New features in OAC

The latest patch for OAC - Essbase has been released. Well it has been released for OAC - Classic (AKA Customer Managed or non-autonomous to use old terms). From the Emails I've seen at client sites, OAC (Oracle Managed, Autonomous) will be pushed out in a couple of weeks. Editor's note, I was notified that the patching is delayed on Oracle Managed until the end of February.   Depending on who you are talking to, this release might be called 5.1 or .115 or even something else. All of this is enough to spin my head. I know they are doing it just to keep me on my toes.

I didn't write this post to talk about the changing names, although it is one of the items included in the new features. If you have not read about the new features, you can find them HERE. There are a couple of good blog posts about a couple of the enhancements on the Essbase Labs blog. Multi-cell drill through and Connecting to ADW.  However, there were changes that do not appear in that document that I want to talk about.

OUTLINE CUT AND PASTE

First there have been enhancements to the Outline editor in the UI. Prior to this release, it was painful to create shared roll-ups, you could cut and paste members and you would get error messages about duplicate members, shared before stored , etc. Well now they have added the ability to copy members/hierarchies and make them shared or be able to move them more easily.

as you can see there is now a copy option in addition to the cut option

 

I created a new group named Glenn's Group and I can now paste as shared items into that group

They have even added shortcut keys for those of you who prefer that over the mouse.
i know this is a work in progress, expect to see even more changes in the future.

ANALYZE IMPROVEMENTS

Second, The analyze data function has been improved.

Now you can save off queries you use often

The layouts panel can be toggled on and off and you can save layouts.
When you save a layout you are given a few options .

•  Default. This sets the query to be the one executed when you open the analyze data. 

• Database default. An admin can set this to be the query that opens for all users 

After reading my post, Karen from development augmented it with :

-       User accessing ad hoc tab for the first time will see the default database layout (if set by an admin), otherwise they’ll see the equivalent of SV ad hoc analysis on an empty sheet (apex of all dims).

-       User accessing ad hoc tab for any subsequent trip will see:

a)     Their own previously saved default layout (if they created it)

b)     The database default layout (if one exists)

c)     Their last used layout from the prior session

Note:  there is no way to get back to the SV ad hoc default of dimension 

In addition to ad-hoc reports, you can also run and save MDX queries by selecting Reports

 

You can specify a MDX query or create a new one by clicking on Create. I've done a simple query to just get back the list of products.

 

You will notice it shows up in the query list at the left and once run, I have a few other options

 

I have Execute as which allows me to do impersonation and run this as another user. This is good for testing security. Impersonation is only available for Administrators. Since I'm on a test system, I don't have a list of users to show you.

You also have the ability yo export the results in  CSV, Excel, HTML or JSON format.

STARTING AND STOPPING ORACLE MANAGED INSTANCES  

 One of the big changes is that administrators can now start and stop their Oracle Managed instances. This is something we have been asking for since Oracle Managed came out.  Note, I'm saying Oracle Managed but now this is just called OAC, but I'm saying Managed just for clarity.  Since my instance has not been patched yet, I borrowed the slide from ones I got from Oracle (full disclosure)
Editor's note: Apparently this feature is not making it into the release and will appear in a later release

 SMART VIEW PARENT ON TOP

Another change we have been asking for as long as I've been using Essbase is the ability to have parents appear before children on drill in. Ibn order to get it to work, you need to be on the latest version of Smart View and in the application turin on the setting SSAncestorOnTop

 What is interesting to me is with the .810 version of Smart View, I have to select before I connect to Essbase that I want the parent on top. Once I connect a sheet to a cube, I can't change it. 

 

But once set, when I zoom in, I get the expansion after the parent. (no I didn't manually type in the members, I zoomed in on Year)

 

OTHER CHANGES

A couple of other changes include the ability to manage alias tables in the Outline Editor Outline properties and the ability to search for member names in the Calc Script Editor. 

There have been changes in the way the pretty new @DataSourcelookup function works, but I'm waiting on details from Development. That will have to wait for another blog post.