Sunday at Open World

Well, I flew up early this morning to San Francisco for Oracle Open World. and got back to my hotel around 9:30 pm. It makes for a long day. I do have to say I was happy with the first day's events. After registering( A fairly painless and fast process) I went to the ODTUG symposium on Hyperion. Four sessions back to back.

The first session was by Edward Raske of interRel. Edward has a very dry wit. Think of him as a dry martini. You know the kind. Gin with a picture of vermouth. He is an acquired taste, but quite knowledgeable. His session on "How Essbase works" was very good. Edward has an interesting approach to sessions. He creates about 200 powerpoint slides and tells you how good the ones he is not showing you are. He went over some basic info on block storage cubes(BSO), nothing really new if you have been around, but very good for most of the audience. He then switched to ASO tried to show the differences. Not an easy task, but interesting never the less.

The second session was on Hyperion reporting tools by Sean Bernhoit. While the information was ok, there were a few errors, like saying the Excel add-in and smartview can't exist together. This is not true, you can have both, just not on the same worksheet. Plus you have to turn on the Add-in option for mouse actions on connected sheets only. While most of the information from this session was good, I found the presentation to be very redundant and a bit boring(sorry Sean). If you didn't know anything about the different reporting options, the info was ok. The reporting options he went over included:
Financial Reports
Interactive Reporting (which I think is actually called production reporting)
Web analysis
Smart view

Sean could have included Smartspace gadgets, Visual Explorer and a few other tools, but what he covered was ok. He also mentioned OBIEE which was covered in the next session.
Maybe I'm just bitter because I was originally asked to do this presentation and didn't because I was not sure if I could attend.

Between this and the next session was a break. I was disappointed as nothing was ready at the prescribed time and when stuff came out it was only soda, coffee, tea, apples, oranges and bananas. I was starving as I didn’t have lunch and this did not help my blood sugar much.

The third session was from Mark Rittman. Mark explained to the group how OBIEE and Essbase can work together. I don’t think today was Mark’s best hardware day. He upgraded his VMware before the session and was struggling to make sure it all worked right at the last minute (most did, but there were a few issues). Then the microphones would not work well for him. He struggled through, being the professional that he is and I think it went well in spite of the problems. This was a good session for me as I really have not looked at OBIEE. Mark gave a good detailed account on why to use it. In essence, it's so the data warehouse guys can get Essbase data with their relational data. Mark gave a really good walk through on:
1. How OBIEE is organized (structure, server components, logical components)
2.How to connect Essbase into OBIEE
3. How to bring in a cube to OBIEE (I found it interesting that OBIEE turns the cube into a relational model)
4. Problems with the import
5. How Essbase studio can be used to use OBIEE as a source for Essbase databases.

Most of what he talked about is version 11.1.1 specific, but was very interesting.

Mark posted on his blog the directions for connecting Essbase to OBIEE http://www.rittmanmead.com/2008/09/20/loading-obiee-data-into-essbase-using-essbase-studio-111/

The final session of the day was John Kopke. It was an interesting talk on the direction of EPM at Oracle. Basically, The Hyperion products are here to stay and are the direction for a lot of what goes on. Edward Roske’s blog did a good job of talking about . Rather than repeat everything here, look at his blog http://looksmarter.blogspot.com/.

I went to the keynote and although I’m fairly apolitical, I enjoyed the discussion of the presidential campaign by Carville and Matalin.

After the keynote was the opening reception, various drink, food and LOUD music. The food was ok (remember I was still starving). I’m sure it is difficult to server so many people at once, but the lines were long and the food just ok. (I really liked the pork eggrolls). Well, it’s getting late and I have to be ready for more tomorrow. I’ll try to post something tomorrow night. Unfortunately, I’m only going to be at the conference through Tuesday. I’ll post what I can. I even gave away my wristband to the party on Wednesday and it’s going to be a great party!