Business Objects XI R2 Install on Solaris 10 (WebLogic) Pre-Installation Considerations

BusinessObjects Enterprise requires a database server software and web application server software to be installed and configured.
Oracle 10g database and Weblogic application server are required to be installed before BusinessObjects Enterprise installation. The database (MySQL) and application server (TomCat) which come with the installation package should not be chosen during BusinessObjects Enterprise installation. After completed the installation, the Weblogic application server needs to be configured so it integrates with BusinessObjects Enterprise.
In addition, ensure that all BusinessObjects Enterprise machines can communicate properly with one another:
• Each BusinessObjects Enterprise machine must be able to communicate over TCP/IP with the machine that runs your Central Management Server(CMS). The CMS database must exist prior to BusinessObjects Enterprise installation. The CMS is responsible for maintaining a database of information about your BusinessObjects Enterprise system, which other components can access as required. The data stored by the CMS includes information about users and groups, security levels, BusinessObjects Enterprise content, and servers. For more information about the CMS, see BusinessObjects Enterprise Administrator’s Guide.
• UNIX servers that run BusinessObjects Enterprise must have a fixed host name. Root privileges are required to set or modify a fixed host name on the system.
• Installing BusinessObjects Enterprise should not use root privilege. Ask UNIX administrator to create a user account for BusinessObjects Enterprise and perform a user install of BusinessObjects Enterprise.
• Ensure that your database client and server are set up to use Unicode character encoding (such as UTF-8). Consult your database documentation to determine the settings required for a Unicode configuration.
• When installing Oracle database server, server needs to be configured to use Unicode encoding for the character data types.
• The BusinessObjects Enterprise will be connected to a Weblogic application server. The Weblogic application server must be able to communicate with all BusinessObjects Enterprise machines. This communication is enabled by the BusinessObjects Enterprise SDK, which must be installed and configured on the Weblogic application server. In this case, the BusinessObjects Enterprise Java SDK must be installed.
Note:
• Make sure that Weblogic application server has the JDK on it, you will need to install it before installing BusinessObjects Enterprise SDK.

Checking for required commands and utilities
In order for the install setup program to run correctly, the following commands and utilities must be installed on your Solaris 10 system:

/bin/sh
Pwd
read
touch
uname
expr
hostname
sed
Awk
chown
grep
tail
tar
Id
dirname
Gzip
sty
ulimit
which

These relatively standard commands and utilities should be available on most UNIX distributions. However, if for any reason one of them is not available on your system, download and install a version appropriate to your system.
Additionally, these commands and utilities must be accessible in the PATH environment variable of the user account that you use when installing BusinessObjects Enterprise.
Important
Proper verification of both install privileges as well as connect strings need to performed.For Oracle Connectivity make sure that SQL*PLUS can be used to connect to the database.

Components installation before BusinessObjects XI R2 Install
Several components need to be installed before BusinessObjects Enterprise system can be installed. Here is the list that needs to be followed:

1. Installing Oracle Net Client 9.2
Note: Oracle Net Client 9.2 works as tested. Even though the BO XI R2 supported platforms document lists Oracle Net Client 10.2 as supported, there are issues using 10.2 client (64bit). It is recommended to use Oracle Net Client 9.2 with /lib32 set within the .profile
Follow the instruction below to install oracle 9i (9.2.0.6) client on application server.

· Login to application server usplgmhsras001/usplgmhsras002 with “Vbobje” id
· cd /usr/local/oracle/product.
create this directory if not exist.

· untar "9.2.0.6_client.tar” file
cd /usr/local/oracle/product
tar –xvf 9.2.0.6_client.tar

Validation:
With the Vbobje id, run sqlplus, should see the output like below:

SQL*Plus: Release 9.2.0.6.0 - Production on Wed May 23 16:03:53 2007

Copyright (c) 1982, 2002, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.

Enter user-name:


Vbobje unix id profile update:

Update Vbobje .profile file with the following entries: (if it’s not updated earlier)

ORACLE_HOME=/usr/local/oracle/product/9.2.0
export ORACLE_HOME
TNS_ADMIN=/var/opt/oracle
export TNS_ADMIN
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib32
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
ORACLE_SID=ORCL
export ORACLE_SID
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:/usr/j2se/bin:$PATH
export PATH

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG LC_ALL

export BOBJE_ENV_SOURCED=""
. $HOME/bobje/bobje/setup/env.sh

tnsnames.ora file update:

· cd /var/opt/oracle
create this directory if not exist.

· Copy the tnsnames.ora file from /usr/local/oracle/product/9.2.0/ to /var/opt/oracle/ and modify the entries mention below:

PreProd / Production:
Database sid name
Database SID VIP
ORCL =
(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS_LIST =
(ADDRESS =
(PROTOCOL = tcp)
(HOST = ORCL)
(PORT = 1521)
)
)
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SID = ORCL)
)
)


Validation:
With the Vbobje id, run
· sqlplus bobje/bobje@ORCL

Should be able to SQL > prompt


· on sql prompt run the following select query

SQL> select name from v$database;

Output should look like this:

NAME
---------
ORCL

1. Setting up an empty database for CMS
2. Setting up an empty database for auditing
3. Creating an account, a home directory and a login environment for BOE installation
4. Providing and verifying connectivity to the CMS database
5. Installing the Java SDK
6. Accessing Weblogic Administration Console. It requires account and password


Setting up an empty database for CMS
BusinessObjects Enterprise requires a database (or Oracle schema) to store information about the system and its users. An existing Oracle 10g database will be used.
Database administrator must create a new database on database server before BusinessObjects Enterprise installation. The database used only for BusinessObjects Enterprise , and not contain other tables.Create a new database, create a new user account and password for the database that will be used by BusinessObjects Enterprise. Ensure that the new account has permission to create, modify, and delete tables and create procedures so that BusinessObjects Enterprise can modify the database as required. Write down name of the database, the user account, and the password. They will be used in BusinessObjects Enterprise installation script.
Name the new database (hisrepcmpldb.iweb.gm.com, instance: hisrepcm), and create a new user account (bobje), however, this naming convention is not required.
Ensure that the database server is set up to use Unicode character encoding (such as UTF-8). Consult your database documentation to determine the settings required for a Unicode configuration. For Oracle database servers, during installation you need to configure the server to use Unicode encoding for the character data types.

Setting up an empty database for auditing (if applies)
Create another database schema for auditing. It can share CMS instance. Name the auditing database (ex: bobjeaudit), and create a new user account (ex: bobjeaudit).

Creating an account, a home directory and a login environment
Create a specific user account and group under which the BusinessObjects Enterprise daemons can run. You will log on as this user in order to perform the remainder of the installation procedures. Although it requires root privileges to set up this account, the account itself does not require root privileges. Neither the installation scripts nor BusinessObjects Enterprise itself needs to run as root.Use usual administrative procedures to perform these recommended tasks.

Setting up UNIX system
Create a new group. Create a new user account, and set this user’s primary group to the new group. Assign a secure password to the new user account.
Create the directory where BusinessObjects Enterprise will be installed. By default, the installation will use current directory, that is, the directory you call the install program from, as its base directory for the install. You can override this default, with the directory of your choice at install time. You will see this directory referred to as INSTALLDIR throughout this document.
Set the new user’s HOME directory to the installation directory that you created. When you run the installation script, you choose a “user” installation type so that all of the installed files are confined to the directory that you specify here.
Ensure that the account you created has read, write, and execute permissions on the new HOME directory.
Assign the new user a default login shell, and create or modify the appropriate login script(s) for the user account. In particular, make sure that the login script(s) set up a default login environment that meets these requirements:
The user’s HOME directory must be included in the PATH environment variable.
All of the commands and utilities required by the install setup program must be accessible in the PATH environment variable. For details, see section 10.1.
The user’s login environment must set up the database environment such that the install setup program can access your database client software. Make sure the tnsnames.ora is set correctly. For details, see section 10.2.

Providing and verifying connectivity to the CMS database
To create tables and write data to the new CMS and auditing databases, the installation scripts need to establish a connection to the database server. That is, when you log on to UNIX with the user name from which you will perform the installation, the default shell environment must include the appropriate database environment variables and/or initialization files. Only then can the installation setup program access the CMS database using your database
client software.
The environment variables and/or files required by the installation scripts depend upon the type of database server you are running:
Oracle database is connected through a native connection, the installation searches the current shell for the ORACLE_HOME environment variable. This standard Oracle environment variable must be set in order for the install script to utilize the Oracle client software.

Additional database environment variables must be set in order for the installation script to use the database client software properly. Before running the installation script, test the shell environment of the account from which you will install BusinessObjects Enterprise to verify database connectivity and privileges. See the procedure that corresponds to the database.
The existing database needs to be sourced:
User can modify their own profile and add the command to source their database environment. This method must be done by the user which installs BusinessObjects Enterprise
Note: Consult database documentation and/or database administrator if the account shell environment from which you will install BusinessObjects Enterprise has not yet been set up for database client software, or if you are unable to connect successfully to the database.

Configuring the Java environment variable
After installing the Java SDK you must set the JAVA_HOME environment variable. If your Java web application server installs the Java SDK as part of its installation process, install the application server first, and then set the environment variable.
You need to know the directory path containing your Java SDK bin directory.

To set the JAVA_HOME environment variable on UNIX
1. Log on to the UNIX server with the user account and password which you will use to do your install.
2. Type JAVA_HOME= . is the directory containing your Java SDK bin directory.
3. To confirm that you’ve set the environment variable correctly, type echo $JAVA_HOME.
4. Using a text editor such as vi, add the command to set JAVA_HOME to the login environment for the account from which you will install BusinessObjects Enterprise. Add the command to your .profile file. This ensures that the value of JAVA_HOME is correctly set each time you log on to the account.