BI Publisher 11g – Installing the Trial Edition (Windows)

In a previous post I mentioned the Trial Edition of BI Publisher 11g.

This is a small distribution, intended for evaluation and development purposes only.

It’s a good product to install in a PC or laptop, to have a closer look at the new features of the 11g, or to have a local development environment.

Let’s start by checking some of the requirements for this installation. I’ll just go through the most important ones (i.e. most probably used), so please be sure to check the official product documentation for all the details.

Requirements

BI Publisher (server) requirements:

Server Operating Systems	Disk	RAM	Java
Windows 7 Windows Server 2003 (SP1+) Windows Server 2003 R2 (SP1+) Windows Server 2008 (SP1+) Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP1+) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (Update 3+)	2.4 GB	1 GB (free)	Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) 6

BI Publisher Desktop Tools (client) requirements:

Client Operating Systems	Browsers	Office
Windows 32-bit only: Windows XP (SP3+) Windows 64-bit only: Windows Server 2008 R2 32 or 64-bit: Windows 7 Windows Vista with SP1+ Windows 2003 with SP2/R2+ Windows Server 2008 with SP1+	Internet Explorer 7.x, 8.x, 9.x Firefox 3.5+, 6+ Safari 4.x, 5.x Chrome 12+	Microsoft Office 2003 Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 Microsoft Office 2010 (32-bit and 64-bit)

Database & datasource requirements

Databases

Oracle 10g, 11g R1, 11g R2 Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008 R2 IBM DB2 9.1, 9.5, 9.7 and later FixPaks IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) 11.5+ This trial version is shipped with a sample Java DB (10.6.1.0).

Brief description of the Trial Edition

The Trial Edition setup includes:

• Java SE JRE 6 
•  Java DB 10.6.1.0 - small DB with scheduler schema and BIPDemo schema (seed data for sample reports) 
• Oracle WebLogic Server 11gR1 (10.3.5) 
• Oracle BI Publisher 11.1.1.6.0 server and repository including sample reports

Overview of the installation tasks: 
 1) Download the setup 
 2) Configure all the requirements 
 3) Install the BI Publisher Trial Edition software 
 4) Configure the WebLogic console

  

Download the setup

There are 3 BI Publisher Trial setups:

• Windows 32-bit 
• Windows 64-bit 
• Linux for both 32-bit and 64-bit

The BI Publisher Desktop Tools (a.k.a. Template Builder) has 2 setups:

• Windows 32-bit
• Windows 64-bit

All can be downloaded at the BI Publisher product page (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-publisher/downloads/index.html).

Installing BI Publisher 11g Trial Edition in Windows 32-bit

In this article, I’ll only explain the installation for Windows 7 32-bit, which I’ll be using in my own laptop. But for any other Windows OS it should be more or less the same instructions.

Ready?! OK, let’s start...

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1) Login in the server, PC or laptop with an administrator user

2) Execute the setup: BIPublisherTrialEdition.exe (in my case, Windows 32-bit). This will open the Installer Wizard.

3) In the Welcome window, click Next

4) In the Choose Destionation window, change the location to install (e.g. C:\JavaApps\BIP11gTrial), and click Next. You can also accept the default location, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

5) In the Administrator Details window, enter the username (e.g. bipadmin) and password that will be used for the Administrator user in BI Publisher Trial Edition and WebLogic Server. Click Next

NOTE: The password must be at least 8 characters and contain at least one number and one alpha character.

6) In the Ready to Install window, click Install. Wait a few minutes (>5min), while the installation executes.

7) After the install phase, in the final dialog window, click Finish to start the configuration and initialize the servers. A WebLogic Server command window (MS-DOS type) will open to launch the BI Publisher application. A browser window will also open, “Waiting for server startup…”. This part will also take a few minutes.

NOTE: The WebLogic Server command window needs to remain open for the BI Publisher to work.

 

 8) When the Welcome page appears in the browser, just click Sign In to BI

Publisher, and use the credentials configured in step 5 

NOTE: If the Welcome page is not showed, open it in Start Menu > Programs > Oracle BI Publisher Trial Edition > Sign In to BI Publisher, or just open a new browser window/tab and type the login page URL: http://localhost:7001/xmlpserver/.

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Configuring the WebLogic administration console

If you also want to have a look at the WebLogic 11g administration console, you’ll need to access the console URL (http://localhost:7001/console). By doing that, the console will be automatically configured, and the login page will be displayed.

To login, use the same credentials as in BI Publisher. They’re valid for both authentications.