You are not licensed to use this ODBC driver with the DataDirect ODBC :: OBIEE

Question

Getting below error while connecting Simba driver with BigQuery on OBIEE UNIX Env, any suggesting's. Do we have some license file associated with the driver.

Using the driver from: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/reference/odbc-jdbc-drivers

You are not licensed to use this ODBC driver with the DataDirect ODBC Driver Manager under the license you have purchased. You can order a license by calling DataDirect Technologies at 800-876-3101 in North America and +44 (0) 1753-218 930 elsewhere. Thank you for your cooperation.

Answer 1

So the way this is working (I think) it's like this. Oracle has embedded DataDirect ODBC Driver Manager with OBIEE since the beginning of time. I think this ODBC manager acts as a bridge between the BI Server and the ODBC sources, which have their own ODBC drivers. So even though the Google provided Simba ODBC Driver provides ODBC connectivity to BigQuery the DataDirect ODBC Driver Manager is still needed to interact between the BI Server and the Simba ODBC Driver. In all the examples I have seen online using the DataDirect ODBC Driver Manager to connect OBIEE to other ODBC sources (like Apache Drill, DB2, etc) there is never a mention of having to have a license file for the DataDirect ODBC Driver Manager. While BigQuery was initially in the OBIEE Certification Matrix as a supported data source it has been removed in Nov 2017:

So either Oracle has told DataDirect to start charging for using the Simba ODBC Driver for BigQuery or this was never supported by the DataDirect ODBC Driver Manager and hence it wants a license to present in the system. This seems to be an action taken as a result of the longstanding lawsuit between Oracle and Google. I have tested that once you get a DataDirect ODBC Driver Manager license file (DDODBC.LIC) and you place it on your place in the DataDirect ODBC Driver Manager install directory in your OBIEE installation (in my case this was under./bi/modules/oracle.bi.datadirect.odbc/8.0.2) this error goes away.