We have covered the fundamental techniques of OBIEE development, and through that process we have also studied the fundamental tools needed for OBIEE development. With this knowledge in hand, we can go over some of the other utilities in the Administration tool. These facilities are less utilized, but they can aid and smooth the development process.
Previously, we have carried out all of the tutorials and development examples as a lone developer, but in larger projects we may have a group of developers accessing and modifying the same RPD. To this end, the OBIEE Administration tool provides the ability to merge multiple versions of an RPD as well as functionality for groups to manage development on a sole repository (multiuser development).
As in any IT project, source and version control are points of concern. In OBIEE, there are a couple of issues specifically associated with multiple developers working on an RPD.
Unlike other forms of development, all of our metadata is contained in a single file, that is, the RPD. If we are using a form of revision control, such as CVS software, we are restricted to saving a version of the whole RPD file, even if it contains many projects/business areas. This does not help us if we want to work independently on subsets of the RPD. It also makes it difficult to record what changes individual developers are making and on what objects. All of these challenges increase the difficulty of having developers work on multiple development paths with an aim to consolidate them into one RPD at the end, as would commonly be the case in large projects.
As we cannot use third-party tools for version control, Oracle has provided us with tools for merging separate RPD development paths and recording changes. In previous versions, these tools have been buggy and cumbersome to set up, but there have been improvements in these areas, so it is worth taking a look at the possibilities.
Outside of these inbuilt tools, we can also consider how to manage multiuser developments by ourselves.