Downgrade an OBIEE RPD Version

An RPD file saved by one version of the OBIEE Administration Tool cannot be opened by an older version of the OBIEE Administration Tool or be applied to an older version of an Oracle BI Server. For  this example we’re looking at an RPD created with version 349 of the Administration Tool (that’s the first release of OBIEE 11.1.1.9) and we’re trying to apply it to a server expecting version 326 (that’s the latest patched release of OBIEE 11.1.1.7.150120)

You can check the version of the tool you’re currently using by going to Help > About in the menu and look at the Repository Version line.

You’ll get an nQSError 36010 from the Administration tool if the tool is not of a high enough version:

nQSError: 36010] Server version 326 cannot read the newer version 349 of the repository c:\oracle\middleware\fmw\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIServerComponent\coreapplication_obis1\repository\Dev_Copy.rpd

Luckily there is a way round it! For certain versions you’ll be able to downgrade your RPD file so that you’re able to open it in the older version of the Admin tool. This isn’t true for all version, but from my test the below major versions worked for the downgrade process:

• 11.1.1.6 > 11.1.1.5 (318 > 308)
• 11.1.1.9 > 11.1.1.7 (349 > 326)

To downgrade the RPD file you’ll need to use an Admin Tool version that can open the file. Carrying on our example, we’ll need to use the 11.1.1.9 Admin Tool. You will need the nqgenoldverrpd utility which is part of the Administration Tool installation and can be found in the below path:

C:\Program Files\Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus Client Tools\oraclebi\orahome\bifoundation\server\bin

The utility has a few switches which you’ll need to enter to tell it what it needs to know to downgrade the RPD file.

• -P – is the RPD password of the source RPD you wish to downgrade.
• -I –  is the source RPD you wish to downgrade.
• -O – is the target name and path for the downgraded RPD
• -V – is the RPD version to downgrade to.

There is also a -F which will force the downgrade process to clear any expressions that cannot be downgraded.

The following example will downgrade an RPD on your desktop with password Admin123 and save it to a new RPD file on your desktop. The downgraded version will be 326 which is OBIEE 11.1.1.7.

First of all, open a CMD prompt in Windows and navigate to the above path, or the path where your Administration Tool is installed.

C:\Program Files\Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus Client Tools\oraclebi\orahome\bifoundation\server\bin

And execute the nqgenoldverrpd command and substitute your values.

nqgenoldverrpd -P Admin123 -I C:\Users\James\newversion.rpd -O C:\Users\James\oldversion.rpd -V 326

You’ll see the below message once it’s complete:

Reading newversion.rpd...
Preprocessing...
Generating oldversion.rpd of version 326...Done!!!

nqgenoldverrpd File Paths

You can find the nqgenoldverrpd utility installed as part of the OBIEE Admin Tool or under an OBIEE installation on Windows.

• On Client under : [CLIENT_FOLDER]\oraclebi\orahome\bifoundation\server\bin\nqgenoldverrpd.exe
• On Server under : $MW_HOME\bifoundation\server\bin\nqgenoldverrpd