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Bag of words connects to Oracle Business Intelligence — OBIEE 11g/12c, Oracle Analytics Server, and Oracle Analytics Cloud — through the BI Web Services SOAP API. It discovers the subject areas the credential can see, reads their presentation tables and columns, and runs Logical SQL against the BI Server, so every query goes through your semantic model rather than around it.
The Oracle BI connector is part of the Enterprise Edition.

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How it works

All three products ship the same v12 web services at /analytics-ws/saw.dll, so one connector covers them:
  1. Bag of words logs on (nQSessionService.logon) and holds a session ID.
  2. It lists subject areas (MetadataService.getSubjectAreas) and describes each one with its presentation tables and columns (MetadataService.describeSubjectArea).
  3. Queries run as Logical SQL (XmlViewService.executeXMLQuery), and the returned rowset is typed from its inline schema — numbers, dates, and booleans come back as real types, with Oracle’s user-facing column captions applied.
Each presentation table becomes a schema entry named SubjectArea/PresentationTable, for example A - Sample Sales/Products.
Logical SQL is not database SQL. Columns are referenced as "Presentation Table"."Column" and the FROM clause names the subject area, not a table. Joins are implicit — the BI Server resolves them from the semantic model — and row limits use FETCH FIRST N ROWS ONLY rather than LIMIT.

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Before you start

  • The base URL of the instance: the analytics URL for OBIEE/OAS, or the OAC instance URL.
  • The BI Web Services SOAP endpoint (/analytics-ws/saw.dll) reachable from Bag of words over HTTP(S) — some deployments front the portal with a proxy that does not expose it.
  • An account that can log on and has been granted the subject areas you want to expose. For OAC the username is the account’s email; for OBIEE/OAS it is the domain user.
  • A deployed semantic model (an RPD, or a Semantic Model on OAC). An instance with nothing deployed connects successfully but exposes no subject areas.

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Connect in Bag of words

Go to Settings → Data Sources → Add data source → Oracle BI. See Connecting a data source for the general flow. Test Connection logs on and counts the subject areas. If the instance has none, the test still succeeds but says so explicitly — that means the credential works and there is nothing deployed for it to see.

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Authentication modes

  • username — the Oracle BI / OAC user. Use the email address for OAC, the domain user for OBIEE and OAS.
  • password — that user’s password.
Because the mode is available at both scopes, you can configure one shared service account for the workspace (system), or have each user supply their own Oracle BI credential (user) so the BI Server applies that person’s own subject-area grants and data filters. Per-user credentials on a connector like this require Enterprise — see Authentication.

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Troubleshooting

The SOAP call reached the server but the credential was rejected. Check the username form for your product (email on OAC, domain user on OBIEE/OAS) and that the account is not locked. A SOAP fault is surfaced with Oracle’s own message and error code.
Confirm host is the base URL only — the connector appends /analytics-ws/saw.dll itself, so a host that already includes it will not resolve. Also confirm that any reverse proxy in front of the instance forwards /analytics-ws.
Either no semantic model is deployed on the instance, or the account has not been granted any subject area. Deploy the RPD / Semantic Model, then grant the account access and re-index.
The BI Server echoes a subject area name back even when it cannot describe it, so entries that come back with no business model and no tables are dropped from the catalog. Grant the account access to that subject area’s presentation tables.
Oracle returns query errors inside the rowset rather than as a fault; Bag of words surfaces the text and code as the query error. The usual causes are an unquoted identifier containing spaces, a column referenced with its subject area prefix instead of its presentation table, or an explicit JOIN clause — the semantic model resolves joins itself.