Oracle OBIEE and ODI meet NoSQL MongoDB

Sumit Sarkar reviews his experience at Rittman Mead BI Forum 2015 and shares some tips for making sense of NoSQL data in OBIEE.

DataDirect is the leading vendor neutral vendor for data connectivity. Our goal is to connect BI developers and consultants with NoSQL data, as well as with BI and NoSQL vendors. I can't think of a better place to do this than Rittman Mead BI Forum 2015 in Atlanta. I was at the show as part of my NoSQL BI evangelism tour, and enjoyed the opportunity to to meet with Oracle analytics professionals from across the world.

I had a speaking slot at the show which I used to help attendees make sense of NoSQL data in Oracle BI Enterprise Edition (OIBEE). During the session, I covered:

• What Oracle analytics professionals should know about NoSQL
• How SQL on NoSQL works across OBIEE and ODI
• Examples of enterprise reporting versus analytics use cases for NoSQL
• "Gotchas" and lessons learned from our experience

Here’s the recap from Twitter:

.@SAsInSumit showing connecting #OBIEE to #MongoDB with DataDirect drivers pic.twitter.com/gjUg2hQCfl

— Robin Moffatt (@rmoff) May 15, 2015

And finally @SAsInSumit with NoSQL and #OBIEE at #BIForum2015 pic.twitter.com/CotSQTkNkP

— Michael Rainey (@mRainey) May 15, 2015

Last presentation of #BIForum2015, @SAsInSumit on accessing NoSQL sources from OBIEE pic.twitter.com/YpP2GOOexC

— Mark Rittman (@markrittman) May 15, 2015

That would be #MongoDB in the Oracle BI Admin Tool. #BIForum2015 pic.twitter.com/dnb29XHMgz

— Danny Bryant (@dbaOnTap) May 15, 2015

.@SAsInSumit can connect them all!!! #BIForum2015 pic.twitter.com/zOVahu2nBm

— Rebecca Wagner (@Bec_Wagner) May 15, 2015

The DataDirect Difference for MongoDB Explained

Below is an example of one of several thousand MongoDB documents from the database I used during my demo. This illustrates the challenge of using SQL to connect a varying number of documents with varying current and future reporting database preferences:

{
 "_id" : "5537f1a41867375916706e8d",
 "index" : 592,
 "guid" : "5b6ceafb-3743-42ef-a0a1-f815ed9cadad",
 "isActive" : true,
 "balance" : "$3,825.13",
 "picture" : "http://placehold.it/32x32",
 "age" : 20,
 "eyeColor" : "brown",
 "name" : "Stacie Lang",
 "gender" : "female",
 "company" : "ISOTRONIC",
 "email" : "stacielang@isotronic.com",
 "phone" : "+1 (983) 590-3177",
 "address" : "578 Bryant Street, Lowgap, Colorado, 6814",
 "about" : "Veniam consequat adipisicing do minim pariatur laborum sunt l
 aboris officia ad fugiat voluptate cupidatat. Consectetur nulla veniam irure des
 erunt duis in do. Eiusmod aliquip exercitation do est laboris est id Lorem non c
 upidatat occaecat cillum Lorem. Cupidatat laborum labore reprehenderit irure qui
 s aliqua quis adipisicing sit veniam incididunt dolor exercitation culpa. Culpa
 ex enim occaecat mollit laborum proident nisi sit mollit ex nisi minim ea dolor.
 \r\n",
 "registered" : "2015-04-04T22:29:02 +04:00",
 "latitude" : -11.711396,
 "longitude" : -118.650697,
 "tags" : [
 "Lorem",
 "fugiat",
 "ex",
 "ullamco",
 "excepteur",
 "laboris",
 "laboris"
 ],
 "colleagues" : [
 {
 "id" : 0,
 "name" : "Alexandria Finley",
 "reportingDBs" : [
 {
 "Current" : [
 "MySQL",
 "Microsoft Access"
 ],
 "Next" : "SQL Server"
 }
 ]
 },
 {
 "id" : 1,
 "name" : "Alyce Sweeney",
 "reportingDBs" : [
 {
 "Current" : [
 "SQL Server"
 ],
 "Next" : "PostgreSQL"
 }
 ]
 },
 {
 "id" : 2,
 "name" : "Hamilton Mercer",
 "reportingDBs" : [
 {
 "Current" : [
 "PostgreSQL"
 ],
 "Next" : "Oracle"
 }
 ]
 },
 {
 "id" : 3,
 "name" : "Harrington Meyer",
 "reportingDBs" : [
 {
 "Current" : [
 "Redis",
 "Oracle",
 "Redis"
 ],
 "Next" : "MongoDB"
 }
 ]
 }
 ],
 "greeting" : "Hello, Stacie Lang! You have 7 unread messages."
 }

Here’s what that database looks like in the OBIEE Admin tool when using Progress® DataDirect®,  the industry’s first and most reliable ODBC/JDBC connector to MongoDB supporting unlimited levels of normalization:

And here’s what flattening JSON documents looks like. This is what competing solutions do and it's just plain UGLY.

I caught the reaction to that flattened schema from BI developers.  Everyone was grateful for DataDirect!

Use #DataDirect #ODBC #JDBC for Analytics with MongoDB to avoid data modeling nightmares with competing solutions pic.twitter.com/l6z8o8KGfr

— Sumit Sarkar (@SAsInSumit) May 18, 2015

Get started with NoSQL for OBIEE

With DataDirect drivers, using NoSQL data with OBIEE couldn't be easier. If you’re interested in connecting OBIEE, you can download our 32-bit ODBC Windows Driver for the BI Admin Tool or our 64-bit ODBC driver for the platform of choice for the BI server. If you’re interested in ODI for data integration instead, you can download our JDBC driver. For any other questions you may have, leave me a comment or give us a call to connect with a data connectivity professional today.

Also, come say "hello" to me at MongoDB World next week!