I have been speaking at a lot of conferences and client events over the last year touting the great new features of the new version of Smart View. As a matter of fact, I’m repeating the session on Feb 16th and 18th in interRel Webinars. (contact dwhite@interrel.com for more info) The questions I often get are “What do I need to upgrade to get functionality” and “If I just upgrade Smart View what functionality do I still get?”
Before I answer thos questions I’ll first answer “What version of Smart View should you upgrade to?” Since Smart View is pretty backward compatible I would upgrade to the latest version 11.1.2.2.310. This is a patch that was released last Monday and includes connectivity to OBIEE or as many Oracle people now call it BIFS (Business Intelligence Foundation Suite). Note, you must be on OBIEE 11.1.1.7 for the connectivity to work. There are a number of other enhancements and bug fixes to this version.
Next, what you you have to upgrade to get full connectivity? Well, for Smart View itself, you should be on 11.1.2.1.102 (or higher) as well as APS and Essbase 11.1.2.1.102 or higher. If you are going the patch route or 11.1.2.1 then I would recommend you get the Smart View patch 11.1.2.1.103 and APS and Essbase patches 11.1.2.1.104. Of course , you are even better if you upgrade to 11.1.2.2.310.
Finally, If you just upgrade Smart View without upgrading APS or Essbase, the functionality you can expect to get (Thank you Smart View development team for this list) is:
- Ribbon specific to Provider
- Re-designed Options Dialog
- Smart View Panel
- Sheet level Options
- Retain Excel Formatting
- Improved Function Builder
- Fix Links (Removes path references in cells with Smart View functions) Before: “=D:\Oracle\Smartview\bin\hstbar.xla’HSGETVALUE(…..
- After: =HSGETVALUE(...
- Performance Improvements
So while you won’t get cool things like multiple grids on a sheet or member name and alias, you get a few perks. The sheet level options are one thing that was missing in prior versions of Smart View that I’m glad got put in.
If you upgrade to at least 11.1.2.2 you also get an awesome new Smart Query tool that enables you to create extremely complex queries that return sets of members/numbers which can be combined and saved. It is fantastic feature that is not getting the press it deserves. In a future post, I‘ll go through a detailed example so you can see its power.
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3 comments:
Hi Glenn,
We have just upgraded Essbase (11.1.2) and APS with patches 11823697, 11823281 and Smartview client 11.1.2.1.103.
A lot of users use Esscell and we are moving them over to Smartview. Noticed that when we apply an attribute in Smartview using HSGetValue, it applies it to all the HSGetValue formulas in the entire sheet. Esscell formula's on the other had are independent of each other.
To explain it a bit, we have an attribute say on Entities dimension (US,CAN,UK). Only about 50% of the entity members have an attribute attached to them.
Now I add one HSGetValue formula without specifying the attribute, it works fine. Now in another cell, I add a second HSGetValue formula and also include an attribute say 'US' in the formula. When I retrieve, the first formula values shows missing. If i delete the second formula now and retrieve, it shows a value.
Is this a bug or expected behavior? Any inputs are greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Savio
Savio,
I rarely use hsgetvalue formulas so I never tested that. I would suggest opeing an SR with ORacle to see if it is expected behavior or not. It sounds similar to a grid retrieval where an attribute on the page turns the entire retrieval into an attribute based retrieval.
Thanks Glenn. After a bit of tinkering around, I found the solution. Some of the level zero members did not have the attribute assigned. On a hunch I created a dummy attribute member "Other" and assigned it to all the members to which the US, UK or CAN attribute did not apply. Basically, every member of the dimension has to be assigned an attribute for HSGetValue to work correctly.
Just thought I'd leave a comment incase someone else comes across this issue.
Thanks,
Savio
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