The state of OBIEE on the web

An advance footnote

I’ll start this by saying why I think things are how they are, and then I’ll get to the meat of my article.

OBIEE in its current incarnation (v10.1.3) is a mature product. All the big bugs have been caught and fixed. All the known quirks are well documented. All the missing features are known. All the clever workarounds have been found. All the neat little hacks have been explored.

What’s left to talk about?

Where have all the good men (and women) gone?

The OTN OBIEE Forum has become a depressing place.

This is no forum of equals, sharing and discussing a joint interest in a product.

I would say that 90%, if not 95%, of posts are from beginners. Already I can hear the shaking of heads, but bear with me. There’s nothing wrong with beginners posting on forums. Everyone has to start somewhere. But the problem is — they then disappear. So instead of organically growing as part of a community and in turn becoming more knowledgeable and helping others with their problems they leave. This leaves a fresh batch of beginners with questions, yet the same people answering them (invariably growing more frustrated and cynical).

The second problem, and not limited to this forum, is that people don’t RTFM! They don’t search in Google, and they sure as heck don’t search the forum. Why should I spend MY time looking up something in the manual for someone just so that THEY don’t have to?

This maybe shows my age, but on Usenet (nntp:// !) the mantra was always to “lurk” first. You gained a feeling for the group, and you saw quickly what questions came up repeatedly. You read the FAQ, so that you didn’t post a Frequently Asked Question. That’s where FAQs came from – people ask the same question again and again.

Asking questions is brilliant. Asking questions is how one learns. Showing curiosity in something and exploring it is how one becomes truly knowledgeable. Answering those questions and thinking about them is how one learns more and proves ones knowledge.
Asking for the hundredth time why Presentation Services won’t start, if OBIEE is supported on a certain OS, how to configure a DSN on Linux, or how to implement SSO is not learning. It’s plain lazy. It’s asking someone else to do your job for you.
If you really can’t get Presentation Services to start, and you post up the full spec of your environment, configuration, and what you’ve tried already and with details of what didn’t work with all the symptoms, links to all the posts you’ve found and ruled out as being relevant to your problem and why — then, and only then, is it fair to be posting your question.

And finally, since when did a lack of manners become acceptable? If someone helps you out, it’s polite to say thank you. People constantly abandon threads yet go on to post new ones. It’s also important from a point of view of people searching (hah!) for previously answered questions. If a suggested solution has been acknowledged to work other people may try it. If a suggested solution has been met by a deafening silence then people may give it less credence.

To finish this section on a positive note, here’s an example of what I think the forum should be about. These are a couple of threads I’ve been involved with where it’s not been necessarily something documented, where there’s been a back and forth of diagnostics, where both sides have benefited from the thread

• http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=975769
• http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=967044

Silence in blog land

Related to the OTN forum is the decline in OBIEE blogging. Just as there’s no sparks of new ideas or problems being discussed on the OTN Forum, there’s not a lot being posted on the OBIEE blogs any more. It could be literally the case that everything that’s to write about has been.
If one looks at the blog archives of people like Venkat and John M, what else is there to be said, other than re-hashing the same points?
There are new blogs coming along (and I include myself in that, in internet years I’m extremely recent too), but there’s either not a lot to write about, very esoteric, or just re-working the same ideas.

OBIEE 11g

I’ll say again what I did at the top of this posting.

OBIEE in its current incarnation (v10.1.3) is a mature product. All the big bugs have been caught and fixed. All the known quirks are well documented. All the missing features are known. All the clever workarounds have been found. All the neat little hacks have been explored.

On the horizon and (slowly) approaching is OBIEE 11g. It’s is already in a limited ßeta. Once it’s open to a more wide field (presumably those currently ßeta testing it are under NDA) there’ll be a whole raft of exciting new things to talk about and I would imagine things will pick up again

The future

A new OBIEE forum?

I think there’s a real need for a proper, moderated, OBIEE forum. The OTN one is probably beyond redemption. Much better to start a new one with clear posting rules, and as people stray gently bring them round 🙂 No-one has time to herd cats (per the OTN forum), but the odd stray question can easily be redirected. A forum outside of OTN would also be free of its dodgy functionality and restrictions.
A well organised forum with little repetition will have less traffic to read through, and thus be much easier searched.
Registration would be mandatory, to reduce the number of people “fire and forgetting” their questions.
Even have a ‘waiting period’ after registration to reduce the number of “URGETN!!!!!” posts.

Volunteers? 😀

Blogging

Over here it’s approaching the time of year when animals go into hibernation, and maybe some OBIEE bloggers are doing the same, ready to burst forth full of life once OBIEE 11g is available.

A real footnote

Maybe it’s the dark autumn evenings making me a grumpy old sod, and things aren’t as I make out. I’d be interested in people’s comments 🙂