As you will see in the following chapter, one of the tasks that we set is to create a set of tables in the repository that mirror the tables in your database. This is best done when you can connect your client to the database you are modeling.

Creating a connection to your database is simple if you have the client software already installed on your workstation. For example, if you are connecting to Oracle, you will need the Oracle drivers on your machine.

We are connecting to the AdventureWorks database on SQL Server, which is on our local machine where the OBIEE client is installed; this means the software is already in place. In your installation, you may have to download the driver. Search Microsoft.com for an ODBC driver that matches your Windows version and database version, and install that first.

When the software is in place, create a new DSN using the SQL Server driver and you are ready to go.

At this point, you can move on to the next chapter, but if you want to connect to an Oracle database (and who wouldn't?), you will need to do some more work.

When you use the Oracle Client (OCI) connector, you can use a TNS name, and the system looks for the description of the TNS name in a file called tnsnames.ora. The default place it looks for the file is in the folder called <<CLIENT INSTALL FOLDER>>domainsiconfigfmwconfigienvcore, which in our example is C:fmw_obieeclientdomainsiconfigfmwconfigienvcore.

Copy your tnsnames.ora file into this core folder.