Essbase 11.1.2 New Features review
In my last post I gave a brief overview of some of the new features in EPM 11.1.2, specifically from an installation and environment point of view. Today I want to focus specifically on Essbase, and what is good, great and maybe unfortunate in the new release. This is by no means a comprehensive overview of all the new features, but rather my take on some of the more interesting aspects.
EPM security link – Essbase apparently does not store user details in the .SEC file, if running in EPM security mode. This means there is no need to synchronize security between Shared Services and Essbase any more. This is very good news, as this synchronization added an extra step which could be forgotten and meant security issues all the time.
Allocations on ASO cubes – You can now perform allocations on ASO cubes, previously this could only be done in BSO. One more reason to go ASO rather than BSO as a default? If that is not all, the next feature might convince you…
Custom Calculations on ASO – Basically this means you can now write calc scripts for ASO cubes. Not as fully featured yet as for BSO, for example you can only target level 0 cells, but a step in making ASO on par with BSO in terms of calculation capability. Will BSO eventually fall away…?
New @XWRITE function – the inverse of the @XREF function. During calculation you can write to data blocks in the same or other remote cubes (whereas @XREF pulls data from remote cubes). Very useful if you have distributed cube environment with data dependencies, as from a central calculation you can update all dependent cubes, rather than pulling data from calcs in each cube.
32 alias tables – Instead of 10 you can now have up to 32 alias tables. I guess this is good for some applications, I must be honest in all my years of using Essbase I have never used more than 6 alias tables in a single cube, and that was an extreme case.
IPv6 support – As all the other modules in EPM 11.1.2, Essbase also supports the new IPv6 internet protocol, which aims to allow many more addressable internet addresses.
OCI support – Essbase can now use OCI to connect directly to Oracle sources in load rules, rather than ODBC. It helps that Oracle is now the boss…
Monitor progress of data loads and dim builds – While data loads or dim builds are in progress, you can now query the progress, to get info such as which stage of the process is taking place, number of records processed and rejected, etc. This can be done if you kick off an asynchronous data load or dim build only. Very useful to track progress, something you previously couldn’t really do, short of continually refreshing the log file to get some idea of what is happening.
Error handling in Calc Scripts – Using the new @RETURN function you can exit a calc script with a custom error code based on results of an IF..THEN statement. This means you can add a lot more logic to error handling in calc scripts, and return meaningful codes.
MaxL Error Handling improved – You have an IfError in the MaXL Shell that can detect errors like syntax and no permission errors. You can therefore directly in the MaxL shell test for more complicated errors and exit with a return code, or continue processing. This should make error trapping and processing in MaxL scripts a little better than currently possible.
Export metadata to XML files – Another addition to the sorely lacking metadata export in Essbase has been added. You can now export metadata to an XML file, using a MaxL command (EXPORT OUTLINE). These XML files can then be used by other proceses where you need outline information, or to compare outlines. I assume at a later stage you will be able to import from these XML files?
Failover support – You could do failover for Essbase with High Availability Services, but they now made it possible through using Oracle Process Manager and Notification Server (OPMN). This offers comprehensive failoverand clustering support for Essbase.
This is some of the more important new features, there are more, if you want to read about these yourself you can access the EPM documentation at the following link:
Oracle EPM 11.1.2 – Reviewing the new features
Today I finally got my grubby paws on the latest, greatest, best thing ever version of Oracle EPM, 11.1.2. You know, the version Oracle is punting as containing the largest number of functional improvements in specifically the Hyperion EPM applications since Hyperion was bought. At first glance there certainly seems to be some exciting new functionality, things such as Disclosure Management and Financial Close Management for you HFM types, a proper HFM export to Essbase module based on HyperRoll, new functionality in Planning such as much enhanced workflow and excellent integration with Office, etc.
I plan to look at some of the major new features, module by module, and share my finding on this blog. Obviously this will not be done in one or two blogs, but probably a whole series over the next couple of weeks.
For a start, I want to share my thoughts on the new features and direction Oracle is taking in the installation and general architecture of EPM 11.1.2. So here are some of the new things you need to be aware of when starting to implement EPM 11.1.2, some good and some – well you will see…
- The first line which hit me between the eyes was the following: This release is intended for new deployments only. Upgrading or migrating from previous EPM System releases is not supported. In addition, products from this release are not compatible with products and applications from previous releases. What does this mean, exactly? Basically it means install EPM 11.1.2 on a clean environment (new servers), and rebuild your applications – or at least manually migrate them by exporting data and metadata and reimporting on the new environment. Essbase is not really an issue, Planning a little more complex but not too much, but HFM probably requires a lot of work to manually migrate, if not rather rebuild.
- Tomcat is no longer the default embedded J2EE server, Weblogic is. Apache is no longer the default Web Server, Oracle HTTP Server is. This is actually not a bad move for scalability reasons, as long as the promised relatively seamless deployment actually works.
- All EPM tools now make use of a new logging mechanism, Oracle Diagnostic Logging (ODL). Seems like this will offer much better housekeeping of logs, such as max log file size, log file rotation, etc.
- Essbase Excel add-in now has a small Microsoft MSI file for installation. This is great news, you don’t need the entire foundation installation file set just to install the Excel add-in.
- No more OpenLDAP (great news, how many of you have experienced corrupt OpenLDAP repositories). Basically the Shared Services database repository will now house the Native Directory info.
- Default directory structures have changed completely, again. Something like Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11\ is what you can expect, but this can be set at installation time.
- Shared Services and Workspace Web is now a single web service
Next blog I will probably start with the new Essbase features, as well as some Smartview stuff. Let me know if you have any questions on EPM 11.1.2, or want to share any experiences with it.
