OBIEE – Creating an OBIEE repository and importing a physical schema

OBIEE stores its physical and logical schema in a repository. The repository is a file with an extension of .rpd In this post we look at creating a new repository and importing the physical schema metadata from the foodmart datasource created in the previous post.
1. Open the Oracle BI server Administration page. Go to Start-> Programs -> Oracle Business Intelligence -> Administration.
2. Create a new repository. In the oracle BI administration tool click on File-> New . Type the name of the repository. Here we use the name ‘FoodMart’. save as type .rpd.
3. The administration tool will show three views. The view on the right most end is the physical layer view. The middle view is the logical layer view and the left most view is the presentation layer view.

4. To import the schema from the foodmart database: click on File->Import->from Database. Select the ‘FoodMart’ datasource
On clicking OK, you will be presented with the following screen

The required table can be selected to import the metadata for that table. Here we will import schema from all the tables. The physical view will show the imported table schemas.

select any table and right click and select ‘View Data’ to view data for that table.

Importing from a database is not the only way to create a physical schema. The schema can also be created manually, but in most cases that is not required. It is also possible to add more columns or tables to an imported schema.

By default when the schema is imported, the count of rows for each table is not available. Right click on the table and select ‘Update Row Count’ to find the number of rows in that table at that time.

We will create a star schema for inventory_fact_1997. Create the following foreign keys
product.product_id = inventory_fact_1997.product_id
store.store_id = inventory_fact_1997.store_id
time_by_day.time_id = inventory_fact_1997.time_id
warehouse.warehouse_id = inventory_fact_1997.warehouse_id

Right click on the inventory_fact_1997 table and select Physical Diagram -> Object(s) and All join(s).

The physical schema is now ready for use.