Why I created a blog

Its been many years since I first created this blog. It has remained true to Essbase and related information over those years. Hopefully it has answered questions and given you insight over those years. I will continue to provide my observations and comments on the ever changing world of EPM. Don't be surprised if the scope of the blog changes and brings in other Hyperion topics.


Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Apparently 80 characters is not enough

Even I learn new things that are interesting, at least to me and a subset of the nerds. This is a post on something I find amusing and  others might as well.

 I'm working on a project at a client converting Essbase from 11.1.2.4 to 21c (21.4.2) and ran into something interesting. We were comparing aliases we were building in the two systems. In 21c the alias  names were longer than in 11g.   I figured it could be that they increased it a little, but when I looked at the admin guide I was amazed. For BOTH member names and aliases the limit has increased to 1024 characters. I would never want a name or alias that long, but if it floats your boat go for it. I could see an interesting use for it. For example, if I have a customer dimension, I could have a second alias table with  company name, address, phone number, contact person name. or a product dimension with details about the product. It certainly opens up new possibilities. 

I'm guessing this came from the work on federated partitions  on OCI Marketplace installs where Essbase can use an Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW) to build a cube with no data. The data is retrieved via SQL queries from the ADW when it is asked for. The cube structure is hybrid cubes.  Since the member names are sourced from ADW columns  it makes sense they would have to accommodate longer names

 We did notice another difference that could impact retrievals if using UDAs. UDAs in 11g are not allowed on shared members. Apparently in 21c that restriction is gone. It might be because 21c has a new concept of member IDs and a shared member would have the same member ID .

one last thing I noticed is filter names go to 256 characters  I'm sure there are more changes, but these are the ones that I thought interesting. .

Thursday, April 13, 2023

Smart View has gotten smarter

 Smart View 32.1 was recently released and has some nice features included in it. 

My favorite is the new freeze frames feature. I know what you are saying, you could already do this in Smart View using excel formatting. This is true, but the option in Smart View is better. 

How is it better, well as you pivot dimensions between the POV, Columns and Rows, the freeze frame adjusts automatically to freeze all column and rows, so you can just scroll through the data. Excel freeze frames is fixed on whatever  you set it to prior to pivoting. 

To set it, it is on the formatting tab (who would have thought), just check the box   

If you are concerned about speed, I don't think you need to be. My test retrievals were really fast when adding row or column members.

 
 
Here are a few samples of the pivot.
POV, 1 Column and 1row


 
 
POV, 1 Column and two rows


Other improvements are:
 I give a meh for this one. I'm not one to change the color pallet on Office so this is not a big deal for me, it is for others so your opinion may vary. This is only available if you have an Office 365 subscription
 
Many people don't even know about Health Check, look for it in the Smart View main ribbon under Help, (click the down arrow)
 
 
From the readme file (since they do a good job of explaining it:
"

In the Health Check dialog, two new Microsoft Edge WebView2 enablement options are introduced, Enable for UI and Enable for All, to allow you to select the level of WebView2 support you require.

Previously, the available WebView2 options were Enable (now Enable for UI) and Disable.

Oracle Smart View for Office uses Microsoft Edge WebView2 to display the user interface login pages and facilitate networking. To accomplish this, Smart View supports Microsoft Edge, along with Microsoft Internet Explorer system components, to display the authentication page, leveraging WebView2 to process complex login sequences.

Note:

Microsoft is currently developing and enhancing WebView2. Microsoft and Oracle advise that you do not uninstall Internet Explorer on computers running Smart View. Even though Microsoft has ceased support for Internet Explorer, it is still tightly integrated with the Windows operating system. If you uninstall it, some libraries that Windows requires for proper networking will also be uninstalled, which may lead to issues; for example, handling the certificates necessary for login or working with some older web sites that require Internet Explorer mode from Edge.

Microsoft advises users that they may disable Internet Explorer, but not uninstall it. If you have already uninstalled Internet Explorer, you may experience issues with networking, not only with Smart View, but system wide. You will not be able to use Smart View's Disable option in cases where critical issues with WebView2 are introduced by Microsoft, and you will not be able to log in pending further WebView2 development and enhancements.

Due to these issues, Oracle advises you to use the Disable option for WebView2 in Smart View (this is the default). You should only use the Enable for UI option if your system has implemented two-factor authentication or if you were advised by Oracle to do so.

You should only use the Enable for All option if you were advised by Oracle to do so.

To use WebView2, Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime must be installed and enabled on each Smart View client machine.

Use the Health Check dialog to verify that WebView2 Runtime is installed:

  • If WebView2 Runtime is not installed, then WebView2 Runtime Version in the Version Information group displays None and the WebView2 Runtime option is not displayed in the Smart View Options group.

  • If WebView2 Runtime is installed, then a version number is displayed in WebView2 Runtime Version, whether it's enabled or disabled, and the WebView2 Runtime option is displayed.

When WebView2 Runtime is installed, the new WebView2 Runtime options are available in the Fix column. The options are: