Oracle Big Data Discovery configuration in Big Data Lite VM

The latest version (4.2.1) of Oracle Big Data Lite VM, among many additions, now includes also the much-expected Oracle Big Data Discovery (v. 1.1), which I had not played with so far (it is a new product); so I thought to take it for a ride.

Since my test data included geolocation attributes (latitude/longitude), one of the first things I was eager to try was some map visualization; after failing again and again to come up with even the simplest map viz, I started digging into the documentation.

The Map component of the Big Data Discovery (BDD) uses Oracle MapViewer to display the map (see ‘Configuring the Map connection to Oracle MapViewer‘ in BDD documentation); the URL for the connection is set in Configuration Options (upper right screen corner) -> Control Panel -> Studio Settings -> df.mapViewer, as shown below:

The df.mapViewer parameter was correctly set to its default value, i.e. the public instance of Oracle MapViewer; nevertheless, I could not render any map visualizations…

After some more digging and experimentation, it turned out that, for some reason, in this version of the VM appliance, the domain name elocation.oracle.com was included in the /etc/hosts file, as an alias for the localhost 127.0.0.1 (scroll right):

[oracle@bigdatalite ~]$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1   bigdatalite.localdomain bigdatalite localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4 kvhost01 kvhost02 kvhost03 kvhost04 kvhost05 elocation.oracle.com
::1         localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6

So, after editing the file to remove the subject domain name (you will need superuser privileges with su), I was at last able to see some map visualizations (more in the next post).

A final note: it had already struck me as kind of unusual for my taste that the help button (upper right) leads to the video tutorials of the BDD Learning Library, instead of the official documentation, as one might expect; so, if you would like to change this, just set accordingly the df.helplink parameter shown in the image above.

Consider this post a little warm-up, and stay tuned for more stuff regarding Oracle Big Data Discovery (coming shortly)…

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Christos - Iraklis Tsatsoulis

Christos - Iraklis is one of our resident Data Scientists. He holds advanced graduate degrees in applied mathematics, engineering, and computing. He has been awarded both Chartered Engineer and Chartered Manager status in the UK, as well as Master status in Kaggle.com due to "consistent and stellar results" in predictive analytics contests.

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