Deleting a user in the OBIEE catalog

I had recently run into this issue with deleting users in OBIEE and my initial reaction was that the solution to this should be trivial. Boy, I was so wrong. I have seen a few posts that help delete users from the catalog, but that would require you to stop the heart before you perform the operation.

It’s frustrating, especially when you have deleted a user in the catalog that you didn’t want to in the first place! If you haven’t got there, or tried that yet, please don’t. But for those who have, this post helps to fix the issue without bringing down any of the servers. Here’s how:

The first few screenshots aims to illustrate the issue, and progressively take you to the solution.

Problem description

Before you delete a user, all is well, and the catalog manager would show the user folder in the correct state:

Delete the user from the web and…

..you will notice that there is a <Deleted Account> tag against the user folder in the catalog. This will not allow you to delete the 1338802 folder – that’s the problem!

And worse, if this user logs back in, the user will have access to all the shared stuff, but no access to his/her personal catalog folder!!!

Most of us will then try to delete the folder from the catalog – this would initially seem like a no brainer till you hit upon the issue wherein you are unable to delete the folder.

Solution:

Change owner from “System Account” to Administrator for the user folder you wish to delete:

Change permissions on the folder: This one is a bit tricky – Select <Deleted Account> and move to right, select Administrator from the right and move to the left. Select “Apply Recursively” and click on ok (next 3 screenshots)

Now you are nearly ready to delete the folder. As a last step, rename the folder, and then delete it:

Problem solved!

This was about a not so nice issue with OBIEE. What will follow next is a really cool capability of OBIEE: Data federation, or is it fragmentation???