Calculation Manager everywhere

March 1, 2014, 2:57 pm

≫ Next: An appeal for Mike Riley, cancer victim

≪ Previous: My ODTUG webinar cup runneth over

Four goals have I

This must be Calculation Manager week. (Do you have themed technology weeks? No? You must have some semblance of a life. How I envy you.) Putting aside the sadness (or happiness) of my life, this week is Calculation Manager week because during this very same set of five days the following occurred:

On Tuesday, I gave an ODTUG webinar on The Most Awesome Planning Calculation Manager Hack the World Has Ever Seen
There was a question about how to convert graphical Calc Mgr Templates to Script over on Network54
A while back (okay, not within the same week – give me some artistic license) a thread also n Network54 about the reusability of graphical versus Script objects
I was asked if it really was true that Calc Mgr 11.1.2.3 Templates cannot accept parameters

Whew, all (mostly) in one five day period. Sometimes you choose Calc Mgr, sometimes Calc Mgr chooses you.

The Most Awesome Planning Calculation Manager Hack the World Has Ever Seeen

I’ve written, presented, and generally bored the ears off of any number of unfortunates who happen to be near me when I start talking about the benefits of Focused Aggregations. Focused Aggregations is my term for using Planning and Hyperion Business Rules/Calculation Manager (actually, this is totally transferable to Dodeca and calc Scripts as well) to figure out what is in the Planning form POV and Page dimensions and then only aggregating the bits of the hierarchy that are impacted by the changes on the form. This radically reduces the scope of the calculated blocks and hence improves performance, sometimes a lot.

What this approach, until this great hack was invented (not by yr. obdnt. srvnt. alas), did not do was interpret the dimensions on the rows and columns of the form. This necessitated an AGG of the sparse dimensions which kind of negated the whole point of Focused Aggregations – an AGG just aggregates everything in the specified dimensions. And there the collective EPM world was until Christian M. came up with the technique through trial, error, and sheer desperation. I would throw in a bit of inspired genius as well.

I blogged about it here in some depth and in this webinar go even deeper into the concepts behind Focused Aggregations and of course show how to do everything along with benchmark results. It is a hack, but it is a most glorious one. And you will note that this is a blog with “hack” in its title.

Go listen to the presentation (I think my presentation does add something to the explanation) if you wish, or simply download a pdf of the presentation here for a quick review. Your choice.

Converting graphical objects to Script

AP (I have no idea who AP is) was in a bit of a pickle – he had converted a Hyperion Business Rules (so 11.1.2.1 or before) Planning application, complete with HBR macros, to 11.1.2.2. In doing so, the HBR macros went from being Script based (BSO calc Script language) to graphical. The question was: How does one convert those graphical Templates (Templates being the Calc Mgr replacement for HBR macros) to Script?

Here’s an example of a Workforce Planning Template. You can see that there isn’t any conversion functionality. And while some people are proponents of graphical Calc Mgr business rules, I am just too steeped in writing code to switch, so my interest was piqued by AP’s question.

It’s pretty easy

After spending five minutes trying every which way I could think of to convert the Template from graphical to Script, it occurred to me that I had reviewed graphical code as BSO calc Script language by clicking on the Begin node of a rule and then selecting the Script tab in the properties pane.

Looking at the rules that come with Workforce, I can see that there’s a rule called “Add TBH Hourly” that contains the very same Template.

NB – I am doing this with a predefined rule, but you could easily create a your own rule and drag a Template into it to accomplish the same result.

If I open the rule up I see that graphical Template.

By clicking on the Script tab in the bottom properties pane, I get:

That code can be copied and pasted to a text editor. Once there, simply create a new Template and you are off to the races.

Here it is in Notepad++:

It’s a bit of a hack, but hey, remember, you are on a blog all about hacks. And it does get AP to where he wants to go.

Speaking of graphical versus Script

There was a thread a while back about a whole host of things about Calculation Manager over on Network54. (Technically this didn’t happen this week but now is a good time to review the thread.)

In the course of that thread, it was stated:

The bit that sort of surprised me was this statement:

“Yes. In fact, if you don't use it, you are probably missing out on one of the most powerful features of Calc Manager: reusable code objects.”

The “it” being Calc Mgr’s graphical interface and the implication being that you cannot reuse code unless it is graphical. Hmm, really? Perhaps I misunderstood.

And then that poster went on to write:

Okay, I didn’t misunderstand. Again he asserted, “To CL's point, I believe that when a developer converted the "graphical" Scripts to the other mode, we lost the reusability features and had to manually search-and-replace in those objects. And so, I have avoided it.”

Hmm, really? That bears testing out.

For the record, I am taking reusability features to mean – can a code based Script object be reused by reference and can a code based Template be reused by reference in Calc Mgr rules? That, to me, seems to be the essence of reusability. I think I know what specific reuse functions that commentator was referring to as “lost” and he isn’t the only one to think that. I will address that additional functionality later in this post. For the time being, let’s set the above baseline and prove or disprove it.

Test the first with Scripts

Here’s the simple code as a Script object:

Here’s a rule referring to a shared Script:

Here’s the deployed Script’s status after execution in Planning:

So that code-based Script works as a reusable object.

Test the second with Templates

The same simple code:

And now in a different rule:

Note the nice comment blocks that Calc Mgr gives us when we refer to a Template.

And here it is after successfully running in Planning:

Conclusion

Code based objects, whether they be Scripts or Templates can be reused.

Yet another assertion that ain’t necessarily so

A former client of mine was converting an 11.1.2.0 Planning implementation to 11.1.2.3 via a consulting company That Shall Not Be Named. That company’s consultant got to one of my HBR macros with parameters and came up with a pretty interesting claim: In 11.1.2.3, Templates cannot receive parameters.

Huh? Really? That would be a huge reduction in functionality. I think it’s pretty safe to say that Oracle’s approach with the EPM products is not to reduce functionality, but to expand it. A lot. So I was rather surprised by this statement.

And it got more interesting because the consultant then went on to claim that he had checked with his company (I would actually do the same if I were he and of course if I had a company to fall back on) and they had confirmed this. Verrrrrrry interesting, if true. But that reduction in functionality just didn’t make sense.

So, in my Doubting Thomas persona (which is actually pretty close to way I view much of the world and is quite a useful one when it comes to IT), I went off to either prove or disprove this assertion. From such interactions are blog posts born.

A review of what Template parameters are and why you would care

Calc Mgr provides two different ways to share code as demonstrated above – through either Script or Template objects.

Given that the above example is functionally equivalent, it does sort of beg the question as to what Templates are for. After all, if a Script and a Template are the same, and a Script is easier to work with, why bother inventing Templates?

Just like HBR macros, Templates can be snippets of code or completely contained code streams.

Also, and here is what is crucial when you compare Scripts and Templates, Templates can be just simple code Scripts or huge combinations of Scripts, graphical objects, etc. Really anything you can create in an overall rule you can put into a Template. This is a huge jump in functionality over Scripts and of course (and this is one of the many things I like about Calc Mgr) it is completely up to you how you do this – have multiple discrete Templates and call them from a rule, have a huge Template that does all the logic, or have multiple discrete Templates that are managed by a calling Template that in turn is driven by a rule. Pretty cool, eh?

Again, just like HBR macros, Calc Mgr Templates (no matter how they are organized) can have parameters passed to the code stream that are then dynamically substituted on execution. This is a valuable bit of functionality because it allows us to write code as an object and then, as required, pass values to that bit of code. Please note that this is not the same as receiving the value of a Calc Mgr variable. That is also available to a Calc Mgr Template but those values are driven from Planning to Calc Mgr. What I am talking about is designer-specified values getting passed as required.

One use case might be custom currency conversion with multiple rates. Depending on how you write the code, you might want to pass different rates (actual, forecast, estimate, favorable, unfavorable, etc.) to the same base chunk of code. It’s the same code, just different rates (a specific member name) substituted in the code.

Of course you could rewrite the code multiple times and just repeat one code block after the other or you could create multiple Calc Mgr Scripts and use them as required but both techniques end up with way more code. In turn that larger code base will need to be maintained. Ouch.

If you could take that base bit of code and just substitute in the right rate you’d have a single point of maintenance. Less code that performs the same logic is A Good Thing. Unless you like maintaining redundant code in which case please stop reading this post.

Parameters, parameters, parameters

Assuming that you are lazy programmer, and hence a good one, let’s look at how Template parameters work.

But first a Template without a parameter.

And its calling rule. Yes, this is silly. I am only showing this to set up the functionality.

So what happens when I drag and drop the Template into the Script? I am going to show this in screenshots and also take a movie of it so you can see exactly what happens.

Here’s the drag:

And the drop:

Huh? Where’s the Template? I dragged and dropped the Template into the Script and nothing showed up.

I think that is why both consultants said there was an issue with Script-based Templates. But I also think they are conflating a bug with a feature.

If this is unclear, go check out this movie. And yes, I’ve confirmed that this is a known defect to be fixed in 11.1.2.3.500.

Code reference

Did you know that Templates are referenced via code? It makes sense of course – our problem seems to be that a drag and drop does not result in that code. But if we knew the syntax, might we simply enter it? Referencing a Template code (without parameters) looks like this:

%Template(name:="Templatename",application:="appname",plantype="ptname",dtps:=())

Although you can actually get away with:

%Template(name:="Templatename")

Here it is in Calc Mgr just after validating:

So that’s one way around the issue of the drag and drop issue.

A Template with a parameter

So how do you reference, in code, a Template with a parameter?

It’s just an extension of the above example. Here’s the code for referencing a Template with a single parameter.

%Template(name:="Templatename",dtps:=("parametername":=[[parametervalue]]))

NB – Multiple parameters are comma delimited.

Defining a bad parameter

I am going to show you the wrong (or at least incomplete) way to do this so we can both experience the fairly awesome error message.

First I am going to insert a new row in the Design Time Prompt (DTP) tab of the Template.

I’m going to give it a name of paramYear and select it as type member. Note the interesting other selections you can make for the type:

I am then going to replace the hardcoded “FY12” with paramYear. Just click on the insert variable toolbar button and then select the DTP you want:

Here it is in substituted into the code. Note the square brackets [] around the parameter. This is what normal variables looked like in HBR. Calc Mgr does this to differentiate between DTPs and Calc Mgr variables which have curly bracket {} symbols around the variable names.

Now let’s go to our calling code, type in by hand the DTP settings, and see what happens:

What do we get when we try to do a validate:

Unpossible! How did that not work? It is in fact syntactically correct, but we didn’t set the DTP correctly. This is going to be a little unintuitive, but bear with me.

Defining a parameter correctly

Let’s go back to the DTP definition.

First we need to make this promptable. Yes, it is weird that we have to set up a DTP with a prompt that in fact will never get prompted (it is set at design time, so what’s to prompt?) but again, just bear with me.

NB – Optionally, you could select the Choose Dimension Limits to limt the scope of the RTP that shouldn’t ever need to be selected.

Then click on the Template wizard. Within this wizard, you must create a step for the DTP to be executed. This isn’t totally intuitive, at least to me, but here’s my explanation of why this is important:

The concept of a step only makes sense within the context of a promptable DTP. A promptable DTP itself only makes sense if you are passing a RTP variable into the Template.This is correct. The value could be a RTP variable from the rule or any text, member name or function.
A step is analogous to a step in a wizard. When there is a prompt, the prompt has to cycle through steps to receive a value. If the calling code is passing a Calc Mgr variable (which is a RTP on its own) to the Templates DTP, that step is executed.Correct. Any promptable DTP that is part of a step that was skipped due to some condition will be set to blank at the end of the wizard completion.

I should mention that the text in black is my explanation, and the red text is from Sree Menon, the Oracle Calc Mgr product manager who very graciously responded to my questions. More about Sree down in the conclusion of the this (long) post.

In any case, you need to create a step, and then assign the paramter to that step. Think of it as a wizard that must be executed for the Template to run with parameters.

Click on the + symbol next to the Step dropdown:

Then give the step a name.

Then move the completed Step over to the Selected DTPs listbox:

Save the Template, and go back to your calling rule and validate:

Success! Boil in bag!

Now try dragging and dropping that Template into the rule (we’re going to calculate FY11 as well as FY12).

You’ll get a prompt for the value. Select type member:

Select FY11 and then click on Finish in the Step1 member selection dialog box:

You now have a rule with a drag and drop defined code step for the Template tmplAGGDims.

Save, validate, and deploy the rule, and then go test it out in Planning:

Ta da! You now have two parameter driven selections in a 11.1.2.3 Template! It is possible.

And what have we learnt?

A few interesting things:

Calc Mgr can do all kinds of amazing things wrt Planning, including now finally squaring the circle on Planning rows and columns. This is only thanks to the generosity of the Oracle EPM community (Christian M and his coworkers). We own them a huge thanks because the inability to do this has hurt many Planning applications. In my opinion, this improved Focused Aggregation should be standard practice in all BSO Planning implementations.
You can, if you wish, use Script or graphical objects in Calc Mgr and reuse them, or not, to your heart’s content. There is no restriction on reuse based on graphical versus Script status. None. To state otherwise is belied by what I demonstrated above.
You can pass parameters to Templates in 11.1.2.3. If you don’t correctly define the DTP for the parameter, Calc Mgr doesn’t throw an error the way it should (I would rather have a “Yo! You forgot to set a step. Go back and sin no more.” kind of message than just blank lines. It appears that Oracle agrees given that this issue will be fixed.) but it does work. A little experimentation proves that.
And that leads to the observation that there is opinion, and then there is fact. Sometimes the two match up; sometimes they do not. No matter what, opinion and fact are not the same thing. This blog most definitely has a voice, a point of view, and a large dose of my opinion. But it is also backed up with fact – I try to put myself in the shoes of a Doubting Thomas and then prove that what I say works. Sometimes I realize that I have been dead wrong. You never get to see those blog posts because they are memory holed. And when I am wrong and I don’t test enough and then publish it (I am thinking of that post where Jason Jones rather kindly corrected a pretty egregious mistake on my part) I dig right into that delicious dish of crow. I deserve it and while my ego is wounded my commitment to technical correctness doesn’t allow me any other path. Would it that all consultants thought the same way. :)
Speaking of opinions, you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. But you knew that, right? And if I were you, I wouldn’t believe anything yr. obdnt. srvnt. claims without fully testing it out on your side. Trust but verify is not a bad internet-as-a-source-of-wisdom approach.

One other observation: Sree Menon, the Calc Mgr product manager, suggested to me that I stick his Oracle email into this post and let world+dog beat a path to his Calc MGr door. I am quite familiar with the spam, phishing, and generally criminal nonsense that comes to this blog via its comments (and that you don’t see because I memory hole the lot), so I am not totally comfortable doing that.

What I propose instead is that if you have some burning question you want to ask Sree, please post it in the comments of this post, I will review it, contact you, and then if you pass the test (the test mostly being are you a human being asking for help or a spambot looking to make his life miserable) I will introduce the two of you. I am not Sree’s keeper but believe me when I tell you that this blog attracts weirdos (other than the weirdo writing all of this stuff) like iron filings to a magnet. In any case, the offer from Sree is geniune per our email conversation (again, me in black, Sree in red) below:

This definitely is blog material. Is it okay if I mention you? Not your email address, but just your name? Or would you prefer to remain anonymous?I have no issues in either giving my name or my oracle email. If people want to contact me directly using my email id, on one hand, I would love that. If I am able to help people, then I feel blessed.

Now that kind of response makes this particular geek get all misty eyed. Thanks again, Sree, for all of your input (and the input of your fellow product managers and developers). Thanks again!

Be seeing you.

↧

An appeal for Mike Riley, cancer victim

March 15, 2014, 7:27 am

≫ Next: Hybrid Essbase has arrived

≪ Previous: Calculation Manager everywhere

Who is Mike Riley?

This will be a blog post like no other I have ever written. I make it a very deliberate point to not make this blog about marketing, sales, or any kind of commercial appeal. That isn’t why you, oh Gentle Reader, are here.

This blog post is an appeal, but it is not related to commerce of any sort. It is an appeal for a man who is a friend of all EPM geeks – Mike Riley.

Have you ever wondered how EPM came to ODTUG in the first place? Or why ODTUG has been such a comfortable home for EPM? It is largely due to one man – the very same Mike Riley, former ODTUG board member, past president, and current conference co-chairman who is the subject of this post. Success has many fathers, and Mike was not alone in his support of all things EPM at Kscope, but he was the primary guiding light.

When I reflect on what ODTUG has done for my professional education, network, and career it is a little hard to credit given its impact. I am firmly convinced that my Oracle ACE Director award (not to mention my continued employment) would have occurred in, oh, about 6,000,000 years (I may be underestimating) if ODTUG had not opened its collective arms and welcomed me and all of you into the community of professionals that make up ODTUG. Professionally, we owe Mike a debt of gratitude.

ODTUG is too big for Mike to have met and touched every one of you (although I have seen Mike work a room – it certainly isn’t for lack of trying), but for those of us who have interacted with Mike in depth, we personally owe Mike a debt of gratitude. This obligation stems from the fact that Mike believes in the best in all of us. I have watched Mike take flyers on people that he barely knew, given them the room to succeed (or fail and that in particular takes a special kind of courage), and unwaveringly support them as they became fully fledged volunteers in ODTUG. Not many people have that insight, maturity, or altruistic concern for others.

If Mike is reading this, I know like all good modest Midwesterners (my family hails from Michigan so I get it) he is a bit uncomfortable with praise, especially publically delivered. Mike, I would not write the above if every word wasn’t exactly how I feel. Try not to blush. :)

This post is not intended to be a hagiography (the above is the unvarnished truth) but instead that appeal I wrote about. What do I mean by appeal? Mike Riley has stage III rectal cancer. As horrific as that sounds, I should note that this is not an obituary. He is under treatment; Mike has undergone radiation, surgery, and now chemotherapy. Getting and beating cancer is not for the timid. Despite the almost unimaginable difficulties he has undergone his spirit remains and he is tough.

His family – wife Lisa, daughter Morgan, and son Cameron (What an excellent choice in male names. Ahem.) are all tough too. They need to be. Mike and his family are always in my thoughts and prayers. Cancer is a cruel bitch of a disease. And that’s where you can materially help.

Enter OracleNerd

Chet Justice, fellow Oracle ACE Director, Kscope14 database content chairman, OracleNerd, and super nice guy has initiated several fund drives for Mike. The first was an informal one to get Mike to see his home town St. Louis Cardinals play the Boston Red Sox for the 2013 World Series. Chet then really got serious and set up a GoFundMe charity drive for Mike and his family. Its goal is $10,000 and is almost there – a testament to Mike’s friends and the ODTUG community (I am not too sure that both sets of people aren’t one and the same).

Please ignore that fact that the fund has almost reached its goal because the medical monetary needs of Mike and his family continue – insurance does not cover all expenses and they add up rapidly. Remember how I wrote cancer is a cruel bitch? First it destroys your body, then it destroys your savings. Cruel is an understatement.

Please give generously

The ODTUG community, and Essbase hackers in particular, are generous, kind, and thoughtful people. We are obligated to Mike for his pioneering work in giving so much to the EPM world. He is also one hell of a nice guy and he needs our help. Edward Roske has asked you to do this; I am asking again.

I wrote in the first paragraph of this post that this would be a blog post like no other I have ever written and in over 150 posts I have never written about a person or appealed for money. I likely, God willing, never will again. The exigencies of Mike’s medical situation demands that I do. And they demand that you reach into your heart and help him.

Give generously, won’t you?

↧

Hybrid Essbase has arrived

March 24, 2014, 8:30 am

≫ Next: Getting started with Hybrid Essbase

≪ Previous: An appeal for Mike Riley, cancer victim

A patch, but much more than just a patch

After much anticipation, Oracle have released the latest and greatest update to Essbase, the Oracle Essbase Release 11.1.2.3.000 Patch Set Update (PSU): 11.1.2.3.500. As a patch, you must first have 11.1.2.3 installed. You then get to experience the pleasures of opatch.exe as you apply the following patches to Essbase and its components (there are many platforms available, the below are Windows 64-bit only):

Component	Patch
Hyperion Essbase Server 11.1.2.3.500	Patch 17767302: Essbase Server
Hyperion Essbase Client 11.1.2.3.500	Patch 17767299: Essbase RTC
	Patch 17767307: Essbase Client MSI
Hyperion Essbase Studio Server 11.1.2.3.500	Patch 17767295: Essbase Studio Server
	Patch 17767296: Essbase Studio Console MSI
Hyperion Essbase Administration Services (EAS) 11.1.2.3.500	Patch 17767309: EAS Server
	Patch 17767316: EAS Console MSI
Hyperion Analytic Provider Services (APS) 11.1.2.3.500	Patch 17767293: APS Services

If you are not on Windows, you can search for the patches. Yes, the below search is for Windows but go ahead and change it to your platform of choice. Oracle is OS agnostic.

That Windows-specific search will give you this (I cut off the non .500 files):

Just be sure that you also search for Studio, EAS, and APS.

If you want the whole 11.1.2.3.500 EPM patch (and it is a monster 1.7 gigabyte patch -- I heard about it from John Goodwin’s blog) go to Patch 17529887: Patch Set Update: 11.1.2.3.500 for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System. Here’s the readme (you must be logged into Oracle Support to read this).

Why should you care?

I’ll give you my take on this release, but as the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

I’m going to briefly cover Hybrid, but I think the other big hits from this release are:

MDX Aggregate and Sum are sped up
FIXPARALLEL
A change to the way Essbase stores BSO data

MDX Aggregate and Sum

A pretty common issue in ASO databases is the need to do a level zero-only calculation (say for a rate calc) and then aggregate up. Except of course ASO doesn’t work that way – it’s dynamic, remember? And that means that ASO wants to calculate data at all levels, including that rate calculation. If the rates are only valid at level zero, this fully dynamic nature results in inaccurate results when those rates are summed and then calculated at upper levels.

Many (including me) have tried to get round that by creating member formulas that test for the level of the dimensions and use MDX to aggregate dimensions on the fly. This often doesn’t work because MDX calculations are dynamic and hence do not take advantage of the bitmap. As Dan Pressman would say, doing this is not letting ASO be ASO. What I say is that this is S-L-O-W. Too slow, usually, to actually work.

Do it in batch

Oracle have realized this and, in 11.1.2, came up with ASO calc scripts. They are run via MaxL and the execute calculation command – it’s a little ugly looking but supports those level zero only calcs. Run that and let ASO be ASO and do the aggregations it loves to do – perfect, right?

What about interactive applications?

While that’s fine for batch processes, it doesn’t work very well in interactive applications. I’ve seen some stunningly kludgy ways of launching MaxL in the background to do the level zero calcs after a user inputs data. It works, kind of, but is a pain.

A better way, hopefully

Oracle feels your pain, and have optimized Essbase so that the member formula MDX technique may allow you to do those dimension level tests and then do a Aggregate or Sum.

I note that this may be a solution for you because:

I haven’t tested it
I have to believe that it only scales so far

OTOH, per the “I haven’t tested it” statement I could be 100% wrong and maybe this approach will work for large dimensions. Watch this space for a test in the near future.

What does the read me say?

Faster Queries for MDX Aggregate and Sum Functions

In aggregate storage databases, performance is improved for MDX queries containing the Aggregate or Sum functions. Essbase performs dependency analysis and uses a formula cache to execute these requests dynamically.

For the optimized performance of these functions on aggregate storage databases, include in your query the following elements:

Any of the following functions, used within the named set and/or as an argument to this function: Intersect, CurrentMember, Distinct, CrossJoin, PeriodsToDate. The use of any other functions (such as Members) disables the optimization.
The second parameter, accounts_member, must be included for optimal performance.

Note: Optimal query performance may require a larger formula cache size. If you get an error message like the following, adjust the Essbase.cfg setting MAXFORMULACACHESIZE accordingly:

Not enough memory for formula execution. Set MAXFORMULACACHESIZE configuration parameter to [1072]KB and try again.

Pretty cool, eh?

FIXPARALLEL

We all know, and mostly love, CALCPARALLEL. It can be a little tricky to set up correctly, causes greater PAG file (we are back in BSO land, btw) fragmentation, and lots of functions revert Essbase to serial mode, but the performance boost is so great most developers just use as much of it as possible.

FIXPARALLEL is just what it says – parallel calculation for blocks of commands as defined by FIXPARALLEL…ENDFIXPARALLEL.

A question arises: If BSO parallel calculation already exists through CALCPARALLEL, why bother with a different method of parallelization? It’s partly about choice, and partly because FIXPARALLEL doesn’t rely on task selection the way CALCPARALLEL does. In other words, FIXPARALLEL doesn’t depend on “sparsity, outline order, dependencies, and member formulas” when generating a task list.

Also, FIXPARALLEL works with temporary variables (VAR functions), DATACOPY, and DATAEXPORT (flat files only).

A change to the way Essbase stores data

This one caught me by surprise, mostly because it tells me that the way I thought Essbase stored data in blocks has been wrong.

Per the ReadMe:

Prior to this release, each time a data block was updated, it was written to a new disk location. With this release, for Exalytics, Essbase enables in-place data writing.

In-place data writing means that when updates occur, the data block can be written to the same location, as long as the compressed size of the data block fits in its original location on the disk.

In-place data writing can help reduce data fragmentation and lower the need for frequent restructuring of database. It also reduces the need for frequent index updates, resulting in improved performance.

I could have sworn that Essbase always did that. In fact, many people (although not Glenn Schwartzberg) have. Even Oracle (at least previously) stated:

The Average Fragmentation Quotient ratio measures free space in a given database. As you update and calculate data, empty spaces occur when a block can no longer fit in its original space and will either append at the end of the file or fit in another empty space that is large enough. These empty spaces take up space in the .PAG files

I, and others, took this to mean that when Essbase can write a data value back to its original block, it did.

Reading this, and Glenn’s comments that this has always been the way Essbase works led me to try an experiment with Sample.Basic on 11.1.2.3.000:

I cleared the database and loaded calcdat.txt. That got me to 1 for the Average Clustering Ratio and 0 for the Average Fragmentation Quotient as displayed in Esscmd’s GETDBSTATS command (I am not exactly sure this is yet available in MaxL).
I went into Smart View, navigated to New York->Budget->Sales->Jan->100-10, changed 640 to 645, and did a submit.
Looking at GETDBSTATS again showed me that Sample.Basic now had an:

Average Clustering Ratio of 0.9999647
Average Fragmentation Quotient of 0.04882698

Glenn was right (yet again, I might add -- I wouldn’t bet my life on arguing technical functionality with Glenn as I am still to young to die), changing even a single value causes Essbase to fragment. I can only conclude, just as the documentation states, Essbase, outside of Exalytics, this release, and the INPLACEDATAWRITE Essbase.cfg setting, that Essbase for most of us does not write back to the same location.

Hybrid is here, or ASO meets BSO

I’ve been waiting for this one ever since it was announced at Oracle OpenWorld 2013– Hybrid, formally known as BSO/ASO Hybrid Aggregation Mode, is a fascinating piece of code. What it essentially does is brings ASO dynamic aggregations to BSO databases. This is beyond huge because it solves the data explosion issue that has bedeviled BSO Essbase since its inception.

Hyrid aggregation means that you get all of the BSO goodness (think all of those great BSO calc script functions) that you know and love but get away from the all (or most) of the bad things in BSO that stem from the aggregation process of stored members:

Upper level blocks don’t have to exist
Database sizes are much smaller
Calc times are much shorter (or even nonexistent)

It’s all very exciting stuff that I and Dan Pressman will cover in coming blog posts and of course our ODTUGKscope14 presentation Evolution or Revolution: The New Hybrid Essbase.

The future

I’m going to stop for now (mostly because I have to have a life and because I need to get rid of the beta patches I have and install the commercially released version) but will note that this this release has a lot of limitations as one might expect for an initial go round. Think of 11.1.2.3.500 as a statement of direction, with limitations being taken away and new functionality being added over time.

The next few blog posts will cover what I and others discovered during the beta process, some of the workarounds, and the implications of this exciting new extension to BSO Essbase.

You may know that I was part of a team that wrote a book all about advanced Essbase: Developing Essbase Applications. In it, author Dave Farnsworth wrote a chapter called, “BSO Will Never Die and Here is Why”. Despite many people’s attempts to declare BSO dead, I think it’s safe to say that Oracle doesn’t agree.

Be seeing you.

↧

Getting started with Hybrid Essbase

April 1, 2014, 3:01 am

≫ Next: Going back to the beginning

≪ Previous: Hybrid Essbase has arrived

How do you use Hybrid Essbase?

It’s actually very simple.

Install the 11.1.2.3.500 patches as I outlined here.
Configure the Essbase.cfg file to use the ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO setting (see below).
Tag all of the upper level members in your sparse dimensions as dynamic.
Have fun, fun, fun, discovering what Hybrid can and cannot yet do.

This post is a one of a series that will explore how to use Hybrid for fun and profit.

And with that, off we go!

Right out of the documentation

Once you have successfully installed 11.1.2.3.500, have a good read of the readme file. In it, you’ll find the following parameters for ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO.

Parameter	Description
Appname	Optional. If you specify only an application, all the databases in that application are affected. If you leave out the application and database name parameters, the setting applies to the entire server.
Dbname	Optional. If you specify an application and database, the database you specify is affected by the setting.
NONE	Disable hybrid aggregation in block storage databases (the default).
PARTIAL	Turn on hybrid aggregation only for simple outline aggregations based on the consolidation operators +, -, and ~, but excluding the operators *, /, and %. Leave formulas to be calculated in block storage mode.
FULL	Turn on hybrid aggregation for simple aggregations and formula calculations. See Notes for formula limitations.

Before you blithely turn on Hybrid everywhere, have a good read (and reread) of the below section.

How can you use these settings in Essbase.cfg?

Setting	Result
ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO NONE	Turn off Hybrid for all BSO databases, except where overridden
ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO FULL	Turn on Hybrid for all BSO databases, even when not specified
ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO Sample NONE	Turn off Hybrid for the Sample application, even if ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO FULL is specified
ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO PARTIAL	Behavior as FULL

A warning, and quite an important one

Did you catch that bit about ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO FULL? Databases that are not (you think) candidates for Hybrid mode now are Hybrid databases. Even if upper level sparse members are not tagged as dynamic, Essbase will still calculate what it can in Hybrid mode, and that includes dense calculations. Hybrid touches everything. Do you want this? Only you can decide but it seems a bit extreme for a “Wot’ll she do, mister?” first look.

One further note – if you turn ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO on, Essbase will not convert classic BSO databases to Hybrid databases until the database is started. After that, well, read on.

My Essbase.cfg

The above turns off Hybrid for all databases and then enables Hybrid for all databases in the SampleH application.

Unlike ASO, you can still have multiple databases per application, and they can all be Hybrid. Ain’t Hybrid grand? But speaking of ASO…

What does a Hybrid database do to the directory structure?

Do those folders look familiar? Take a look at ASOSamp.

The ASO (this ought to give you a hint as to the internal architecture) folders of default, log, metadata, and temp are now part of Hybrid databases.

You can even change where those temporary folders go. Per the ReadMe:

Directories for Hybrid Aggregation Mode

Related to the addition of hybrid aggregation in block storage databases, in this release, the following subdirectories are created under $ARBORPATH/hybrid/AppName:

default

log

metadata

temp

These subdirectories are similar to those found in aggregate storage application directories. When the application stops, the directories are removed, and when the application restarts, they are replaced.

To change the location of the directories, edit the following setting in essbase.cfg:

ASODYNAMICAGGINBSOFOLDERPATH [appName] path-to-directory

AppName is optional. path-to-directory specifies the new directory after you have moved it.

Just like ASO databases can split their tablespace files across drives (with a little more granularity because ASO can put default and temp in different locations), Hybrid allows you to move all of the tablespace folders to a separate drive using the ASODYNAMICAGGINBSOFOLDERPATH setting.

No going back

I set ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO to NONE, stopped Essbase, tarted Essbase, and started the SampleH database back up. The tablespace directories are recreated (they are by definition dynamic in nature anyway), even if you disable Hybrid for the database.

Personally, I would not use the ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO FULL setting just yet and instead go with a combination of ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO NONE and ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO Appname Dbname. But I am the cautious type.

Was that query Classic or Hybrid?

The application log has the answer.

I am going to use good old Sample.Basic, aka, My Very Favorite Essbase Database In The Whole Wide World, versus a Hybridized version called SampleH.Basic. The queries are all simple Smart View retrieves.

One note about Sample.Basic – yes, it is kind of silly to test Hybrid against Sample.Basic as its performance is fast no matter what one does to it. However, it is a handy way to try out Hybrid’s functionality with a small data set. As you will see a bit later on, that smallness can be important.

Classic all the way

The below is from Sample.Basic. There’s nothing you haven’t seen many times before. I only include it for purposes of comparison. This is a simple query from Smart View.

[Sat Mar 29 15:18:03 2014]Local/SampleH///1748/Info(1042059)

Connected from [::ffff:192.168.46.149]

[Sat Mar 29 15:18:03 2014]Local/SampleH/Basic/hypadmin@Native Directory/1748/Info(1013091)

Received Command [SetAlias] from user [hypadmin@Native Directory]

[Sat Mar 29 15:18:03 2014]Local/SampleH///7080/Info(1042059)

Connected from [::ffff:192.168.46.149]

[Sat Mar 29 15:18:03 2014]Local/SampleH/Basic/hypadmin@Native Directory/7080/Info(1020089)

Ignoring span Hybrid Analysis option. Spanning into Hybrid Analysis Relational Source has been disabled. See the essbase.cfg file

[Sat Mar 29 15:18:03 2014]Local/SampleH/Basic/hypadmin@Native Directory/7080/Info(1020055)

Spreadsheet Extractor Elapsed Time : [0.001] seconds

[Sat Mar 29 15:18:03 2014]Local/SampleH/Basic/hypadmin@Native Directory/7080/Info(1020082)

Spreadsheet Extractor Big Block Allocs -- Dyn.Calc.Cache : [1] non-Dyn.Calc.Cache : [0]

Hybrid

And here’s SampleH.Basic’s log file using the same query. Do you see it? A single line tells you that the query is indeed in Hybrid mode.

[Sat Mar 29 15:22:13 2014]Local/SampleH/Basic/hypadmin@Native Directory/6828/Info(1013091)

Received Command [SetAlias] from user [hypadmin@Native Directory]

[Sat Mar 29 15:22:13 2014]Local/SampleH///3576/Info(1042059)

Connected from [::ffff:192.168.46.149]

[Sat Mar 29 15:22:13 2014]Local/SampleH/Basic/hypadmin@Native Directory/3576/Info(1020089)

Ignoring span Hybrid Analysis option. Spanning into Hybrid Analysis Relational Source has been disabled. See the essbase.cfg file

[Sat Mar 29 15:22:13 2014]Local/SampleH/Basic/hypadmin@Native Directory/3576/Info(1204002)

Hybrid Aggregation Mode enabled.

[Sat Mar 29 15:22:13 2014]Local/SampleH/Basic/hypadmin@Native Directory/3576/Info(1020055)

Spreadsheet Extractor Elapsed Time : [0.001] seconds

[Sat Mar 29 15:22:13 2014]Local/SampleH/Basic/hypadmin@Native Directory/3576/Info(1020082)

Spreadsheet Extractor Big Block Allocs -- Dyn.Calc.Cache : [1] non-Dyn.Calc.Cache : [0]

Taking advantage of Hybrid

Remember, Hybrid touches every calculation, if it can. The big win is the ability to get rid of AGG and CALC DIM commands. After all, those upper level blocks are the source of all bad things in BSO Essbase related to data explosion – the size of upper level blocks.

As I noted above, once Hybrid is enabled, it will try to execute against the BSO database on every query. Thus you do not need (and cannot) to tag a dimension as “Hybrid”. If the Hybrid engine can be invoked, it will be.

Here’s what a fully Hybridized Sample.Basic looks like:

Tagging upper level members as Dynamic Calc gets rid of those blocks (this is true in Classic BSO as well) and, if Hybrid is enabled and its rules are followed, allows the super fast Hybrid engine to aggregate data on the fly. That’s all there is to it.

A Hybrid failure

I’m going to hold off on all of the things that Hybrid fails at for another post as the list is so long. Yes, long. And yes, I still think it is awesome. It isn’t all that hard to break Hybrid.

Again, think of this release as a technology statement of direction and, if you are sufficiently clever, a useful tool. Hopefully I am of that sufficiently clever ilk to actually use Hybrid in a meaningful way, but let’s face it, yr. obdnt. srvnt. has a somewhat mixed record on that whole “Isn’t he a clever chap” thing. Wish me luck. :)

Again, I will share with you my workarounds both within this blog and of course at the Kscope14 session I am giving with Dan Pressman entitled Evolution or Revolution: The New Hybrid Essbase.

Be seeing you.

↧

Going back to the beginning

January 27, 2014, 6:46 am

≫ Next: EPM 11.1.2.3.500 Patching Woes, Trials, and Tribulations

≪ Previous: Getting started with Hybrid Essbase

Is time travel possible?

Alas and alack, no.

Although I have searched for just such a device, to my knowledge there is no WayBack Machine that can take me back to 1992. Yes, that long distant time from the 20th century before the Global War on Terror, before the Internet (at the time I had an AppleLink account which gave me email to someone actually outside of my Fortune 50 employer as email used to stop at the company network’s end – it was a different time), a time when I did OLAP on an IBM mainframe using Comshare’s System W, and a time when all of the hair on my head was 100% devoid of grey.

22 years is a fair clip ago when it comes to personal history and it is an eternity in the technology field.

And yet there has been in my professional life a constant since that time (for me it started in 1993 or 1994 but give me artistic license).

What oh what oh what could it be?

Note to young people (like, oh, under the age of 30) – once upon a time, people (honestly, even the women had to wear ties of a sort) in corporate America were expected to wear a suit and tie (all the time – to the bathroom, to lunch in the cafeteria, on the way out the door – always), took notes on paper (actually, I still do), had 3270 terminals at their desks (nope, don’t have one of those, thankfully), etc. In other words, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

With that preamble, what might be the one constant from early in the Clinton administration?

No, not suits – those are gone except for weddings and funerals.

No, not ties – see the above.

No, not rolodexes – they were obsoleted by smart phones.

No, not mainframes – they are certainly around but are no longer the primary target of corporate IT.

It’s Essbase. Yes, Essbase is that old – over 22 years. If Essbase were human, it could vote, marry, take a loan out for a house, buy a gun, and serve in the armed services. In other words, Essbase is a mature product.

That it is still around, largely in its original form is testament to its genius. Yes, there have been many improvements and additions, but at its core, Essbase still does what Essbase did when it was first invented by Bob Earle and Jim Dorrian back in 1992. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the patent for BSO Essbase. Yes, of course ASO Essbase is internally quite different, but read that application and see if what was described is all that functionally different than what it does today.

Not a time machine, but something almost as good

As I wrote, I haven’t found a time machine. But I recently did get to spend a fascinating afternoon with one of the two fathers of Essbase – Bob Earle. I must hasten to add that this is because of the generosity and contacts of my good buddy Tim Tow who seemingly knows everyone.

Fellow ODTUG board members Tim, Natalie Delemar, and I met Bob for a few drinks at a hotel in Seattle. We were all there because of the ODTUG board face to face meeting (we have two a year, one right before Kscope14, one six months earlier, usually in the host city). This was our chance to meet one of the progenitors of Essbase and we were all quite keen to meet him.

Here we are.

Natalie, Yr. Obdnt. Srvnt., Bob Earle, and Tim Tow

So what was it like?

Bob is an incredibly self-effacing guy. He was astonished that Essbase was still around, amazed that people cared about it so much, and was, I think, sort of gobsmacked that we were so interested in his story. He was also very clear that he was only one half of the team that invented Essbase.

Essbase was an idea, an opportunity, and (I think) a really fascinating and stressful chapter in Bob’s life.

I will also note that Bob is a very private person, and asked that what we discussed remains confidential. I will say that I think he found the genesis of Essbase to be quite the roller coaster and he has completely divorced himself from the high technology world. Take from that what you will.

It was a true honor to meet the man that set so many of our careers on the path they now are. I’ve often thought of what I might be doing if my former boss, Mike Rose, hadn’t thrown Comshare’s resold version of Essbase on my desk and said (I am paraphrasing, but this is pretty much as it happened), “My mainframe costs are killing me, see what you can do with this product.”

The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Here I am with the guy that unwittingly landed me right here at this blog.

Sometimes you can go home again.

↧

EPM 11.1.2.3.500 Patching Woes, Trials, and Tribulations

April 7, 2014, 4:07 am

≫ Next: Limitations in Hybrid BSO Essbase

≪ Previous: Going back to the beginning

A warning

Don't take infrastructure advice from me. Ever. That begs the question, “Why are you reading a blog post on infrastructure by yr. obdnt. srvnt.”? Simply because tales of suffering, woe, and misadventure are always instructive and sometimes entertaining. Read the below to know that when I write this I state the truth.

The following workaround fixed my issue, but I make no warranty that it will apply to anything other than my environment. With that huge caveat, off we go...

Why I am here

As most of you know, I am a serially challenged (I do it again and again and I fail again and again) infrastructure idiot. However, needs must when the devil drives, and no one else is going to install the 11.1.2.3.500 patch for me, so....

I spent most of the last weekend in March struggling with that EPM 11.1.2.3.500 17529887 patch. Much of the issue was that Planning simply didn't work. My compact deployment started up all right, but when I tried to enter a Planning app, nothing. And by nothing I mean I could not edit dimensions, forms, etc., etc., etc. Bummer.

Help is on the way

In desperation, I reached out to John Booth (if a customer needs infrastructure work, I am not sure why he would use anyone else – for sure you shouldn't hire me) and described my system symptoms. John asked if the ADF patches 16964825 and 18362693 had been applied.

I think they are supposed to be applied automatically as part of that big (2 gigabyte) patchset but it didn't (apparently) happen.

I tried applying those patches from the normal C:\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1\OPatch location. They failed. I reached out to John again (not many would take calls on a Sunday -- thanks, John) and he explained to me that there are two opatch locations. The ADF patches, because they are at a base level of Fusion (I think I have this right), are applied at C:\Oracle\Middleware\oracle_common\OPatch. I applied the patches and now Planning mostly worked.

Here are the screenshots (the second one is important because there is a twist) of the patches being applied.

16964825

18362693

Did you see the special bit of the patch here? Don't just patch 18362693, patch 18362693\oui. From John I know that "oui" in this context is not "Yes" in French, but instead Oracle Universal Installer.

Did it work? Yes and no.

The issue

I could now get into Planning via IE. Terrific. But Planning via Smart View...it was interesting. What's wrong with the below screenshot?

Take a look at it in IE:

Yet Another Infrastructure Moment of Pain or YAIMP.

The fix

What I did was roll everything back (thank you VMWare and thank you Cameron for being the cautious geek you usually are) via VMWare’s snapshot functionality to a prepatch environment.

I then applied those two ADF patches before I did anything else in that C:\Oracle\Middleware\oracle_common\OPatch location.

I then applied the rest of the .500 patches in the normal C:\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1\OPatch location. Opatch tried to apply the two ADF patches (it is built into the 17529887 patch as far as I can tell) and aborted their reapplication, but continued on with the rest of the patching process.

I then crossed my fingers. Did it work?

Why yes it did. Whew.

The clew I should have knew

Were I more eagle eyed, I would have seen this in my initial failed install:

That would be the two required ADF patches going KABOOM. Did I see it? Nope. Dumb, dumb, dumb on my part. As my teachers used to say back in school, “A smart boy, but does not pay attention to detail. Must do better.” It is nice (?) that my fundamental personality traits are constant through time.

Even dumber is that this is explicitly noted in Oracle Support KB article Issues Using Planning after Applying EPM Patch 11.1.2.3.500 (Doc ID 1640411.1). Although I swear that when I looked for some clew (or clue) to my issue I couldn’t find it. Sigh.

The cause

So why didn’t it work? Most likely because I didn’t have my 11.1.2.3.000 environment set up quite right. Careful reading (oh sure, now I do this) of the Great and Good John Goodwin’s post on 11.1.2.3.500, rewards the faithful reader with this important note:

One thing is nice is that applying the patch looks to automatically install the required ADF patches in to oracle_common home. (if you have opatch added to the path variable that is).

Looking at my PATH environment variable I see:

No reference to C:\Oracle\Middleware\oracle_common there and I think that is why the whole thing didn’t work.

The end

I think I have ten new grey hairs from all of this. And if you wonder why I suffered through this

process, I have twoKscope14 sessions riding on a .500 environment. It was either do or die. Luckily this time I lived. Again, I would never have gotten this far without John Booth's help. Thanks, John!

Be seeing you.

Cameron

↧

Limitations in Hybrid BSO Essbase

April 28, 2014, 3:32 am

≫ Next: A Stupid Excel, Plannning, and Cameron Trick

≪ Previous: EPM 11.1.2.3.500 Patching Woes, Trials, and Tribulations

Before I begin

Lest anyone think that this blog post is Cameron’s Exercise in Whining About Essbase or Cameron’s Gift to Oracle’s Competitors or Cameron’s Act of Cutting His Oracle ACE Director Throat, please note that just about everything I am about to describe below is in the Essbase 11.1.2.3.500 ReadMe and I encourage you go to check out that oh so useful document to prove that I am not making this up from whole cloth.

This post will consist of a review of what that document means as Dan Pressman and I have tried (and failed) to get round the limitations and in the process discovered a few new surprises both positive and negative. If you continue on you then have the opportunity to marvel at our stubbornness aka our inability to read, understand, and follow documentation which is both amusing and instructive. Sometimes that stubbornness results in positive discoveries, so I suppose it isn’t a totally negative behavioral characteristic.

Or you could just read and absorb the ReadMe and be done with it but then you’d miss the bits we figured out.

One last preparatory note – we are doing extensive testing with Hybrid to try to figure out the architecture behind Hybrid because we believe that understanding at a high level how Hybrid works is key to the most effective utilization of the tool. Also, it’s cool to figure things out. Again, if this sort of thing piques your interest, I encourage you to come to the Evolution or Revolution: The New Hybrid Essbase Dan and I are giving at Kscope14 where we will be setting ourselves up for ridicule and contempt when Oracle finally publishes how Hybrid works expounding at greater length on what we believe to be Hybrid’s architecture and resulting design good practices.

The right perspective

The .500 patch is the first release of Hybrid. In fact it is really a .0 release. As such, it is not perfect, and Oracle freely admits and documents that in the ReadMe file. Think of this release of Hybrid as a statement of technology direction and a proof of technological concept.

In that light, what they have done with Hybrid is extraordinary and to be applauded as this functionality will simply revolutionize how BSO databases are designed and utilized. Yes, it is that important.

At the same time, we are in very early days with Hybrid so please do not read this blog post and walk away thinking, “Hybrid is half-baked, it isn’t good for anything, life isn’t fair, I never got a pony as a child, etc.” This is the beginning of what I think of as the Hybrid revolution, you are getting in at the ground floor, and it is pretty easy to see where the improvements to Hybrid will be made. Maybe today Hybrid is right for your applications, maybe it is not; I am willing to bet that as time goes on more and more of your BSO applications will become good candidates for Hybridization until each and every one of them is a Hybrid database. I told you this is the beginning of the revolution.

On to the limitations

What happens to a failed Hybrid operation?

Oracle has stressed, and I am reiterating, that Essbase will never return an incorrect value. By that I mean that if an operation fails the supported-by-Hybrid test, Essbase will revert to Classic BSO operation and will return the correct value. It may take a looooooooonnnnnngggggggg time to return the value, but return it Essbase will. Do not be scared of inaccurate data coming out of Hybrid.

Let’s review the ReadMe

Again, dear Oracle competitors/Oracle Legal, the following is directly from the ReadMe document, so again before anyone gets excited, go read that officially released document.

Unsupported calculations

I am afraid this is going to be a bit disappointing as the list of unsupported functionality is quite comprehensive. Again, I stress that you consider this list in light of Hybrid being at its very first release.

One more thing to stress (or restress) – when I write “It does not work” that does not mean that Essbase doesn’t return the right value, it means that Hybrid didn’t fire and Classic BSO took over. However as you have now set your database to calculate dynamically that could mean quite a delay.

I should also note that we only tested the top three but to my mind these are the most important bits of missing functionality. Through this painful experience, I have learnt to trust the ReadMe so I no longer feel the need to try to prove the documentation wrong.

Cross-dimensional operators

To me this is the big does-not-work feature. You cannot reference a cross-dimensional operator and use the Hybrid engine. Dan Pressman and I went round and round and round on this trying some fairly crazy approaches, one of which involved CDFs, MDX, perl, and substitution variables before we finally came to our senses and realized it just didn’t work.

Time Balance

Yes, that’s right, Time Balance is not available in Hybrid. I really wanted this one to work and wasted a staggeringly large amount of time trying to get this to work via UDAs, member formulas in an Analytic dimension as you might in ASO, and I think by baying at the moon. None of it worked.

Attributes

They just don’t work. Nope, not at all. G’wan, try it yourself. They don’t work, even though they are dynamic sparse calculations which one would sort of think would be right up Hybrid’s alley if you know how ASO handles them. With luck, they will be coming very soon.

Dynamic calcs with formulas that are targets of transparent partitions

I did not try this one, but I believe Oracle when they say it does not work. Dan did and confirms that this does not (he admits he did not read the ReadMe first and thus continues our near-perfect record of being unable, or at least unwilling, to read and comprehend documentation) work.

Queries with both two-pass and one-pass dynamic calc members from the same dimension

Ibid.

XOLAP

Ibid.

Other things that don’t yet work

These are not in the ReadMe file, but we personally tested these and know that at least in this release, they are not yet there in Hybrid.

DATAEXPORT

The calc script command DATAEXPORT doesn’t work in Hybrid, at least when writing out upper level members. I didn’t try (or care) about level zero because there wouldn’t be any Hybrid functionality there. Gary Crisci called this one in an email exchange with me. And yes, it is super sad, but I have email exchanges about Essbase functionality with people. Time to get a grip, Cameron. Or a life.

Report Writer

The Essbase Report Writer, around since the beginning of Essbase is also not supported by Hybrid.

Transparent partitions that have Hybrid sources and Classic targets

One of the many harebrained and unsuccessful attempts Dan and I attempted was to try to push all of those lovely fast dynamic ASO aggregations from a Hybrid source to a Classic target where we thought Classic could then apply its Time Balance, cross-dim, etc., etc., etc. functionality. There is no joy in Mudville.

XREF and XWRITE

To be fair, I didn’t test XWRITE, but for sure XREF doesn’t work and I have to believe where one goes, the other follows.

Top-down formulas

Any formula that fires in top down mode does not work in Hybrid. Unfortunately, many calculation functions fit this profile.

So what does work?

Rack and stack BSO databases

If this functionality wasn’t there, Hybrid wouldn’t exist. But it does work, quite well actually, and that is very exciting.

Formulas

Supported functions

@CHILDREN, @EXP, @INT, @ISMBR, @MIN, @MINSRANGE, @MOD, @MODE, @NOTEQUAL, @POWER, @RANGE, @REMAINDER, @ROUND, @VAR, @VARIANCEP, and @VARPER

These functions are supported.

Sparse formulas

So long as the formula references only other members of the same sparse dimension members, Hybrid can fire.

Dense formulas

So long as the formula references only other members of the same dense dimension members, Hybrid can fire.

One interesting thing to note here – intrablock calculations will, if possible, fire in Hybrid. Think about what that means – Hybrid is working everywhere, not just for sparse calculations. And not just at upper levels. Again, ponder that bit of information because it is fairly earth-shattering.

Sparse to dense/sparse formulas

You cannot use cross dimensional operators, but if your sparse formula references sparse members and dense stored members, the calculation can succeed in Hybrid. The example the ReadMe gives is as follows: @MINSRANGE("Stereo","Qtr1":"Qtr2"); which assumes that this is a sparse member formula, Stereo is in a sparse dimension, and that Qtr1 and Qtr2 are stored dense members.

Transparent partitions with Classic BSO source to Hybrid BSO targets

This works quite nicely – hooking this up between a Classic and Hybrid database couldn’t be easier. And it is fast, just like a Classic BSO to ASO partition. With this, you no longer need to build two different engine versions of the same database. This is a significant reduction in build and maintenance effort and a big win.

NB – Before you try it in a futile attempt to get round the documented functionality of Hybrid by wrapping Classic BSO functionality around Hybrid as we did and as noted above, you cannot xref or transparent partition from a Hybrid source to a Classic target and fire the Hybrid engine; everything will run in Classic BSO mode. Did I mention that this can be slow? It is.

Other things that work

MDX as a data extractor

Remember how DATAEXPORT and the Report Writer do not work in Hybrid? The good news is that MDX queries do use Hybrid so we can extract upper level data in a really fast mode so long as we can parse the output.

If there were any more proof needed to show that Oracle has bet big on MDX (and really, there isn’t), here it is – MDX trumps the Report Writer which has been around since the year dot in Essbase.

Where do we go from here?

The list of limitations is seemingly long and I suspect that it is not complete. If you are disappointed by this, you shouldn’t be. Cast your mind back to how limited ASO was when it first came out. Now think about how powerful and capable it is. I expect the same functionality improvements to occur in Hybrid.

Oracle have thrown a lifeline to BSO (and yes, you ASO bigots out there, BSO does have quite a few good points) that will, in my opinion, both transform BSO applications and bring the two engines much closer together. It’s early days with Hybrid and I for one am going to continue to explore what Hybrid can and cannot do.

If this sort of geeky exploration is to your liking, and you want to know more about what Dan and I found, I again encourage you to come to our joint Kscope14 session.

Join us, won’t you?

↧

A Stupid Excel, Plannning, and Cameron Trick

May 5, 2014, 8:10 am

≫ Next: Might I learn something from Oracle Support?

≪ Previous: Limitations in Hybrid BSO Essbase

Will I ever learn?

Will I? Will I? Sigh, no, apparently I will not. I cannot believe I didn’t catch this before. I have been struggling with this for, oh, about 6 years (whenever 11.1.1.1 came out and with it outlineload.cmd). I am actually really and truly mad at myself for not knowing this. Idiot.

The background

During a long, troubling, stressful, and not particularly fun weekend (sorry for the whine but not knowing this really frosts my cookies) trying to get ASO Planning to do something it just cannot do for my KScope14 session, I stumbled across this simple solution to Planning outlineload.cmd files in Excel.

The problem

When a member has a comma or special character in it on metadata export (outlineload.cmd and with 11.1.2.3, Planning itself will export dimensionality) Planning will wrap double quotes around the member or alias so that it can correctly parse the field and the record on the way back in. What happens then in Excel (I tested on Excel 2010 but this has been the way it’s worked since at least Excel 2003 and probably before) is this:

In case you can’t tell, an Account with the member name Depr,Taxes,Insur. Is spread over multiple columns in Excel where in fact it should be in the Parent column.

What’s even weirder is that the member name is in the correct column. See the yellow highlighted cell A477. So what’s up with the pink highlighted data in A478, B478, C478, and actually just about everything else in row 478?

A quick look in Notepad++ shows little difference. Or at least one it took me literally almost forever to spot. Idiot.

Goofus and Gallant

The bad

The good

The test with the answer

Do you see it? Do you? Please don’t be as blind as I was.

The answer is spaces. Or more specifically, spaces after commas. That’s it.

Bad, bad, bad

Metadata-comma-space-metadata is bad.

Depre, "Depr,Taxes,Insur.", Depreciation, false

Good, good, good

Metadata-comma-metadata is good.

Depre,"Depr,Taxes,Insur.",Depreciation,FALSE

The end of this Stupid Trick

That’s why even in the bad file the first instance of Depr,Taxes,Insur. worked in cell A477 but blew up in B478. Record 477 didn’t have a leading comma-space as it was the first field in the record. Record 478 did because it is the second column and had that infernal comma-space preceding it as a delimiter. This difference in behavior in Excel was the clue that made me finally realize that maybe there was an issue with the way the delimiting was working.

I should also note that I looked around for a definition of comma-delimiting and I could not find:

Any document or standard that said that spaces should or should not follow the delimiting commas.
Any document or note regarding Excel that stated that Excel works this way.

I can’t believe I am the first to recognize this or figure it out and document it. Perhaps this is all so obvious that world+dog already know it but it eluded me, hence this post.

To plainly state the solution to this incorrect delimiting in Excel: All you have to do is go into a text editor and search for comma-space and replace it with plain commas-no space before you import it into Excel.

That second good file? It’s the result of that search and replace.

Arrrgh, soooooo frustrating. At least I have one positive thing coming out of this weekend. May you never make this mistake. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of you already knew this. Double arrrgh.

Be seeing you.

↧

Might I learn something from Oracle Support?

May 12, 2014, 4:16 am

≫ Next: Come one, come all, to the EPM carnival

≪ Previous: A Stupid Excel, Plannning, and Cameron Trick

Might I learn something?

I might and there’s a strong possibility you might as well. Read on and find out about a new initiative that Oracle Support are running to help you get the most out of, well, Oracle Support. I cannot see how you would not want to do this unless of course you find nearly endless searching through what is a huge website whilst your boss/clients/peers are beating on your head with, “Did you figure it out yet? Do we need to file a SR? Did you figure it out yet? Did you? Did you? Did I mention that it’s really important that you figure this out? Right now would be a good time to do so.” to be oh so enjoyable. No, probably not.

What oh what oh what is this all about

If you are an Oracle customer, or an Oracle partner of Gold level or above, you have the ability to browse Oracle’s Support site, download patches, log Service Requests (SRs) if you are a partner of Platinum or higher (customers can always do this so long as their maintenance is current), and download patches as well.

There are many resources out there on the web: blogs, message boards, Twitter and they are all (well most – I don’t get the blogs that are copy and paste regurgitations of the documentation; I also understand although I do not approve of sites that simply take Support KB articles and replicate them) pretty good. But nothing trumps the breadth and depth of Oracle Support. I like to think of this as the difference between paid troubleshooting, workaround finding, and general knowledge dissemination and those who do it for free, like yr. obdnt. srvnt and many others. I don’t think one replaces the other (okay, except for those illegal sites – and no, I am not going to link to one as they are depressingly easy to find), they are instead complementary. A blog like this one might cover a function or feature in one of the many EPM tools; Support will tell you how to fix one of those systems and even help you prevent problems. I can only do the latter if you hire me and maybe not even then.

As I alluded to in the introductory paragraph of this post, Oracle Support is big. Big in terms of content by product, big in terms of products, big in terms of sheer size. Like I wrote, just big. And with size comes confusion as one must filter out all of the other products that Oracle sells. I seem to remember Thomas Kurian mentioning at an ACE Director briefing (note to all -- this is as close as I come to the Oracle power structure) that there are over 2,000 products with the Oracle brand and Oracle Support covers them all.

To reduce this potential confusion Oracle Support have launched all manner of education in how to use Oracle Support. The latest initiative is an Oracle Support accreditation exam. Italia Norwodworska of Oracle support sent me an email suggesting that I might like to check it out. As I am one of those who is often confounded by the Support website, this sounded like a really good opportunity to learn more about a site I don’t often use, but when I do use it, I really need to use it as efficiently and effectively as possible. Remember those quotes in the introduction? Those were real life examples. Ah, stress, how I don’t enjoy you.

What does it look like?

The Level 2 Accrediation for Business Analytics (I seem to have skipped level 1 but as always I do not let a lack of proper technical preparation slow me down) exam is a series of videos that explain how Support works and how to best use it. Going through every one of the videos is recommended unless you really do know it all. For the most part I just listened to it and jumped back to the videos when something I really didn’t understand was discussed. The nice thing about videos like this is that you can play them as many times as needed till you grok the subject.

In case it is not obvious, you watch (or half-watch and listen) each of the subject areas and then take the test at the end.

This being the age of social media (and inexpensive animation) you will get pictures like the below to help drive a concept home:

Hmm, she reminds me of a grade school teacher telling me, “Cameron, you are a moderately bright boy, but you do not pay attention.” True, that, even today. But I did try to pay attention and as you’ll see from my not totally stellar score, I did manage to mostly pay attention. The school-like aspect of this exam will become obvious later.

I’d like you to meet Joe

Joe is a stock photo and considerably better dressed than any Essbase admin I have ever met. And I say this as someone who is just rolling off of an Essbase admin gig (don’t ask and I am officially the World’s Worst Essbase Admin as I kept on proposing new and hopefully better practices instead of just doing my job). Here he is – I think his eyes follow me wherever I go in a room. Creepy. OTOH, Joe has what looks like a wicked cool 17” laptop so maybe he isn’t all bad. At the same time, he never seems to move. As I wrote, creepy.

All kidding aside, you will get to meet Joe at the beginning of every video and then Stalker Joe (as I have named him) goes away. He’s just a bridging device and really isn’t so bad. Having had a good look at those of us in the EPM community (and I most definitely include myself in this category), perhaps it is best that Oracle used a model.

The heart of the matter

Snarky (and really, unworthy) comments by yr. obdnt. srvnt. aside, this exam is quite valuable. Dave Farnsworth, former EPM consultant (sadly now retired) once told me about buying books on one’s own nickel: “If I get one new idea out of a book, just one, it’s paid for itself.” I managed to learn at least four new things from this exam. Did I mention it was free? Quite the deal.

Things I should have known, but didn’t, and now do

What is a PowerView?

It’s the way you filter products within Oracle Support so you don’t get KB articles on how to get that bucket of prop wash for the IBM Series 360 (I am making this up in case it isn’t obvious) but instead just focus on the products you want to use. It’ll be available the next time you log into Support. I always wondered/was too lazy to figure that out, but I should have.

Terminology, vocabulary, and definitions

What’s the difference between a Patch Set, a Patch Set Update, and a Patch Set Exception? Damfino. Actually, now I do.

Patch Set

Patch Set Update

Patch Set Exception

Just to recap:

Patch Set = Large number of merged patches, are cumulative bug fixes, and change the release number. Remember all of thepostson11.1.2.3.500? That was all about a patch set.
Patch Set Update = Low risk, cumulative patches, designed to be applied on a regular basis without forcing product recertification.
Patch Set Exception = Single fix for a single problem, applied via Opatch, handed out to customers with lots of pain.

I must shamefacedly admit that I have had no idea what these have precisely meant since, oh, 2007 and Oracle’s acquisition. There’s lots of good information like this in the videos.

Art following reality

Here is a generic boss woman (sensible heels, suit, short hair) dealing rather adroitly with the geek in glasses. Hmm, lose the blue eyes and the tie and it could be me, right down to the Rocky from South Philly at the Art Museum looking down the Ben Franklin Parkway towards City Hall pose. Yeah, I come from Philly.

Let’s see if we can read some other truths into this screen shot:

Jolene (for I have named her such) has way better fashion sense than the geek. This is damning with faint praise, but still it is worth noting.
She will be his boss in six months if she isn’t already.
Jolene secretly hates Cameron the geek and likely for good reason as she can run technical circles round him. Also, she doesn’t think she’s Rocky Balboa. Cameron shouldn’t either. Look at that physique – he’s fooling himself. The physical similarities (right down to the big head and glasses) are perhaps a bit too close for comfort for this writer.

Some fairly obvious advice that is surprisingly often not followed

I can think of many times where servers, usernames, and even passwords get posted to public forums. Don’t Be That Guy.

Seriously, the above is really good advice. Heed it or rue the day you posted confidential information for world+dog to see.

Teacher is going to ring my bell

Class cutup, clown, or idiot? Only the exam can tell the tale.

Clicking on the Take The Exam link moves you to an Oracle University exam. Gulp.

It’s a 30 question multiple choice exam – shades of school all right. Most, but not everything, on the exam is in the videos (there is an assumption that you actually use the tools) and it took me about five minutes to go through the test. You can review questions at any time and all in all it’s an effective interface.

Read ‘em and weep

I did actually take the videos seriously although perhaps not seriously enough:

A passing score, but will it get me into the university of my choice? There’s that report card again with “Must try harder” in the margin.

What have I learnt from all this?

A couple of key things:

The videos are quite good with information that I should have known but did not. Sad but there it is.
Even if I got a fair-to-middling score, I learnt new things, cf. the above comment. This is all that really matters.
It is pretty painless to watch these videos and take the test – I reckon you will need just under 40 minutes if you do it all at once.
Sit up straight, no slouching, and pay attention! Sorry, that was just a PTSD school moment – Oracle are actually quite friendly. They want you to succeed as it’s better for all concerned.

I really applaud Oracle for coming up with this – it’s straightforward, entertaining (I wouldn’t have written all of those mildly funny comments if I didn’t enjoy it), and informative. Take the test and I’ll bet that you too will learn from it.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating

Oh sure you say (you do say this, don’t you?), Cameron is merely shilling for his corporate masters. Au contraire. I dream of the massive amounts of dosh, cash, moola, bread, cabbage, simoleons, and spondulix that the various companies I write about send me. In my dreams alas and alack, because it is actually the other way round. Also, I have no corporate master.

What I mean by that is that I just stumped for a lovely, shiny, good-for-365-days Gold Partner agreement. That’s $3,000 + tax of my not-terribly-big company’s money. Why? Gold Partners can access Oracle Support.

Yet another example of why being an independent ain’t all beer and skittles but Oracle Support is worth it and my money is where my mouth is.

Be seeing you.

↧

Come one, come all, to the EPM carnival

May 19, 2014, 2:48 am

≫ Next: I need your help to put Oracle EPM on the spot at Kscope14

≪ Previous: Might I learn something from Oracle Support?

Only two things scare me

As a child of the Cold War, I share Austin Powers’ first fear all too well, but the second? Carnies? Really? On the other hand, Kscope does nomadically wander from city to city. But do we all smell bad? Have small hands? Hopefully at least not the middle property (I, and I believe most of ODTUG bathe on a regular basis, with soap) and I think I have pretty large hands, so that’s only one out of three. G’wan, watch the clip. I’m pretty sure Michael York’s look of incomprehension pops up on my face at least once a day in reaction to all kinds of interesting statements.

But not this time

No need for a look of incredulity – what I’m about to relate is dead easy to understand.

The EPM community will be hosting an EPM (‘natch) carnival at Kscope14, Monday, 23 June 2014, from 8 till 10 pm. Why oh why oh why would you go? Simply because it will be about fun, networking, and help.

What is this thing you call “fun”?

For once it isn’t my current project that is driving me, in sequence, to rage, tears, and anxiety, but instead preparing for my way-too-many-OMG-why-did-I-agree-to-this Kscope presentations. As almost always, I have no one to blame but myself. No matter the source of your current angst, the EPM carnival will be a salve to your troubled waters (yes, I am mixing metaphors but bear with me) because it will include:

Bean bag toss – your favorite(?) EPM ACED’s face will be superimposed onto a clown’s mouth and you get to throw the bag in the mouth. We certainly talk enough; perhaps this is your opportunity to shut us up?
Road Rally - this is a multi-player game where everyone rolls dice and if your “lane” number is rolled you advance your car (hot wheels)
Say Ahh - this is a put-put golf game
Skee Roll - smaller version of the classic skee ball game
Balloon Darts
Hoopster /Electronic Shooting – basketball
Ring Toss - classic coke bottle ring toss

Although I am crushed to relate that health and safety regulations preclude the ACE Director dunk tank (I have a strange feeling that this would be quite popular), you must agree that the above activities contain at least a scintilla of fun. Those fun times are a great motive to be there, but they aren’t the only reason you, oh Kscope EPM attendee, should come to the EPM Carnival.

Networking

While the education that Kscope provides is second to none, an equally compelling reason I (and I suspect you as well) come to Kscope is to meet, if only once per year, with my peers from around the globe. This is where the elite Oracle geeks meet and greet; the EPM Carnival gives us all a relaxed, friendly, and open way to meet people from all walks of EPM life, free from the pressures of work responsibilities.

Informal contacts can be just as valuable as the ones forged through work. Kscope’s social events, from the Community Service Day to the big Wednesday night Special Event, are the place to forge those relationships. Don’t ignore the Monday night EPM Carnival as another avenue to do just that.

The spirit of giving

As many of you know, Mike Riley, Kscope14 conference co-chairman and former ODTUG president is battling cancer. Cancer is a cruel disease and Mike needs all of the help – spiritual, material, and financial – that he and his family can get. ODTUG is Mike’s professional family, and when a member of our family needs help, we give it.

The EPM Carnival will give you an opportunity to do just that – you will be able to donate unused Carnival tickets (it’s just like going to a Grange Fair, right down to how you pay for the rides) or even purchase additional ones for Mike’s fund. Yes, this is a naked appeal for your help. You expected dignity from me? You haven’t been reading my blog much, and certainly not on this subject.

As so many of we EPM geeks are a bit, um, hopeless when it comes to examples of physical dexterity, you will be able to supplement the carnival tickets for whatever game you are playing not so well with cold hard cash to move your middling score up to the winner’s circle. The real do-re-mi that you contribute will go towards the fund for Mike.

The EPM community owes Mike a huge professional debt because he is really the reason why EPM is part of ODTUG and thus Kscope. He is also one hell of a nice guy. He needs our help and you can provide it. Isn’t that enough to cause you to cough up a few tickets?

Summing it up

So there you have it: fun in the form of possible ritual humiliation of EPM ACE Directors, a chance to informally meet your peers, and an opportunity to aid Mike Riley. All made possible by the fine folks at Secure-24.

I’ll be there. Will you?

↧

I need your help to put Oracle EPM on the spot at Kscope14

May 27, 2014, 10:22 am

≫ Next: The sessions I want to attend at Kscope14

≪ Previous: Come one, come all, to the EPM carnival

Why help out?

This year, Thursday at Kscope14 is going to be different than years past. What do I mean by that? Simply that instead of the normal fare of technical session after technical session, ODTUG is trying something different this year on the last (sob) day of the conference – deep dives into technology. These are longer and different in focus sessions that allow you, the Kscope14 attendee, to really get to the very heart of whatever tool or track tickles your geek fancy.

What that means is that there are sessions on:

And a panel session on Good ‘Ol Planning consisting of the Planning and Essbase product managers, hosted by none other than yr. obt. svt.

What’s it all about, Cameron?

I am so glad you asked – the Planning Deep Dive is your chance to ask direct, possibly slightly painful, and definitely interesting questions to both Gabby Rubin, Essbase product manager, and Shankar Viswanathan, Planning product manager.

Huh, you say (you do say this, right?), what’s the Essbase product manager doing at a Planning deep dive session? Remember, Essbase is at the heart of Planning, so asking why Planning does this or that without asking why and how Essbase does the same thing is all a bit pointless.

Gabby and Shankar graciously accepted the chance to be mercilessly grilled by you. What I mean is that this is a panel of two (Gabby and Shankar) with me as moderator, and you get to lob questions, hopefully difficult and maybe a little painful, directly to them. Oracle of course has the option to grin or grimace at you and then refuse to answer your question but I have found that typically Oracle are quite open. It at least ought to be entertaining.

What I plan on asking them

As you will see, I am not exactly pulling my punches. These are items of intense interest to me, and I suspect many in the Hyperion Planning world:

When will Hybrid Essbase be certified for Planning?
Why can’t we report on attribute dimensions via Planning data connections; this is especially puzzling in the light of ASO Planning and ASO Essbase’s superior attribute performance.
Why is ASO Planning not an Essbase data source? Again, attribute dimensions work so much better in ASO than BSO – it is very puzzling.
Planning seems to be the engine that drives Essbase sales, yet Essbase functionality appears to be influenced by OBIEE. Why? How is Planning impacting Essbase’s future direction? What about other tools? Will Essbase retain its EPM focus or become just another component of the Oracle database?
ASO Planning allows (by Planning standards) huge databases, yet Planning’s administrative performance cannot keep place, e.g., extraordinarily long dimension build (and even longer delete) times, slow refreshes, and poor form execution. How will Planning’s performance improve? When?
Planning and Essbase have at least seven (EPMA, EAS, Studio, Classic Planning, Outlineload, ODI, BIFS, and I’ve likely forgot a few) ways to build dimensionality and load data. Each method has its merits, each has its weaknesses. Why isn’t there a single optimized metadata and data management tool? Or at least fewer ones.
Documentation for the EPM schemas stopped with 11.1.2.1. Are there any plans for releasing new schema maps or is that someone’s KScope15 session?
When, when, when will SQL be used to read and write Essbase data and metadata aka when do Load Rules die?
When will BSO Essbase perform the following using the Hybrid engine: Attributes, Time Balance, Cross dimensional references, and add all of the Calc Script functions?
It appears as though many aspects of Essbase (Exalytics-only functions) and Planning (tied more and more closely to EBS and Fusion) are losing their technology-agnostic nature, historically one of the benefits of the Oracle Hyperion EPM technology stack. Are we looking at a future in which the EPM suite only works on Oracle hardware and with Oracle back-end software?

But those are just my questions. I don’t actually expect to get answers to all of the above (I think they alone could fill our two allotted hours but I am a firm believer in over-preparing), but you now have an insight of the EPM Mind of Cameron. It’s not too scary, is it?

Shankar and Gabby didn’t actually agree to me as Privy Councilor for a Planning-themed Star Chamber. The Planning Deep Dive is your opportunity to ask your questions to the very people who define the future of Planning and Essbase.

How you will ask questions before and during the Deep Dive

I have a sneaking suspicion that you will have many, many, many questions and I want to give everyone a fair chance at them.

While I will be taking questions in the normal way during the session, i.e., you raise your hand, ask the question, I repeat it, and maybe Oracle answer it, that approach single threads the Q&A process and doesn’t necessarily let the best ones bubble to the surface.

To try to get round that, I am asking that you send your questions now, yes right now, to the following Twitter hashtag: #PlanningDeepDive. Before the conference, I will monitor that tag for your oh so valuable questions. During the Deep Dive session I (or more likely a “lucky” volunteer as I cannot walk and chew gum at the same time) will monitor the same. I (we? confusing isn’t it?) will see if they share common themes and guide the discussion around those lines.

And that’s it

I think this will be a lot of fun, perhaps even for two very brave (and very generous) Oracle EPM product managers.

Yes, there are lots of other cool things going on at the same time (as always, I wish there was a way to attend, oh, the Planning, Essbase, Business Intelligence, EPM Foundations, and BI/EPM Reporting Deep Dive sessions all at the same time but of course that just can’t be) but I think what the Planning track has on offer simply isn’t matched anywhere else on Thursday.

If you don’t show up, I will of course be crushed, but then again I will have two rather hard to reach Oracle PMs at my mercy to ask, whine, and beseech about the future of the two tools that have come to define my (and very likely your) career.

This will of course be more meaningful if you do attend – you will have insights, concerns, and questions that I could never come up with. Your participation is key to the success of this session.

In case you can’t tell, I am tremendously excited by this opportunity as I think this will be a dynamic, exciting, and educational session like no other at Kscope and one that will be driven by you, the audience member.

Join us, won’t you?

↧

The sessions I want to attend at Kscope14

June 2, 2014, 9:07 am

≫ Next: Deep Dive Thursday at Kscope14

≪ Previous: I need your help to put Oracle EPM on the spot at Kscope14

What this post is all about

Oh dear oh dear oh dear, Kscope14 is almost upon us. This year’s conference is fraught with desperate preparation on my part (this past weekend was spent up to my armpits writing my ASO Planning presentation – fun, fun, fun, kind of) as I desperately try to hit the conference date with everything done. Fingers crossed on this one but if I pull it off, the presentations will be good and there are one or two fairly awesome hacks to go along with it all. I am excited, if slightly frazzled, so business as usual.

But this post isn’t about my neuroses, instead its purpose is to highlight the sessions I am most looking forward to at Kscope14, aka other people’s sources of stress.

Schedule

There is simply too much to write about in one blog post so my look forward will have three parts:

This week – individual sessions
Next week – Thursday Deep Dives
Week of 15 June – Sunday Symposiums and oh yes I am flying to Seattle

As always with Kscope, there are way more sessions than there is time to attend. Remember that many of these sessions are recorded so you can watch the screen and hear the presenters live and in person.

For instance, to help figure out a component of my ASO Planning session, I listened (and listened and listened) to Josie Manzano’s Kscope13 session Using Calculation Manager with Essbase ASO until I finally got it. This ability to go back and listen sessions when you need them is invaluable. There are many, many, many sessions available at ODTUG’s web site and I encourage you take advantage of this valuable resource. I have.

My top Kscope14 sessions

Essbase

Calc Manager Rules with an ASO Cube: Yes, It Works!

Monday, 23 June 2014, 10:45 am to 11:45 am

Oh yes, I know, it works. And then bits of it don’t. I am doing a ton of stuff with this right now in ASO Planning and am super curious to see if Ludovic De Paz and Paul Hoch have gone down the same path I have or if they have figured out another way. Like anything, there’s a good, bad, and mediocre way to do something – I wonder where my work falls.

Next Generation Essbase Outline Extractor Tips and Tricks

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 8:30 am to 9:30 am

I was part of the beta team (a very bad member of the beta team; I like to think I have somewhat redeemed myself with post-release bug finding, but then again maybe not), and I have seen some of the improvements Tim has come up with whilst in the Tim Tow Reality Distortion Field (The one where I feel almost smart enough to be a Java, aka real, programmer. Alas, it goes up in a cloud of smoke as soon as the call ends.). I’m not sure how much of what I’ve seen is going to make it in this release. For sure it is a time of change for the tool, all for the better.

Essbase Technology Evolution

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 11:15 pm to 12:15 pm

Kumar is the manager of Essbase development. That’s right, the guys that write Essbase. Do you suppose he might have some interesting insights into the future of Essbase? Could be.

MDX Simplified: A Methodical Approach to Writing Complex Functions

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

Do I suffer when I write MDX? Oh yes I do. Hopefully Jennifer Hanks can make at least this part of my coding life not be a soup sandwich.

ASO Design Principles for Financial Reporting

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

Yes, you read that right, two MDX sessions at the same time. And this one is by my colleague Gary Crisci who always does stellar work. Let’s hope Jennifer’s (or Gary’s or each) session is recorded.

Essbase Studio: Why in the Name of Glenn Are You Not Using This Awesome Tool

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm

Why, Glenn, why? Why am I not using it? Perhaps because I have yet to attend your session oh older-not-really-brother?

Essbase New Features and Roadmap Update: 2014 Edition

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 9:45 am to 10:45 am

Gabby Rubin will cover how Essbase and Exalytics are moving forward, sometimes in lockstep, other times in parallel. I am super interested in this and hope fervently that commodity hardware continues to be supported as I’m not likely to hit an Exalytics project any time soon.

Kumar and Dan Go to Kscope: How ASO Works (Based on Your Questions)

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 8:30 am to 9:30 am

Dan Pressman will be the moderator (buffer?) between you, the panel audience, and Kumar, the Essbase development manager. Ask your question, see if Kumar answers it. :)

Evolution or Revolution: The New Hybrid Essbase

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 11:15 am to 12:15 am

Yr. Obdt. Svt. is copresenting with Tim German, aided by Dan Pressman, and I think this session will be eye opening to say the least. We will cover the biggest advance to Essbase since ASO both in its currently available 11.1.2.3.500 release and some as yet unreleased functionality. You’ll see from this why Hybrid BSO Essbase will likely be the future of many of your projects. Yes, I am excited. :)

Planning

Beyond the P&L: Balance Sheet Planning Made Easier Using Movement Members

Monday, 23 June 2014, 10:45 am to 11:45 am

Movement, not balances, is what I think Amy Del Rosario will be presenting. This can be a difficult concept to grasp but is quite a bit more efficient. At least that’s what I think the session is about – of course the only way to know for sure is to attend.

ASO Planning: Don’t Do That, Do This

Monday, 23 June 2014, 1:15 pm to 2:15 pm

Yr. Obdt. Svt. is copresenting with Tim German, aided by Dan Pressman, and this is a subject near and dear to my heart (and my wallet as almost all of my implementations contain at least a component of Planning). I think we have some really great good practices for ASO Planning that aren’t discussed anywhere else, a hack or two that ought to make your eyes pop, and of course all of the things that will only bring Pain and Agony so they are best avoided.

Using Project Financial Planning (PFP) to Streamline Budgeting at Biogen Idec

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 8:30 am to 9:30 am

I was never a fan of Planning’s Capital Expenditures application, finding it was easier and more flexible to roll my own. Oracle must have heard my whining as they have released Project Financial Planning (PFP). Matt Ward’s customer success story should be interesting.

Unleashing Hyperion Planning Security Using ODI

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 9:45 am to 10:45 am

Ricardo Giampaoli and Rodrigo Radtke de Souza are both huge fans of ODI (as am I) and really understand and hack it to pieces (as alas, I do not at their deep level). I have however been known to twist Planning into a pretzel for fun and profit and I do have at least a basic appreciation of ODI. Hopefully that all means I will be able to keep up. Hopefully.

Planning with ASO: An Implementation Roadmap

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 11:15 am to 12:15 am

As I am (as noted above) hip deep in a competing presentation, I am beyond interested to see how Jake Turrell has approached ASO Planning and what he has on offer. Jake does good stuff and will be sure to have at least a somewhat different take on the tool. Unfortunately, I am going to be presenting my Hybrid Essbase session at the same time so I do hope this is a session ODTUG records.

Running with Scissors and Other Things You Shouldn't Do With Hyperion Planning

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 3:15 pm to 4:15 pm

Brian Marshall is going to catalogue Things That Planning Cannot Do, And How To Do Them. This ought to be fun.

Planning on the Cloud

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Shankar Viswanathan is the Planning product manager, so if he speaks about the functionality of Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) I daresay he will lay down the definitive word. I just hope he keeps his energy levels up, because he’s 50% of the Thursday Planning Deep Dive panel session.

EPM Business Content

Leveraging Essbase Throughout the Enterprise to Increase Productivity and Profitability: A Use Case for Essbase at The Kroger Co.

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 11:15 am to 12:15 pm

Elizabeth Ferrell will be covering one of my favorite tools, AppliedOLAP’s Dodeca, works as a budgeting tool in an environment of 500 (!) Essbase cubes. This ought to be fascinating stuff.

Transition from Traditional Forecasting to Rolling Forecasts

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 9:45 am to 10:45 am

Juan Porter will cover the business and functional side of moving from yearly to rolling forecasts. Important stuff, and important for customers (and EPM geeks, come to think of it) to understand.

Bulletproofing Excel and Smart View

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

Did Charles Beyer wrap Smart View in many layers of Kevlar? Shelter it behind armor as thick as a King George V class battleship? Sometimes I am blown away by the awesomeness of Smart View, other times I have a visceral desire to blow it away. Hopefully Charles can make it all better for me and everyone else.

Reporting

One Spreadsheet, All My Data

Monday, 23 June 2014, 1:15 pm to 2:15 pm

Matt Milella and Toufic Wkim, both of Oracle Corp, will show how to exploit Smart View to the fullest extent with every data source imaginable. Matt and Toufic are excellent and entertaining speakers.

How GE Lit Up Smart View and Brought Good Things to Life For Its Users

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 8:30 am to 9:30 am

Gary Adashek will cover how he managed the transition from the Excel Essbase add-in to Smart View. I imagine he has a few new gray hairs because of that but I also he also has more than a few tips to help all of us make the transition.

PDF Bursting into Workspace

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Celvin Kattookaran dives deep into the Workspace API to manage reports like never before.

Implementing Advanced Financial Reporting Concepts for Rolling Trend Reports

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

If you build rolling forecasts in Planning you must build rolling reports. Come to Scott LeBeau’s session to find out how.

Smart View Advanced Topics

Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 8:30 am to 9:30 am

Glenn Schwartzberg, older-not-really-brother will be presenting on Smart View. His session is short on details but Glenn always does excellent work.

Transitioning Functional End Users from Add-In to Smart View - A Change Management Study

Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm

Sarah Zumbrum will cover the transition for functional users of Smart View. I hear the transition is a bit akin to chopping one’s hand off with an axe held in that same hand. In other words, a difficult and frustrating task, so this should be a session worth attending.

Is that enough?

Yes, that isn’t every hour of every day (you will note that Saturday’s volunteer event, Sunday’s symposium, and Thursday’s Deep Dives are all not, yet, covered), but it sure is an awful lot. Will I get to attend all of these sessions? Given my role(s) behind the scenes at the conference, probably not, but I am as always hopeful.

I’m sure you have your favorites – what are they? Send ‘em in to the comments section of this blog.

Be seeing you.

↧

Deep Dive Thursday at Kscope14

June 9, 2014, 5:32 am

≫ Next: Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Symposiums at the smokin’ ODTUG Kscope14

≪ Previous: The sessions I want to attend at Kscope14

Choices, choices, choices

I already wrote about the Planning deep dive I am hosting on Thursday, 26 June 2014 at Kscope14, two weeks ago and I encourage you to keep on sending deeply embarrassing and probing (not regarding me, regarding Oracle thankyouverymuch) Tweets using the hashtag #PlanningDeepDive. This is your chance to, metaphorically at least, put Essbase and Planning Oracle product management on the spot. Let’s not have all the questions come out of my not terribly imaginative mind lest the next release of Planning look like this:

Yes, that is somewhat unlikely, but there are many who would applaud the return of AppMan, or at least something that behaves like it for both Essbase and Planning. So mark that down as one of my questions to Shankar and Gabby.

But the Planning Deep Dive is not the only Deep Dive happening on the last day of the conference. Oh no, you are to be spoilt for choice as there are nine different Deep Dives happening at the same time. In other words, the competition is on, and the competition is fierce, but that only means that you win as there will be great content no matter what session you attend. I only point out that the Planning session that yr. obdt. svt. is likely to be the most interesting, entertaining, and generally awesome of the bunch. Ahem.

The heart of the matter

As I wrote, there are nine Deep Dives in total, and I will not be crushed (a bit hurt, mind, but not crushed) if your interests do not revolve around Planning and Essbase. ODTUG is catholic in its scope, and there is quite literally something for everyone. What do I mean? Cast your eyes down the page and gasp in wonder.

Application Express

Scott Spendolini of Enkitec will be leading a two hour session covering APEX security including instance and application level settings, architecture reviews, and eliminating coding vulnerabilities. This is Important Stuff.

ADF & Fusion Development

Don’t know what Application Development Framework (I think I have that right) is? Take a look at EPM 11.1.2.3.500 on the web. ADF all the way. So it is an important part of the EPM architecture and really the way forward for all of Oracle’s web-based development.

Luc Bors of AMIS Services will be showing how to go far beyond the documentation (almost always a good thing and that is sort of why you come to Kscope, right?) by showing the undocumented and not taught tips and tricks that make a mobile ADF application fly.

Developer’s Toolkit & The Database

I have to preface this summary by saying most of what Cary Milsap of Method R says about the Oracle database flees far, far, far over my head. Having said that, Cary is a fantastic speaker and he has some very interesting takes on what it means to be a good programmer.

Let me try putting it this way – often when I attend a session at Kscope I learn new technical features, knowledge about a product, or a way to fix something that doesn’t work. That is all great, in fact better than great, but Cary explains how to think about problems. That’s a very different proposition and one that I find fascinating.

His session on the Oracle database is all about finding slow code, timing it, and fixing it. I daresay he will throw in a mix of why you should think about performance and how to think about it. Powerful stuff indeed.

Business Intelligence

Kevin McGinley of Accenture and Stewart Bryson of Rittman Mead are two physically opposite geeks who think with one mind. And apparently that mind is fixated on Late Night With David Letterman if only Dave did BI.

Inquiring minds want to know: do they do Stupid BI Tricks? Join them and find out.

Essbase

Tim German of Qubix is trying something really ambitious – a very different and in depth approach to the content a panel covers. Normally, a panel presentation takes questions from the audience during the session and the panelists respond. There’s not a thing wrong with that approach and there are several such panels on Essbase and Planning during Kscope14.

What Tim is doing that is exciting and different is that he is asking you, oh Kscope14 attendee, to submit questions during the week that will hopefully stump, confuse, and inspire in-depth responses from the panelists. I think of this as a way for you to propose mini-presentations (they may be minus fancy Powerpoint slides, but the quality of response should be there) to the panelists. With luck, they will disagree with one another, sparks will fly, and good time will be had by all. At the very least ought to be entertaining.

I should mention that the panelists will be:

Tim Tow
Mark Rittman
Glenn Schwartzberg
Carol Crider
Sarah Zumbrum
Steve Liebermensch

So yeah, some interesting people. :)

Here’s how you can submit questions to Tim:

Via the Twitter hashtag #EssbaseDeepDive
Directly to Tim’s Twitter account at @CubeCoder
Via email to EssbaseDeepDive@gmail.com

Planning

As I wrote at the end of May, I am moderating the Planning Deep Dive and I think it is as unorthodox as the Essbase session. Both the Planning and the Essbase product managers, Shankar Viswanathan and Gabby Rubin, will be on stage, ready to take your questions. It has been one of my frustrations that Essbase and Planning have their road maps discussed separately as Planning is so reliant on Essbase for its features and Essbase is equally driven by Planning’s requirements. The two are symbiotically joined and finally we have the ability to quiz both of them on where the products are and where they are going. Send in your questions either via this blog or on the Twitter hashtag #PlanningDeepDive. Apparently I am an underachiever compared to Tim as I have only two ways to contact me – Twitter and of course this blog’s comment section.

Regardless of my laziness, I am counting on your difficult and interesting questions to make Oracle inadvertently tell us all kinds of cool things that maybe they would have withheld. Of course Gabby and Shankar may never come back, but one can at least hope for an interesting session this Kscope. Next year is someone else’s problem. ;)

Financial Close

Chris Barbieri of Ranzal is continuing his “What would happen if I did…in Hyperion Financial Management” series. Will he: split the atom, discover a cure for the common cold, or merely come up with something super cool in HFM?

My guess is on the last as from the description I see both hacks of HFM (what fun is it if the tool isn’t twisted into a pretzel?) and how to actually test if the hack works (Test? Why do that? Oh yeah, the destruction of the earth is a possibility.) All of this is to help you, HFMers, to understanding how the tool works at the lowest level. Cool stuff and I should add that Chris is a very entertaining speaker.

EPM Foundations

Those of you foolish enough to read this blog on an ongoing basis know that I am somewhat challenged when it comes to infrastructure. That is in fact a fiction, I am an infrastructure idiot – it is simply beyond me and my skill set. Sigh.

The guy that I call when I am absolutely and positively stuck (and the guy that I unreservedly recommend to clients) is none other than the moderator of this session – John Booth of Huron Consulting. John is kind enough to take pity on me and once in a while I sort of, kind of, barely repay him. So basically it’s all giving on his side and all taking on mine.

John continues his generosity with all of you by heading up a three man panel (John, Rob Donahue of Rolta, and Eric Helmer) giving you 90 minutes of their combined knowledge and infrastructure good practices. That is simply amazing and if you are responsible for your implementation’s trouble-free running, this session is for you.

Reporting

Tracy McMullen of interRel is heading a mix of EPM and BI reporting experts. If her abstract can be believed, restaurant paper napkins are one of the media. I think that might be tounge in cheek.

In fact what Tracy has on offer is a you-ask-‘em, they-answer-them panel that interestingly covers both sides of the Business Intelligence/Enterprise Performance Management divide. Smart View, OBIEE, and Financial Reports are to be covered, and if you ask, maybe, just maybe those paper napkins could be in play.

And there you have it

As always, Kscope suffers from too much good content all at the same time. What a conference, what a problem to have.

Thursday’s Deep Dives continue that tradition and I know you will all be there for what promises to be a very interesting and innovative series of events. If I wasn’t moderating, I would be flitting from room to room, trying to get all of the geeky wisdom I could into my brain. You might just be able to do that.

See you in Seattle.

↧

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Symposiums at the smokin’ ODTUG Kscope14

June 16, 2014, 8:53 am

≫ Next: Kscope14 Day 0

≪ Previous: Deep Dive Thursday at Kscope14

Introduction

You have to be of a certain age (middle) and have a certain interest (cars) and it likely doesn’t hurt to have roots in a certain place (the Midwest) to know this man and this sound and this place. At least click on the sound link – so cool.

What, gasser racing isn’t your thing? Hard to believe but I am told it is true. And it all happened on Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

What’s your Sunday?

If you are at ODTUG Kscope14, I daresay you’ll be at the Sunday Symposiums, where we get to hear, direct from Oracle, where the products we use are going. If the past is prologue to the future, I can say that what gets announced on Sunday is the early jump on what Oracle will be announcing at Oracle Open World. That’s pretty cool – Oracle use Kscope as the preview venue, not their own conference. We are insanely lucky.

Who will be speaking, and on what?

Oh, just a few topics:

Apex – Joel Kallman, Patrick Wolf, Marc Sewtz, David Peake, Shakeeb Rahman, Jason Straub
ADF – Geoff Poremba, Shay Shmeltzer, Joe Huang, Doug Clarke
Business Intelligence – Stewart Bryson (the first non-Oracle employee on this list), Richard Tomlinson, Mike Durran, Matt Millela (Matt, you’ve left us EPMers!)

As this is actually something I sort of tangentially do, I should note that the always entertaining Matt will be speaking on Oracle BI Mobile

Database and Developer’s Toolkit – Kris Rice, Steven Fuerenstein, Mark Drake, Jeff Smith, Kuassi Menshah
EPM (This is going to be more in depth because this is what Essbase hackers really care about.)

Matt Bradley – EPM Strategy and Interactive Keynote
Rich Wilkie and Al Marciante – Financial Close Suite
Mitch Campbell – Reporting
Robert Peel and Al Marciante – DRM
Mike Case and Rich Wilkie – FDMEE
Gabby Rubin and Steve Liebermensch – Essbase
Matt Millela – Smart View (Matt, you didn’t leave us)

EPM Business Content

Gary Crisci and Ron Dimon – The ROI of EPM as a Management Process
Michael Heukels – The Current State of Affairs in Financial Planning
Mike Nader and Dave Collins – Driving the Future of Strategic Planning
Rich Wilkie – Streamlining the Financial Close

Don’t you wish there were more than one of you?

I wouldn’t inflict two Camerons on the world, but I do sort of wish I could bounce back and forth between the EPM, Business Intelligence, and EPM Business Content symposiums. As always with Kscope we are spoilt for choice. Alas, I cannot be in two places at once, but I sure wish I could.

The Sunday Symposiums are likely worth the price of admission all on their own. I think overall Kscope is fantastic value for money and Sunday is just the icing on the cake.

If you are not coming this year, I have to wonder why and hope to see you next year.

Be seeing you.

↧

Kscope14 Day 0

June 22, 2014, 7:02 am

≫ Next: Kscope14 Day 1

≪ Previous: Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Symposiums at the smokin’ ODTUG Kscope14

Introduction

The Saturday of Kscope is, for me at least, always the first day of the conference. One could argue that in fact it’s the Sunday symposiums, but Saturday is when I get to meet all of the friends I communicate with via (almost exclusively) all of the electronic media available to us today. That face to face meeting is super important as we are all human (I think) and that physical presence allows connections that simply aren’t possible any other way.

My first Kscope (then Kaleidoscope) was in 2008 – I made friends at that first day painting a school that, for instance, helped me write a book and hosted me at two conferences in New Zealand and Australia. And it gave back to the host city. Pure magic and one I am very grateful for. It was my first inkling that Kscope and ODTUG were very special things indeed.

This year

The Community Service Day is one way to make that connection and do a good deed for whatever city Kscope is in. This year’s event was (I am writing this the day after the fact) with the Nature Consortium, a local group that ties environment, people, and the arts. All admirable goals, to be sure, and Kscope14 is proud to be part of that effort. And of course, you know what that means – geeks struggling, a lot, with physical labor. Even my typical pasty white pallor has been darkened (I think that is the polite way of saying I got a bit of a sun burn) by my time in the sun mulching and digging out invasive species. I hate yard work, yet I enjoyed this. It has to be the people, the people, the people. And so it is.

I should mention what all of this work was for – we helped the Nature Consortium in the never ending quest to get rid of invasive species. In this case it was removing (digging out with shovels) and making sure that it cannot come back (the mulching) Himalayan Blackberry from the native forest. So delicious and so bad for everything else. Perhaps it was just as well we were not there when we could eat the fruit, else there might have been a mutiny? Geeks can sometimes loose their rationality in the face of fruit. Or at least I can.

For your amusement

These pictures tell their own tale. Please excuse the poor photography – I have slipped since I first learnt how to develop B&W film back in 4-H (can this actually still be done – we were likely a living breathing Health & Safety disaster in the making with all of those chemicals). Also, I think my “smartphone” is now old enough to vote. No matter, the pictures do show the progress that we made. I’m always glad to give back to nature – no woods = no hiking and that = no fun.

Brekkers

The bus ride out

Shovel ready

Mulching

Btw, you cannot see the bucket brigade that supplied we happy few mulchers. There was a line of people handing off mulch buckets to us – was the line really a mile long? I had no idea I was getting they were getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

The bucket brigade

I actually did manage to get a shot of them. Thanks, guys.

Our Boss

This is OracleNerd’s aka Chet Justice’s son, Chet Justice, Jr., aka LC (Little Chet) being the He Who Supervises And Catches Empty Buckets In A Surprising Manner. I have certainly worked for worse bosses and LC really put his heart into the whole matter. Just like his father, when I think about it.

Arts and Crafts

We were the craft, here was the jazz trumpet.

And the finished (well, almost) product

That’s LC just not giving up. Tougher than us geezers, that’s for sure.

The end of Day 0

At the end of all of this (for some of us, quite unusual) hard physical labor, we had a pizza and then, hopefully, a shower and a nap.

Of course that was not to be (apologies to all who had to be near my, um, fragrance – I am better now that I’ve bathed), as registration and of course rehearsals of presentations were on order.

I’ve basically had a headache and been tired since I got here on Thursday last (ODTUG’s board meeting was on Friday) and it ain’t getting better. Oh well, par for the course for Kscope and it is all tremendous fun.

Be seeing you.

↧

Kscope14 Day 1

June 22, 2014, 9:36 am

≫ Next: Kscope14 Day 2

≪ Previous: Kscope14 Day 0

If you’re not here, you don’t know what you’re missing

Sunday at ODTUG Kscope14 is where Oracle let down their collective hair and tell us, under Safe Harbor, where our beloved tools are going in the next year. Note – this happens before Oracle holds their own, little known conference. This is preview, in a word, awesome.

But of course that Safe Harbor means I can’t tell you anything about the content. Nope, sorry, not going to do it. I want Oracle to come back next year. And I’d like to not get sued.

What I can relate

As I type this, the audience is grilling Matt Bradley. Matt is brave.

And I can tell you is that Oracle has (or will, later in the day) talked about:

EPM Strategy and Interactive Keynote
EPM Reporting with OBIEE
DRM
Planning Suite
FDMEE
Essbase
Smart View
Wrapup

Don’t you wish you were here? You can be if you aren’t already. Just attend Kscope15.

See you there!

P.S.

As I can, I will update this blog as the day goes on.

Planning -- OMG, so cool. And I have to leave and do ODTUG stuff. Arrgh. Way to go Shankar!

↧

Kscope14 Day 2

June 23, 2014, 11:41 am

≫ Next: Kscope14 Day 3

≪ Previous: Kscope14 Day 1

Kscope14 Day2

It has begun

Finally, yes, the “real” Kscope has started. Okay, to be fair yesterday’s Sunday Symposium was the real kickoff, but today is the first day that attendees are presenting.

I’m currently watching my hated former oppressor beloved ex-boss, Edward Roske, battling my older-brother-that-I-never-had-and-will-never-have, My Man In California, Kind to his Mother, Glenn Schwartzberg on Essbase design concepts. One of them is the smart one, the other not so much. You decide who. I know who the better man is.

It will begin

The ASO Planning session I am copresenting with Tim German (you can decide who is the smart one and who isn’t, I’m pretty sure Tim is the former and I am the latter) is at 1:15 pm in room 604/603/602.

I’m very excited about all of the cool things we learnt in putting together the presentation.

ASO procedural calculations

If you are an ASO Essbase database developer, and you have struggled with ASO procedural calcs, even if the word “Planning” makes you ill, you need to be at this session. We have something really exciting and I hope to see you all there.

The end, but not really

I will, as time permits, update this blog all day long.

Update numbers 1 and 2

Update the first

The ASO Planning presentation Tim German and I gave went over well, hopefully. We just pipped the 60 minute mark so not as bad as we might have thought from a timing perspective.

Otherwise, it went well, although of course the reviews will tell the tale.

We are going to see if we can present all the cool stuff we didn’t have time for in an ODTUG webinar, or failing that, some other kind of webinar. Watch this space.

Update the second

Gabby Rubin (ODTUG Oracle Contributor of the Year) is doing his always entertaining best with Essbase futures. Of course it’s all under Safe Harbor, so I can’t say anything. But it is very interesting. :) This is some seriously interesting stuff. You should be here.

Probably all for today

Kscope14 is nothing if not fun, beyond seeing the future of Essbase. After Gabby’s session, is the next cocktail party, and then the EPM Monday Night Festival.

Nope, not all for today

The EPM Carnival

Wow, what a fantastic success this was. Please excuse the Stone Age nature of my pictures as my “smartphone” uses vacuum tubes, needs to be wound regularly, and I think uses coal or maybe charcoal for power. All of the nice looking pictures are courtesy of Leticia Cordova who apparently isn’t as cheap as I am and thus can take pictures that are actually legible.

The madness begins

Arch of balloons

Are these games disturbing? Why yes they are.

Finally getting me to shut up

Will need eye bleach after this one

Monday night meetup

We EPMers are a hardy lot, and there was more, more, more to Day 2. If there is this much more, more, more to day 3, I may not make it till Day 3, but I will have a good time in doing it. In short, Natalie Delemar (aka @EssbaseLady) and I hosted another of our ODTUG EPM Monday Night meetups. A fun (and late) time was had by all.

As the saying goes, if it didn’t happen in social media, it didn’t happen at all so here are the pics.

What do EPM geeks do when they’re at a bar having a fun night out?

$C:\Users\cameronl\Pictures\p7.jpg$

Sometimes we smile at the camera

$C:\Users\cameronl\Pictures\p8.jpg$

We draft unwitting Oracle employees into our midst

$C:\Tempdir\Conferences\ODTUG 2014\20140623_234009.jpg$

Or we make silly faces

$C:\Tempdir\Conferences\ODTUG 2014\20140623_233927.jpg$

It was a lot of fun. I am beyond sleepy. I also can’t believe how fast Kscope14 is passing by. Noooo, make it last longer! That’s my brain – the rest of my body may be disagreeing.

Be seeing you.

↧

Kscope14 Day 3

June 24, 2014, 5:02 pm

≫ Next: Kscope14 Days 4 and 5

≪ Previous: Kscope14 Day 2

Oh my goodness

Are we really at the halfway mark? I suppose it depends on how you define the start of Kscope14. Given my state of tiredness, I don’t know if I can count to 5 (or is it 6 or is it 4?) and then do a divide by 2. No matter, Kscope14 is now in full swing.

And what does that mean, Cameron?

It means busy. I should note that this state of business is true for everyone, not just me. Or maybe especially not me. I, thankfully, don’t have to work a booth. I do have ODTUG (not too bad) and OTN (quite nice, actually) responsibilities but compared to doing the meet-and-greet that conference booth duty entails it’s nothing. So I am not (well, maybe just a little, but this is hopefully the last time today) whining too much about it.

No really, what?

I am actually relaxing right now listening to Gary Crisci explain the nuances of ASO Design Principles for Financial Reporting. I feel so…calm listening to Gary. He’s really an excellent presenter: a good speaker, extremely logical, and very, very, very thorough. Yes, I am a fan. And, unlike me, Gary is relaxed. Isn’t he a little bit like Rick Moranis’ satire of Perry Como? Perhaps I am the only one who sees it?

So where was the stress?

I am not presenting today but I was on two panels.

The first was at 8:30 (eek!) on Tim German’sEssbase Optimization Panel with John Booth, Dave Collins, Edward Roske, and MMIC Glenn Schwartzberg. Considering breakfast consisted of two cartons of milk and an energy bar (I have too little time to eat – That Is A Bad Thing) I think I managed not to embarrass myself too much.

The second, the OTN-sponsored Essbase ACE Lunch and Learn was at lunch time (food, so this was good). It was moderated by the aforementioned Gary Crisci and the panelists included yr. obdt. srvt., Glenn Schwartzberg (Glenn, like me, fits the idiom a bad penny always turns up), Tim Tow, and John Booth.

And that was all a bit tiring. Happily, I am mostly obligation free for the rest of the day. That means I get to look forward tonight to rehearsing with Tim German for our Evolution or Revolution: The New Hybrid Essbase session. For those of you interested in seeing the future of Essbase development (surely everyone?) you really ought to be there at 11:15 in room 604/603/602.

So is the above a whine? I guess you could argue that it is, but it’s all tremendous fun, despite the level of effort, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Are you here? Do you agree? What, you aren’t here? Why?

If Oracle technology is important to you, and you like to stay informed, aka employed, I can’t think of any other place on God’s green earth that is a better place to learn, meet the experts (obviously someone other than me), have fun, and figure out what the next step in your career will be.

I know I’ll see you next year.

And for those of you who are here, don’t you agree? Send your huzzahs care of this blog.

Be seeing you.

↧

Kscope14 Days 4 and 5

June 27, 2014, 8:59 pm

≫ Next: What's coming in Planning 11.1.2.4

≪ Previous: Kscope14 Day 3

What happened to live blogging Kscope14?

That, as the saying goes, is a great question. Kscope happened. I have never, ever, ever been so busy over a sustained period of time as I was this past week. Ever.

Sleep? Gave up on it. Food? Gave up on it. Coffee? Definitely did not give up on it. Fun, learning, networking, giving? Gave all I had and more, just like everyone else at the conference. I will say that not getting sleep at Kscope is par for the course, but literally not having enough time to eat…Not Cool. I usually carry some kind of energy bar. Good thing or I’d have completely dropped dead.

So that’s my excuse, I was just too busy to blog. Surely eating and sleeping do have to have some kind of priority?

It gets worse and worse every year. Or is that better and better? You decide.

So, Cameron, what did you do?

Yet another great question. Natalie Delemar aka @EssbaseLady and I were comparing notes about sessions post the conference. I figured out that I managed to go to just two sessions other than my own. Two. That’s really a bit disappointing but it does sort of explain why I seemed to live on Mojo bars.

Briefly:

Two presentations (ASO Planning and Hybrid Essbase)

As an aside, you have not “lived” till you stay up past 1:30 am rehearsing your part of a presentation in preparation for a rehearsal 3-ish or so hours later with your copresenter. Fun times, fun times.

Essbase experts (so what was I doing there?) panel participant
Meetings with Oracle
Interview with OTN
Interview with ODTUG
Moderated the Thursday Planning Deep Dive session
Attended the two aforementioned sessions
Did a meet and greet of (just about) each and every vendor in the exhibition hall
Had fun
Sometimes

Slept
Ate

So yes, after all that I think I understand the paucity of sessions. What a conference.

Yeah, you were busy. So what?

My presentations with BFF Tim German

ASO Planning – Do this, not that

ASO Planning, is real, powerful, and hugely fast. Even procedural calcs with a sufficiently powerful hack (If there was a hack meter, and its range went from 1 to 10, this one would be an 11, thanks to Joe Watkins.) can be almost absurdly, did-it-really-calculate fast. I mean fast. ASO Planning isn’t for everyone (there are licensing, calculation complexity, and other considerations, but not very many), but if your application fits within its constraints and needs ASO Planning’s speed, I would definitely encourage you to look at it. It can be magic.

Several blog posts, maybe another presentation, and a webinar or two may come out of this session – there was a ridiculous amount of content we couldn’t use because of time constraints.

Hybrid Essbase – Evolution or Revolution

I think it’s safe to say that Hybrid Essbase is a revolution and it will change what we do with Essbase. It’s almost better than ASO, and I think ASO itself is a very exciting concept and a proven product. The marriage of an ASO-like aggregation and query processor with BSO is going to solve all kinds of design and performance issues that BSO imposes. And we get to use BSO’s rich calc script language. Magic.

The two presentations I managed to see

Glenn vs. Edward

I’ve already blogged about this in my Day 2 post. As always, the snipping and bickering between the two of them reminds me of an old married couple. I think they like each other. And no question, Glenn won that contest.

It’s mostly basic stuff, but I did like the review of Glenn’s accumulation trick. It’s a clever idea that allows you to get dimension totals while skipping intermediate aggregations you don’t need for allocation purposes.

There was however something about what he and Edward went back and forth on that bothered me. As I looked at the code sample, I wondered how the code worked when it was run more than once.

Here’s what it looks like in EAS:

The concept is really quite clever: loop level zero members adding their value to a top of house (or wherever if you used @RELATIVE and an intermediate hiearchy ancestor) ancestor skipping all of the intermediate hierarchies between the bottom and top levels. There could be quite a few so time would add up making this a fast approach to get that total for allocations or whatever the purpose is.

Does it work?

The answer is yes.

Before accumulation

After accumulation

A run of Glenn’s code gives us the 2,300 we would expect.

The sting in the tail

So what happens if 100 is entered into Sasparilla?

Unpossible! But all too true. What happened?

The explanation

Simply that there was already 2,300 in Product->Sales and Glenn’s technique added another 2,400 (the already existing 2,300 from all of the existing level zero Products and the new 100 in Sasparilla). If the technique doesn’t clear beforehand, the code will return unpexpected results.

I can almost hear Glenn say, “But it’s not an aggregation, it’s an accumulation.” And so it is, and it is fast. Having said that, usually well-written BSO calc scripts can be run one or a thousand times in a row and return the same result each time.

If you want to use this technique, make sure you have a way of clearing out that top Product->Sales member before you run this code.

NB – It’s not that this accumulation approach is bad (I actually like it else I wouldn’t bother to highlight it), it’s that it breaks the normal behavior of Essbase aggregations if the developer isn’t careful to remember that he isn’t aggregating, but instead using a clever hack.

Glenn, MMIC, you may very well have stated this and it flashed by me, but I sort of don’t think so and this could really trap the unwary. If you talked about it, think of this as a further illustration of your amazing acumen. If you didn’t, I’m here to correct your mistakes. :) Heaven knows if I am correcting a mistake or oversight, this might be the second or maybe the third time. I contrast that with the 100 (at least) going the other way.

Speaking of the power of Hybrid, see Planning on the cloud

Shankar Viswanathan and Prasad Kulkarni really wowed the crowd on this one.

The big deal(s):

Really big grids really, really, really fast. Faster even than Smart View. Did I mention they were big?
Client side calcs via an Excel-like editing metaphor that post back to forms. OMG cool.
Intelligent sandboxes (finally, as I have kludged this at just about every Planning client ever)
Valid combinations
And of course Hybrid
Did I mention that all of this is coming to on-premise Planning?

I’m going to write a blog post on this one as well as there’s simply too much to go into but the act of opening up a 120,000 row grid, changing drivers, having it flow through into calculated results, and then aggregating immediately, live, well this particular geek almost swooned. Just as well I didn’t as the choice was either the carpet or the metal frame of a chair. I like all of my teeth and I like them still in my mouth.

In other words, Planning cloud demoed really well. If it works half as well as it demoed, they will have knocked the ball out of the park. If it works as well as they showed…well, that will simply completely change the way we architect Planning solutions. Interesting and fun times lie ahead.

We can (if all goes well) hopefully expect this around the end of the year although as always Oracle reserve the right to say it was all a gigantic game of Let’s Pretend.

If it didn’t happen on social media, it didn’t happen at all

I have a steam punk smartphone, aka, it’s five years old and its camera isn’t exactly on the cutting edge of functionality.

Happily I happen to know some people who are apparently not as cheap as I am (the phone, text, and email bits work, mostly, just fine, thanks) and thus can actually provide photographs that can illustrate all of the cool parties that only happen at Kscope. Thanks go out to Leticia and Jessica Cordova (yes, they are sisters who work together in EPM and that is actually pretty cool) who were kind enough to take time out to get some great shots of the entertainment and send them to me so I could post them here.

Monday night EPM carnival

You’ve seen the madness here, now see it in a legible and disturbing photograph. Correction, very disturbing photograph. Was a message being sent?

Space Needle

Tim Tow of AppliedOLAP and Jonathan Berry of Accelitis threw a great big shindig at the Seattle Space Needle. That was super cool, and the view from the top was amazing. Of course, what do people take photos of when they’re at the top of a tall building that overlooks a beautiful city? Other people on top of that tall building.

Buddies

Jessica, yr.obdt. svt., Leticia, Jason Jones

Okay, to be fair, here is why cell phones are not used to do real photography:

But it’s still a pretty cool picture.

EMP

Here’s my buddy Joe Aultman looking…weird

It was sort of interesting when Joe walked into my Hybrid presentation and sat in the front row as I was halfway through a slide. I just about lost it. This shot of Joe, at the conference well before he actually needed to look like a refugee from a big hair band, is stolen from @EssbaseLady.

Guitar sculpture

Sky Church video screen (insert sounds of pounding music to get the right feel)

Some total geek with (apparently) Tina Turner and Madonna-no-it’s-Cindy-Lauper-no-it-is-some-sort-of-generic-80s-female-rocker

Do I look like money? I’ve got it on my fingers and round my neck. But not in my wallet. Sigh. Perhaps the glare from the bling is why my eyes are closed?

Btw, that is Natalie Delemar, conference chairwoman on my right and Opal Alapat BI/EPM content chairwoman on my left. I understand each and every one of us has a serious, real, and responsible job. I agree, it is somewhat hard to believe.

Professional dancers (really quite good; certainly better than drunk geeks getting it on)

Amazing aerialists

In short, as only Kscope seems to be able to do, an outstanding series of entertainment events. No one does it like ODTUG. No other conference is like Kscope.

And now we begin planning Kscope15

Kscope14 was the best Oracle user conference ever, bar none.

ODTUG will now make Kscope15 the best Oracle user conference ever, bar none. That means it will beat Kscope14. Such is the penalty of awesomeness.

That awesomeness doesn’t come from Seattle, or the EMP museum, or a really nice convention center, or even the awesomeness of new product demos and strategy direction Oracle give. Kscope isn’t about technology at all, it’s about people. People who give time, effort, and money (never forget the opportunity cost of all of that time) to make sure that attendees meet life-altering friends, learn career-changing techniques and theory, and experience the transformative opportunities that only physical contact with a group of like-minded individuals can bring. Those communities are what make ODTUG and Kscope special, and in some way they’re what makes Oracle the special and successful company that it is. It all comes back round to people and Kscope is the vehicle that unites those people.

Every conference is like magic in a bottle and I begin thinking about the next one before the current one has even finished. Only crazy (I am sort of sure I’m not crazy. I think.) or crazily passionate (guilty as charged) people think that way but the awesomeness of Kscope has that kind of influence.

If you work in Oracle technologies, and you don’t come to Kscope, you’re crazy.

See you at Kscope15!

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What's coming in Planning 11.1.2.4

July 8, 2014, 12:37 pm

≫ Next: Calculation Manager, BSO Planning, and ASO Planning combine for an awesome ASO Essbase procedural calculation hack -- Part 1

≪ Previous: Kscope14 Days 4 and 5

Before I begin

Like many of the oh-so-cool previews at Kscope14, this session by Shankar Viswanathan (Planning Product Manager) and Prasad Kulkarni (Planning Development Manager) was prefaced by a slide that looked quite a bit like this:

That’s from the Thursday Planning Deep Dive but the text is (I am 100% sure because I got it from the Essbase PM) Oracle’s.

Mentioning this is just my way of warning you that everything I saw, and everything I am going to relate, and the super cool demo that you can see all may come true. Maybe. Or it may not. Oracle are very clear that this is what they would like to see happen but as always with plans, Planning PSU4 (aka Planning 11.1.2.4) may not occur, Planning PSU4 may not occur when they hope, Planning PSU4 may cause Redwood Shores to sink into the sea, etc. In other words, enjoy the below but no more. I certainly hope it all comes true.

The key takeaways

I was pretty much blown away by what I saw both because many of the papercuts have been resolved and because Oracle have added so many new bits of functionality.

Looking at my notes from Shankar and Prasad’s session, I see the following coming for Patch Set Update (PSU) 4:

Improved performance
Sandboxing
Client side calculations
Valid Combinations

Performance

Forms

Performance in Planning forms has been an issue for just about as long as there has been a Hyperion Planning. As of 11.1.2.0 and a usable version of Smart View with Planning, I’ve recommended that clients who want speed (and in general just want decent functionality) to go the Planning/Smart View route. Now I may have to rethink that.

From a performance perspective, Oracle are now claiming that a form with over 100,000 cells now loads in about five seconds. Hmm, that’s pretty darn quick. How do they do it?

The difference now is that Oracle are now using ADF to pull data on demand very quickly. I think that means that they aren’t really and truly pulling all 100,000 cells into the browser when a planner opens a form but instead they are paging it very quickly and intelligently prefetching the data as required. From a human perspective, it seems instantaneous. How many retrieves from Essbase actually occur (is it just one and Planning caches it or is it multiple quick retrieves – I don’t know and Oracle didn’t say) is difficult to tell but with performance like that, who cares?

What about the sends? Surely there is an issue with that 100,000 cell send back to Essbase? Nope, only the changed data is sent from Planning back to Essbase. Cool, eh?

You can see it all here in this video. Check out the form open (about 120,000 cells) from 00:21 to 00:26 and then near-instant aggregation from 00:35 to 00:37.

Also check out the following screenshots from the video for those of you too lazy to watch a video.

Calculations

Entering the data at 00:35

Immediate updates to Period at 00:36

Big deal you say – dense intra-block calculations are always fast. And so they are.

Fully aggregated at 00:37

But a fraction of a second later the entire Market dimension is aggregated as well. That is not what you would expect from BSO Planning, is it?

Something you should look at

Look at the numbers in green. That’s the top of the house sparse Market dimension. Calculated instantly, thanks to Hybrid Essbase.

Speaking of Hybrid Essbase

What’s the number one thing (way beyond form performance) that drives customers, admins, and consultants nuts about Planning? Calculation performance is the answer. What if calculation performance was just about instantaneous? And the calculated results were also intelligently updated from Essbase back to Planning? Say hello to Hybrid Essbase as part of Planning. Yes, the same Hybrid Essbase that Tim German and I presented on at Kscope14 (not as part of Planning) will now be certified for Planning. With the improvements that are coming in Hybrid Essbase 11.1.2.3.502 (hey, you were at Gabby Rubin’s Essbase Kscope14 roadmap session, right?) you know how D-T-S and Time Balance will be supported along with ASO-like dynamic calculation speeds.

Implications

This new speed in form retrieval, scrolling, entering, sending, and now calculating means that a lot of formerly impossible Planning applications may become commonplace.

I am emphasizing the may part of this because I think the last thing the world really needs is a 400,000 Entity dimension with 2,000 planners entering bottom up budgets and then watching Essbase/Planning quickly calculate/aggregate the numbers. Sometimes just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

But what I am anticipating is an end to separate ASO Essbase reporting databases built off of Planning applications. They existed because there was no way to support Actuals reporting in the BSO Plan Types that make up (most of – see the ASO Planning Kscope14 presentation Tim German and I did) Planning. That is a complete pain and cost unnecessary dollars. Why would anyone go through that if Planning can just support the data depth and complexity? Look for this concept to be hotly debated but I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear – Planning can be everything you need in a budgeting application, including reporting.

I also think that driver-based applications that allocate down to a very detailed level will also be possible. Again, this is a question of scaling that wasn’t possible before with BSO Planning (although ASO Planning can do the job quite nicely).

Totally different kinds of applications, non-financial ones in particular, could very well become commonplace where before they were rejected because Planning couldn’t scale. Now it can.

Last thought – ASO Planning, which is really a fairly awesome bit of kit, is in sort of an ambiguous situation. It has the advantage of extraordinarily fast allocations and level zero calculations (even rate calcs – watch this blog for a future post on the power of ASO procedural calcs with Planning), but what will its role be in the face of Hybrid that does so much of the same thing? Only time will tell but I hope ASO Planning gets a chance as it is a fantastic tool and it is available today.

Sandbox

But performance isn’t the only thing Oracle have on offer – they have a sandbox. No, not the one you played in as a kid, I mean the ones that planners use to do what-if tests. I have implemented kludgy ways around this at just about every Planning implementation I have been on (and since I’ve been doing Planning since 2002, that is quite a few) but that was always because the tool didn’t have it natively. Now it does.

What this means is that planners have private what-if slices of their data that they can play with. That part is obvious. What is not obvious is how Planning handles this.

Again, from what I saw and heard (and so I am noting that I may have this wrong), Planning shows base data in a planner’s sandbox but doesn’t copy it to that sandbox. The planner modifies data, runs calcs, etc. in the sandbox and Planning handles the merge of the base data that didn’t change and the updates to those changes.

Think of the slice as really only containing the delta between the existing data and the new data – when a planner looks at his Sandbox, he is seeing the merge of the unchanged base data and his adjustments to those numbers. The UI handles the difference and Essbase (I think) only has to temporarily store a subset of data – this is fast. This is also an awful lot like an ASO slice.

When the planner is happy with his numbers he publishes them back to Planning (they are private until then) and again Planning only updates the new numbers into Essbase.

Custom members on the fly

This feature that again, just about every Planning client I have ever worked with has wanted, was mentioned as part of the Sandbox feature. Planning has this today as part of Workforce and Capex and it will now be available in general Planning as well. If you think about it, this makes sense from a Sandboxing perspective and the fact that it can get published from the Sandbox back to the base Planning app…well, that’s pretty cool.

Client side calculations

This one blew me away – it’s a feature that allows Planners (I’m not totally sure what role does this – Planners, Interactive Users, Administrators, or some new role) to create client-side only calculations that feed their results back to Essbase.

Planners can create these calculations using something that looks an awful like Excel/Smart View (but I believe this is all on the web) and, using Excel formula syntax and cell references, create logic that is posted back to Planning forms and is then calculated on the client side only with the results written back to Essbase. Whew. It is, finally, a breaking of the lock that administrators have on calculations. Again, this will have to be managed, but within the correct context, this is a hugely empowering move for Planners.

In keeping with the spreadsheet UI, Oracle claim they have replicated almost all of Excel’s formulas (so a huge boost over current form calculations). While developing the client side calculations Excel cell references are used; when posted back to Planning it maps those cell references back to member names. OMG so cool.

Valid Combinations

The best has been saved for last. I have personally asked Oracle for this for at least the last four years at Kscope. Perhaps the annoyed glances I thought I got from Shankar during his Planning roadmap presentations were really his way of saying, “You know, Cameron is a complete PITA, especially since he asks me the same question again, and again, and again at every conference, but maybe, just maybe, this is something worth looking into, if only to shut him up.” Perhaps. And I am almost certainly a complete PITA to all sorts of people at Oracle. So double perhaps is likely appropriate.

No matter the motivation (many have wanted this functionality for a long time so the above is artistic license/insanity on my part), we will now be able to define valid combinations (get it?) of dimensions for form navigation. By that I mean, if Entity A is only valid with Products 1, 2, and 3 and Entity B is only valid with Products 3 and 27, those will be the only possible combinations of member selection within the forms, e.g., A can never select 27 and B can never select 1 or 2. The workarounds we have all done in the past (hard coded forms by user type, more attribute dimensions that you can shake a stick at and still lots of semi-hard coded forms) will all now be a thing of the past.

There’s even more functionality in this – in addition to the expected form dropdown filtering, it will also be driven by what’s in the POV (think dynamic user variables and it gets quite interesting), and it will be applicable to Calculation Manager rules. There will even be a report mode that gives us all of the places that people have somehow (could be Essbase, could be forms that don’t use Valid Combinations) gotten data into invalid locations.

Finally, Valid Combinations will fire first and then user security comes into play. This is perfect because it’s exactly the way access should work. First the admin decides what member combinations are valid. Then planners, who may only see a very small slice of a given valid member combination set, have their security applied. The result is data where it needs to go and only there.

When can we see all of this?

As I noted way back in the beginning of this post, with luck we will see this on on-premises Planning by the fall. It will then move to the cloud. This sort of leapfrogging between PBCS and on-premises Planning is actually occurring today and will continue in future.

What does this all mean?

Well, one thing it means is I am not going to be able to whine about:

Planning being soooo slow
How do I stop people from entering data into invalid combinations of members?
My super-lame kludges that supported (kind of) sandboxing

Nor will I be able to whine about client-side calculations. Oracle introduced this before I could even conceive of whining about it. Shall we call it preemptive counter whining? Or just a way to get me to shut up? You decide.

What all of this really means is quite interesting – Oracle are ramping up the performance, adding much-wanted functionality, and doing it all at a super-fast cadence. I’m really very excited (in case it isn’t obvious from all 2,000+ words above this sentence) about where Oracle are taking the product. I haven’t seen this much innovation from Oracle since Planning first came out. Hopefully Oracle will be able to continue the great work and sometime this fall we’ll all be going through the act of installing 11.1.2.4 in our development environments. A big thanks to Oracle for previewing this at Kscope14.

What oh what oh what will Oracle preview at Kscope15 in beautiful Hollywood, Florida? The only way to know is to sign up.

Be seeing you.

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