joined us please go to http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/43109/526A0219C124


The main reason for networking is so that we can share useful information. It is amazing how many projects I have worked on where I needed staff and they come via an agency and yet i could have employeed people directly, for more money!! Use your network. If you are looking for OBIEE work just get in touch. I wont spread your details around, but I may know of a project that you may be suitable for. Do not leave your current job to go contracting without giving me a call. I can help. You know who you are!!


On the subject of groups, I think I should join the following groups

IOUG (International Oracle User Group)
OAUG (Oracle Applications User Group)
Oracle BIWA SIG
Oracle BI Network

If you have the link please send it on.

Need a loopback Adapter

This took me ages to find

If you need to install Oracle database on a Vista Machine then this may help.

1) start device manager
2) right-click top node
3) add legacy hardware
4) select Netwrok Adaptor
5) select Microsoft6) select Loopback adapter

This was from an original post at

http://davedotnet.blogspot.com/2006/06/installing-loopback-adaptor-in-windows.html

Also useful was

http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2004/07/06/174576.aspx

Execute

Probably already covered elsewhere, but I had this lying around from my book notes (Many Thanks to ed Higgins)

These are the executables you can find in the bin directory.

Nb. Siebel support recommends the following executables are not used without prior knowledge or consulting technical support first.

JobManager.exe

Previously known as Analytics Scheduler, nothing much has changed, the Job Manager is used to schedule iBots for Oracle delivers and provides an interface to check progress of batches and records details of failures, it can also be used to schedule scripted jobs including triggering workflows in integrated applications, writing data to the database and triggering statistics updates in the database.

Prior to using the Job Manager, the user needs to run SAJOBS.oracle.sql from C:\OracleBI\server\Schema, this creates the tables for the scheduler, alternative versions are provided for most major databases.
Next one must create an entry in TNSNAMES.ora for the Data Source Name, launch the Job Manager from the Programs menu or Administration and add the connection details in Scheduler Configuration, for non-Oracle databases use windows ODBC and create a DSN.


nQcmd.exe

This command line tool executes SQL script on the database and can be used for Cache Seeding operations, it is not recommended that it be used directly as these jobs can be run through Job Manager, it is also recommended by Oracle that remote access tools such as TELNET or remote desktop are disabled on the server running presentation services as direct access to nQcmd.exe constitutes a security risk.

nQLogviewer.exe

nQLogViewer.exe is a utility and part of the analytics installation and resides in the 'Analytics install dir'/Bin directory. It's essentially a parsing tool that allows you to extract info from the NQQuery.log.

The particulars of the utility are:------------
Command: nQLogViewer -u -f -o

-s -r

where:
= Analytics user
= NQQuery.log to examine

= File to send results to
= ID of user logon session (unique per user logon/logoff session)
= ID of specific request from an Analytics Web Client sessionNQQuery.log

excerpt:+++administrator: 100: 101: ----2002/05/31 10:53:03 timestampExample to see only those entries under session ID 100:nQLogViewer -f c:\nquire\Log\NQQuery.log -o c:\nquire\Log\NQQuery_session100.log -s 100

nQQueryStatsFormatter.exe

No longer used in Oracle BI

NQSChangePassword.exe

This utility allows the changing of analytics user passwords from the command line.

NQSServer.exe

This is the Analytics Server process and must be running for analytics to function, it appears as a service in Windows (Siebel Analytics Server or Oracle BI Server), and is controlled by the Server Manager process in a UNIX environment.

NQSShutDown.exe

The executable can be called in a Unix script and stops the Analytics/BI server.

I'm not convinced these are still valid in the OBIEE world but are for Analytics 7.x

OC4J as a Service

Following the last post on stopping oc4j from automatic running, you may want to run oc4j as a service, so that is can be added to a batch file that starts all the analytics services.


So, to Run OC4J as a windows service

If you want to run oc4j as a windows service download the open source tool named JavaService.exe from http://javaservice.objectweb.org/ which can create Windows Services for Java Programs, adjust and execute the following command:
javaservice -install "Oracle BI: OC4J Service" "D:\jdk1.5.0_09\jre\bin\client\jvm.dll" -XX:MaxPermSize=128m -Xmx512m "-Djava.class.path=d:\OracleBI\oc4j_bi\j2ee\home\oc4j.jar" -start oracle.oc4j.loader.boot.BootStrap -description "Oracle BI Oc4J Service"

Now you can add to your 'net start' commands batch file.

Credit to Andreass in the Majendi team for this.

UPDATE: Venkat has also blogged on this subject, including some screen shots.

Auto running OC4J

I kept meaning to do a brief note on the issue of OC4J automatcally running when you start windows. I'm sure you all know how to stop it, but just on case check out

http://knowledge.ciber.nl/weblog/?p=84

And another thing

You wait ages for a blog to come along, then three turn up at once.



I just had to mention the WHOPPING great rpd that I had to investigate the other day.



It was 50 MB.

Supplied by Oracle as part of the 7.9 Applications install.

It's not that it takes ages to load and edit in the Admin tool, it's just a nightmare to figure out which bits belong to which Licence option. I need to write some UDML scripts to deal with the different packs. Maybe one of you lot already have some to send me :)

Is the future here already?

Have a look at the Oracle whitepaper on OBIEE and SOA. It's the future you can read about while getting on with maintaining your 7.7 Siebel reporting (Actuate) system.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/rittman-biee-soa.html?rssid=rss_otn_articles


Don't let people tell you otherwise - Oracle Business Intelligence is the future - what? including OWB? are you mad. You wait, when Larry gets back from his next sailing trip someone will have written some SAS like functions - or maybe just bought SAS!!!

So are Informatica getting ready to be bought out. The rumours have started and speculation is rife. Just imagine what will happen if someone else buys Informatica and oracle have to re-write all those ETL applcations. Come to think about it, that's not a bad idea. Maybe this time they will do better.

Aaaargh

Thanks Bill. Thanks for the new windows system. not.

I bought a new laptop last week, it's a Vostro 1700 from Dell. Very good spec, loads of memory, fast cpu etc, but also including Vista.

I went to install my copy of OBIEE and it refused, so it's not backwards compatable. So I tried the latest version 10.1.3.3.2 (download biee_windows_x86_101332_disk1) and it installed fine, except it didn't recognise my IIS, so i only got the oc4j.

Opening up the paint dashboard all looked fine so I prepared some data for a demo to my latest client. I created the demo data in Excell and Access, modified the paint rpd to include the new data. The demo was in an auditorium full of managers! (gulp)

Off to the site I went on a train from Copenhagen (at 5am!!). The journey was three hours so I thought I would walk through the steps I was going to give in the presentation. Opening the dashboard was fine, then clicking on the Answers link I was asked to log in again. Loggin in again I was then presented with a screen saying that I was not logged in!!
Clicking on the Admin link gave the same issue. In fact almost every link required you to log in again.


With 20 minutes to go before the presentation I had re-installed the software twice, searched google, IT Toolbox and the forums, and pulled out most of my hair.
Finally I gave up, thinking that if I ran for it I could just get back to the train before they realised I was gone :)

Luckily I still had the install disks for 10.1.3.2 and I borrowed someones laptop with XP on. I Installed the system and fired up OBI EE with 30 seconds to spare.

The presentatin went ahead without any problems.

Phew!

PS

Why Bother?

My next rant will be about Networking, Client Credit, Being in business, and Project Managment. Watch this space.