This is not going to be a 'how to install' post; I think the docs cover that pretty well. Rather, I have seen a few comments and recieved a few mails on BIP 11g. The resounding message is 'why do I have to download nearly 5Gbs to get a 200Mb app?'
Its a fair question, in 10g, BIP is lightweight and can install on almost any mid tier. So whats up with 11g and the super heavy weight install? Well, the first release was always going to be an Oralce platform release. So the whole BI suite is running on top of web logic server with a database in the background to host the scheduling and other supporting tables (this is not tied to Oracle DB, you can use a few others.)
The initial release is going to cause some confusion. There is a pre-step to the install; you have to run the repository creation
utility (RCU) this lays down the required tables on the target database. In BIP's case the scheduler tables. Remember, the install
guide is your friend.
Then you can start your main install on Windows - Linux 32bit/64bit. Word of caution on the win64 install, read the release notes very
very carefully. That bloated 5 gb is mostly BIEE and WLS; little old BIP is still in there, just dwarfed in size by the giants. The
installer will lay down an WLS instance and create the necessary servers (admin and managed - yep, its all pretty new to me too) to run
BIP. Once its complete, you can fire up WLS through the provided scripts and get going with BIP. Default password is going to be
whatever name/pwd you provided during the install process. Administrator/Administrator is no more. You will also notice that the default
security is set to Oracle Middleware. Out of the box this is weblogic's internal LDAP directory but you can very easily plugin your
favored solution using the WLS interface. All the old favorites are still there, including BIPs local security solution. However, I see
the WLS security plugin as huge plus; since I started my fairly recent position, the biggest head ache for customers has been
integrating BIP with their current security solution. This approach should alleviate all of those issues for you.
I have to admit to being somewhat disappointed that there is no 'standalone' install for BIP; at least not in the first release. Im happy thou, that once installed, BIP zips along and is packed with lots of new features. The jewel in the crown for me being the data modeler, I think I have mentioned that before a few times.
So whats coming in the patch set 1 with regard to supported platforms and tech stacks? I do not have any visibility into the plans for a BIP only installer, I suspect that will not happen. We might get a WAR/EAR file that we can deploy ourselves.All I know is, the last time I was in Redwood Shores I saw a lot of Tomcat sitting on developers desktops with BIP running along just great. Of course, lots of tight lips and monitor covering as I walked by ... but we can hope :0)