One of the obvious options for installing Oracle BI 12c is the choice of operating system. Chapter 3, Installing on Web Server 2012 did a nice job of showing the Oracle BI 12c installation on Microsoft Windows Server 2012. However, on a *Nix (that is,: Unix or Linux) operating system there are few, if any, differences mainly because the same GUI is available for all operating systems. As the person conducting the installation on a *Nix environment, you may or may not have the option to directly remote or log on to the server allocated for the Oracle BI environment. In which case the *Nix administrator must provide Secure Shell (SSH) access with display/xhosts options or VNCServer access. This will enable one to use a tool such as Putty or TightVNC to access the GUI Oracle BI 12c installation wizard.

A Linux-based virtual machine (VM) image was produced by the Oracle BI Product Management Development team with the release of Oracle BI 12c. It is referred to as the Oracle BI Sample Application. This VirtualBox-based VM image comes complete with Oracle BI 12c sample data, dashboards, and reports and it contains all of the necessary environment variables, and so on, as a set of examples for a basic Oracle BI 12c Linux implementation. The Sample Application is crucial for anyone wishing to see best practices on reports, dashboards, and the RPD; however, it is not a step-by-step learning resource like this book. In other words, keep reading and learn from real-world experts like us.

Information about the Oracle BI 12c Sample Application is found here, http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html.