Category: Essbase

What’s New In This OBIEE Version? Cumulative Feature Overview Took Kit

So you might ask your Oracle Sales, what’s new in this Oracle BI EE version. Majority of the time, they will tell you a few features.

Here’s the site, Cumulative Feature Overview.

The objective of the tool is to help IT plan ahead to its upgrades and whether it is worth it. Obviously, I if you read my post on “OBIEE 11.1.1.9 Features that makes you upgrade today!”, you will find it absolutely worthwhile to upgrade!

Here’s how to use it:

Continue reading “What’s New In This OBIEE Version? Cumulative Feature Overview Took Kit”

Demystifying OBIEE Essbase Date Measure – The Solution

About the mystery

One of my readers, Saptarshi, asked an excellent question. Original post here: https://mondaybi.com/2014/08/07/an-essbase-obiee-integration-walk-through-with-tips-and-tricks/

He asked:

I am integrating Essbase and OBIEE. I have few measures (accounts) as date in Essbase, such as Receipt Date etc.

Now when I fetch this in OBIEE, they appear as numbers.

How to get date measures from Essbase to OBIEE exactly the way they are sitting in Essbase?

And he’s right! They do appear as numbers. So I Googled and see how frequent this question is asked and if there were already answers I can refer him to. This is what I got!

OBIEE_Essbase_Date_Google_Results

 

Opps, just questions, no answers! Questions like this comes in every few years. Saptarshi actually also posted in Oracle Community too, 16 hours ago! Good job Google! As promised last night, I’m going to demystify and give you a solution to this! In return, just like my Facebook page which was just launched yesterday! Click here!

Continue reading “Demystifying OBIEE Essbase Date Measure – The Solution”

Top Gun 2015 – Thanks Guillaume Slee – Essbase as a Source and Bursting in OBIEE?

About Top Gun 2015

Top Gun is one of the most technical conferences in UK that focuses strictly on Hyperion EPM. This year, thanks to Guillaume Slee, EPM Services Director of Brovanture, kindly used some of the materials from my blog. I feel extremely glad to be referenced in his presentations. I would also like to congratulate him for being voted The Most Popular Presentation out of the entire conference! And again, thank you for referencing my materials!

Check out Top Gun 2015

Check out the presentation by Guillaume Slee

Essbase as a Source & Bursting in OBIEE?

Probably this was one of the questions asked in the conference? Interesting question, but with current Publisher, this could not be achieved for sure and I wouldn’t even try. Clearly because it is stated in the documents that SQL is the only available language for bursting in Publisher.

Any workarounds?

Well depending on your objective isn’t it? There’s bursting in Financial Reporting. If the bursting is about exporting in CSV or Excel or emailing reports in HTML format, I would recommend using Agents (traditionally known as iBots). I would not give a step by step guide here, but will do so later on probably in May as I have extremely limited time lately to write a in depth tutorial. An overview guideline to how this could be achieved is as follows:

  1. Create native users from MaxL with the same bursting security. Say for example you wanted to burst the Customer dimension, then create the same number of users as Customers with the security setup as the customer itself.
  2. Create an Analysis report. Please don’t use Customer as a filter. You would want the customer to be displayed in the report.
  3. Create an Agent
  4. Remember to run as recipient.
  5. Add all the users you created with MaxL. Of course, they will also need id for OBIEE.
  6. Run this report and if everything is setup correctly, they will individually get a report and security of the report is handled through Essbase instead. This would be quite similar to bursting in Publisher but of course with a lot more setup effort. Personally, I would use HFR for such bursting needs unless absolute necessary.

EPM 11.1.2.4 Released! Essbase 11.1.2.4

EPM 11.1.2.4 Released!

Get the latest version here Oracle Software e-Delivery

And the newest EPM 11.1.2.4 documentation!

I do really wonder how Hybrid is doing. Is Hybrid official now? I went through documents, but it seems that it’s still not officially documented.

Essbase Features No Longer Supported

Starting with Essbase 11.1.2.4, these features are no longer supported:

  1. Oracle Essbase Integration Services, including Hybrid Analysis and Advanced Relational Access
  2. Many of the basic concepts of Hybrid Analysis and Advanced Relational Access have been folded into the functionality of XOLAP cubes in Oracle Essbase Studio.
    Visual Basic API
  3. Oracle strongly recommends using the Essbase JAVA APIs. You can also use the Essbase C APIs.
    Configuration settings:

    1. PRELOADALIASNAMESPACE
    2. PRELOADMEMBERNAMESPACE
    3. PRELOADUDANAMESPACE
    4. MAXACTIVEUPDATETRANSACTIONS
    5. MAXTOTALACTIVETRANSACTIONS

Continue reading “EPM 11.1.2.4 Released! Essbase 11.1.2.4”

OBIEE SmartView Part 2 – Connecting to Essbase?

Why would you use OBIEE SmartView Connection and Connect to Essbase?

Before we continue, you need to know how to use SmartView connecting to OBIEE, which was part 1 and can be found here: http://goo.gl/mE23az.

So why would you use OBIEE SmartView instead of SmartView Provider Services when connecting to Essbase? For 3 simple reasons:

  1. Easy creation of Tables instead of Pivot Tables. This could be used for data export, or filtering dimensions that you don’t want to be displayed.
  2. Creating simple charts without too much Excel skills.
  3. Sharing your report through OBIEE Catalog.

I’m sure you will think of other reasons, but let’s just start with those common ones for now. You might also want to read OBIEE Integration with Essbase before you continue reading: http://goo.gl/idX4Ml.

Continue reading “OBIEE SmartView Part 2 – Connecting to Essbase?”

ODI 12c Petition – ODI KMs for Essbase, Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management in ODI 12c

Since ODI 12c doesn’t officially support Essbase, Planning and HFM, it becomes extremely hard to perform complex ETL with multi-source data with just FDMEE option, especially if you have OBIFS. Go here and sign this petition! Tell Oracle you want it! http://www.change.org/p/oracle-announce-support-for-the-odi-kms-for-hyperion-planning-and-hyperion-financial-management-in-odi-12c-by-december-31-2014

Tell Oracle you want them to stay committed to the Hyperion Knowledge Modules for Oracle Data Integrator.

The integration tool of choice for Hyperion has a history of poor commitment levels due do rebranding agreements.  Older users of Hyperion will remember Hyperion Application Link (HAL) which was a rebranded product from Vignette.  Then there was Data Information Management (DIM) which was Informatica rebranded.  Both have gone out of fashion and customers were left with solutions that are no longer supported.  We hope this does not happen with ODI.

When Oracle purchased Sunopsis and renamed the product to Oracle Data Integrator it positioned ODI as “a best-of-breed data integration platform focused on fast bulk data movement and handling complex data transformations.”  Unlike the previous rebranding agreements ODI is a product Oracle actually owns and has greater ability to develop and integrate with Hyperion.  The 11g version of ODI listed top new features including “Adapters for Hyperion Planning, Financial Management, and Essbase.”  What is new for 12c?  Is it the removal of Adapters for Hyperion Planning and Financial Management?  We hope not because many customers will be negatively affected by that decision.

Sign this petition and let Oracle know your interest in the Oracle Data Integrator Knowledge Modules for Hyperion.  Oracle has publicly stated they will support the Hyperion Essbase Knowledge modules for ODI, however no such acknowledgement has been made for the Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management Knowledge modules.  Rumor has it they are considering stopping support for these KMs.

An Essbase OBIEE integration walk through with tips and tricks – Finale

Continuing from the last post – viewed here

Summarizing the tips

  1. Essbase EAS – Give the hierarchies generation name
  2. Essbase  EAS or SubVar Manager – Use Essbase for Substitution Variable
  3. OBIEE RPD – Renaming Measure to Fact and Never Flatten Anything
  4. OBIEE RPD – Double Check Your Dimension & Hierarchy Types
  5. OBIEE RPD – Have a Time dimension. This is usually tagged once imported.
  6. OBIEE RPD – Have your Account or Measure dimension tagged as Measure Dimension and Value as Hierarchy Type.
  7. OBIEE RPD – Uncheck Nullable
  8. OBIEE RPD – Importing Essbase Substitution Variables
  9. OBIEE RPD – Making use of Alias Tables & Uncheck Cacheable

Since the Essbase and RPD is now done. Let’s take a look at Answers and see why these points are considered as best practices.

Continue reading “An Essbase OBIEE integration walk through with tips and tricks – Finale”