You are here

Siebel BI Publisher

BI Publisher 11g and The Case of the Expiring Passwords

I fired up my instance of BI Publisher 11g the other day and when navigating to the login page I received a 404 Not Found error.

“The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI”
???????

I checked my WebLogic console and it said that my BIP Server was running:

???????

So I decided to just stop everything and restart, maybe I missed something. I’m glad I did as when the WebLogic Server was restarting, I noticed a number of exceptions fly by on the console. The common theme among the exceptions was:

ORA-28001: the password has expired

!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, the error was not descriptive enough to tell me WHICH password had expired. So firing up SQLPLUS, I ran the query:

select username, expiry_date from dba_users;

and found that the schemas DEV_BIPLATFORM and DEV_MDS (created by the newly required Repository Creation Utility) passwords had expired, hence causing my problem. I reset them, and everything came up cleanly.

The root cause of my issue was when I installed BIP 11g, I also installed an Oracle 11g database (as is now required). Turns out that new in Oracle 11g is the ability to expire passwords after so many days… and this is apparently turned on by default. As this is just my development/tinkering environment, I quickly turned that feature off.

Thought I would at least post this information in case anyone else runs into it. Naturally, this happened to me right before I was getting ready to do some training, so I had to change my game plan quickly.

Siebel Reporting XSLFunctions Library Methods in Siebel BI Publisher
XSLFunctions (XSLFunctions.jar) is the library for common functions used in standard Siebel BI Publisher reports. Following are the methods supported: current_date() Method returns the current date in the standard XSD date format. Returns: current date as string --- current_time() Method returns the current time in the native time format. Returns: the current time as string --- phoneFormat(inp) Method to returns a String, which is the usual way to display the phone or fax number i.e. (XXX)AAA-BBBB Parameters: inp - Phone number to be formatted Returns: Formatted phone number as string --- trim(text) Method to remove leading and trailing white spaces in a string. Parameters: text - the text to be trimmed. Returns: the trimmed text --- ltrim(text) Method to remove the leading white spaces in a string Parameters: text - the text to be trimmed Returns: the trimmed text --- rtrim(text) Method to remove the trailing white spaces in a string Parameters: text - the text to be trimmed Returns: the trimmed text --- trimleft(text) Method to remove the leading white spaces in a string Parameters: text - the text to be trimmed Returns: the trimmed text --- trimright(text) Method to remove the trailing white spaces in a string Parameters: text - the text to be trimmed Returns: the trimmed text --- length(text) Method to return the length of a string Parameters: text - the text whose length is required Returns: the length of the text --- lower_case(text) Method to convert a text string to lower case Parameters: text - the text to be converted to lower case Returns: the lower case string --- upper_case(text) Method to convert a text string to upper case Parameters: text - the text to be converted to upper case Returns: the upper case string --- chr(int charnumber) Method returns a character for a given number Parameters: charnumber - charnumber the number of the character Returns: the character --- now() Method to return the current time in the native time format. Returns: the current time as string --- left(text, int numChars) Method to return the String, which contains specified (numChars no of characters) leading characters. Parameters: text - Input String numChars - Number of characters to retrieve. Returns: leftmost numChars characters --- DivIntZero(int div, int divisor) Method returns a 0 if the divisor is a zero. Otherwise returns the normal division * result. Parameters: div - numerator of the fraction divisor - denominator of the fraction Returns: numeric value of the division or 0 --- right(text, int numChars) Method to return the String, which contains specified (numChars no of characters) trailing characters. Parameters: text - Input String numChars - Number of characters to retrieve. Returns: rightmost numChars characters --- ToDbl(input) Method to converts a string input to a double value Parameters: input - Input String Returns: double value --- Val(input) Method to Returns the numeric value of a string expression. Parameters: input - String expression from which to extract numeric value. Returns: numeric value --- sum(list) Method to Sum the values in the nodelist Parameters: list - List of objects Returns: Sum value --- sumVal(list) Method to Sum the values in the nodelist after rounding the values Parameters: list - List of objects Returns: Sum value --- toText(double d) Converts the double value to string Parameters: d - number required to be converted Returns: Coverted String --- toText(double d, int len) A number specifying how many decimal places of x to include in the string [optional, default is 2]. Parameters: d - the number to be formatted len - number indicating the number of the decimal places to carry the value. Returns: Formatted String --- toText(double d, int len, s1, s2) The character to separate thousands (s1) with and the character to use for the decimal point (s2). Parameters: d - the number to be formatted len - number indicating the number of the decimal places to carry the value s1 - single character as thousand separator. s2 - single character as decimal separator. Returns: Formatted String --- toTextPat(double d, pat) Method to return the double d in the format specified as pattern Parameters: d - the number to be formatted pat - pattern for formatting Returns: Formatted String --- totext(d) Method to return the date as the date instance of the input date, which is in format yyyy- MM-dd. Parameters: d - Date string Returns: Formatted Date String --- totext(d, f) Method to return the date in the format "f" of the input date, which is in format yyyy-MM- dd. Parameters: d - Date string f - format for Date string Returns: Formatted Date String --- totext(d, f, e) Method to return the date "d" the format "f" of the input date, which is in format " e ". format yyyy-MM-dd. Parameters: d - Date string f - output format for Date string e - input format for Date string Returns: Formatted Date String --- lineTrimLeft(inp, int len) Method to return the complete words, which occur within the length len Parameters: inp - String to be trimmed len - number of characters Returns: Formatted Date String --- chrS(int charnumber) Returns the character that corresponds to the specified character code in the current run time encoding. Parameters: charnumber - A numeric expression that represents the character code. Returns: characters for the code --- Format(expr, format) Method to return the formatted string for input expression according to the format, which can be "Currency","Date" or "String". Parameters: expr - String to be formatted. format - format. Returns: Formatted string --- Format(expr, format, locale) Method to return the string as the currency formatted according to the locale and as per the format specified. Parameters: expr - Currency to be formatted. format - Required format locale - Locale Returns: Formatted Currency --- FormatCurr FormatCurr(expr, locale) Method to return the string as the currency formatted according to the locale. Parameters: expr - Currency to be formatted. locale - Locale Returns: Formatted Currency --- getCanonicalDate(input) Method to convert the date value in string format into the canonical format for use with BI Publisher date functions. Parameters: input – date string or field. Returns: Formatted date in canonical format
Subscribe to Siebel BI Publisher