title: Connect to OBIEE from Oracle SQL Developer?
body: <p>Is it possible to create a connection to OBIEE from Oracle SQL Developer?</p>
  
  <p>I know it is possible to create an ODBC connection to the Oracle BI server within the Windows ODBC Data Source Administrator, and that other ODBC client tools can use that ODBC connection to run SQL against the BI server, but I don't see any way for SQL Developer to use that ODBC connection.</p>
  
  <p>I'm on OBIEE 12.2.1.4 and SQL Developer 17.3.0.271.</p>
  
  <p><strong>UPDATE</strong></p>
  
  <p>Based on Robin Moffatt's article at <a href="https://rmoff.net/2016/03/28/connecting-to-obiee-via-jdbc-with-jisql/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://rmoff.net/2016/03/28/connecting-to-obiee-via-jdbc-with-jisql/</a>, I used jisql (<a href="https://www.xigole.com/software/jisql/jisql.jsp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.xigole.com/software/jisql/jisql.jsp</a>) to set up a connection to OBIEE using the JDBC driver that ships with the OBIEE client -- bijdbc.jar, which is located at $ORACLE_HOME/bi/bifoundation/jdbc/.</p>
  
  <p>Following is a screenshot showing how jisql is able to successfully connect to my OBIEE server via the bijdbc.jar driver and run an example SQL statement; the Oracle-specific connection details are outlined in red:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/uRC9v.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Screenshot 1: OBIEE JDBC connection test using jisql</a></p>
  
  <p>My next step was to try to implement this same successful JDBC connection in SQL Developer.  To that end, I added bijdbc.jar to SQL Developer's third-party JDBC drivers:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/4x3tt.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Screenshot 2: bijdbc.jar added to SQL Developer third-party JDBC drivers</a></p>
  
  <p>After adding the JDBC driver, I did not see a new tab in SQL Developer's connection dialog.  (By comparison, in the past, when I have added other third-party JDBC drivers, such as the jTDS and MySQL drivers also seen in screenshot 2, new tabs had become available.)</p>
  
  <p>Since there was not a new tab in SQL Developer's connection dialog, I tried setting the Oracle tab's connection type to Advanced and inserting the JDBC connection string as the Custom JDBC URL.  Testing that connection leads to a "String index out of range: -1", as seen in this screenshot:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/HhTaT.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Screenshot 3: Error using custom JDBC URL in SQL Developer</a></p>
  
  <p>Since that same JDBC connection string works in jisql, I suspect that either I'm doing something wrong, or SQL Developer does not support connecting to OBIEE via that bijdbc driver.</p>