OBIEE on Vista 64-bit with IIS 7.0

Post date: 14-Apr-2010 07:10:42

If you're one of the brave souls whose decided to go with Vista 64-bit (so you can load a huge amount of memory), you will find that OBIEE is not supported on 64 bit Windows. This post will tell you the things you need to do to get it to work on your developer environment.

Disclaimer #1: Its not supported, so only do this to play around a bit with it on your desktop/notebook.

Disclaimer #2: Always follow good IT practice and keep you software versions perfectly in line from dev through prod. Again, good for playing around a bit.

1. Pre-requisites

2. Use 32 bit Java JDK, not 64 bit. You can get 32bit JDK from here. Make sure to select Windows OS and not the 64 bit option.

3. Make sure your IIS Options are installed on your PC. From Control Panel, go to Programs and Features, then Turn Windows features on and off. From there, make sure that just about everything under "World Wide Web Services" and "Web Management Tools" is selected, most importantly the two ISAPI items under "Application Development Features"

4. Install and Configure

5. Run the OBIEE install program as normal (not covered in this post). As IIS 7.0 is not supported, the install will not configure IIS to work with the OBI Executables. All we really have to do here is create the 2 directories as follows:

   1. 1. Open IIS Manager from Administrative tools

      2. Go to the Defaul Web site in the navigation tree, right click and select "Add Virtual Directory"

      3. Enter the word "analytics" (without the quotes, case sensitive). Select the C:\oraclebi\web\app directory and hit OK

      4. Create another virtual directory called "analyticsRes" that points to c:\oraclebidata\web\res

      5. By default, executing programs is turned off for security reasons. OBIEE uses saw.dll, so we have to tell IIS its ok to run a dll. Click on the analytics virtual directory, and double click on the Hander Mappings feature. Right Select ISAPI-dll and select Edit Feature Permissions. In the dialog box, turn on the Execute checkbox.

6. OBIEE is still a 32 bit application, but IIS has set up 64bit application pools. Execute the following command froma command prompt to tell IIS to run the 32 bit apps (only have to do this once): %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config -section:applicationPools -applicationPoolDefaults.enable32BitAppOnWin64:true

7. Restart IIS by selecting the top node in the navigation pane and selecting Restart from the upper right "Manage Server" Menu.

Start everything up and give it a try - it should work fine now, including the new default application called Sample Sales. (login is Administrator/Administrator) Take a look at this dashboard to truly understand the meaning of the word ugly.