A mini- Quiz for you old timers

OK, I'm stealing from Mark Rittman's Blog and doing a little quiz or puzzle from time to time. This one is to see if any of the old time developers have any memory left. We all know that the best conference to go to for Essbase content is Kaleidoscope (Yes this is a plug for the conference). Prior to it, was the Sales pitch intensive Solutions conferences. But what was the first Essbase conference called and in what year did it start? For Bonus points where was it held. And where was the next year's conference held. Yes it was so successful they did it again.

Kaleidoscope is coming too quickly

It's already feburary 16th and Kaleidoscope is less than 4 months away (June 26 -Jul 1, 2010) and I have too many presentations to prepare. I have 4 sessions that I have to create presentations for and one or two more where I show up and make everyone else look more handsome(anyone next to me always looks better. Is that why pretty girls always have an ugly friend to hang with? I know I'll get comments on this. It is meant in fun don't slam me for it).

Anyway my first session (and first session of the conference) is "MDX basics a practical approach". It goes over some of the basics about coding in MDX and then I'll show working examples of coding them and how they work. Then I have a joint presentation sometime with Gary Crisci and Cameron Lackpout on the Best of OTN posts. We share some of the more interesting threads from ONT (and perhaps Network 54). My final two presentations are the last two presentations on Thursday. First and last, I get to open and close the conference. The sessions are "Load rules basics to Advanced" and "Configure it out" which deals with the multitude of configuration settings in the Essbase.cfg file.

I've gotten a good start on all of the presentations, but if there is something special you feel would be something you want to know about or have dealt with and think I should share, please let me know.

As you all know the kaleidoscope conference is the Best conference for Hyperion Technical presentations. It IS your conference, so share your ideas. I know I am speaking to the choir here as most people who read my blog are technical and know the value of the conference, but for those of you how stumble onto my site, I will reapeat what you hear all over. This conference is better than any single training session you can go to. It has more technical content and more knowledgable speakers than ANY other conference I have been to. Even after doing Essbase for about 15 years, I pick up good information in every session I attend. (Even my own, where someone from the audience will tell me something I didn't know) Yes I am talking about you Cameron, and Gary :)

If you read my blog or are on OTN or Network 54, look me up at the conference and say hi. It is nice to put faces with the handles I see on the web.

Book Review - Oracle Essbase & Oracle OLAP The guide to Oracle’s Multidimensional Solution

First my typical disclaimer.
1. I am an Essbase developer and know little about Oracle Olap
2. I work for interRel Consulting which has a competing book out on Essbase (Well not really as you will read)
3. I am a pessimist by nature.
4. I have irritable bowel syndrome (Not really, but it was a fun thing to say)

OK now with those thoughts in mind, on to the review.

Mid December I got a package in the mail. Oh Boy, another Chanukah gift and In a way it was. I opened the package to find my copy of the book “Oracle Essbase & Oracle OLAP The guide to Oracle’s Multidimensional Solution” that was promised to me for review. This book was written by Michael Schrader, Dan Vlamis, Mike Nadar, Dave Collins and a host of others. I will refer to them collectively in the review as the Authors. Being the holiday season, I sat down and quickly put the book aside to look at later. I have finally gotten around to reading it (I spend too much time on planes and this gave me a lot of reading time). I can say, this is a good, worthwhile book.

I am brutally honest in my reviews and hated the last book I read. This one is very good. I will say it is not the detailed walk you through everything you need to know book, but it a good overview. The discussions of similarities and differences between Oracle OLAP and Essbase are good. The book discusses Oracle Olap and Essbase compares the two and contrasts them pretty well. I don’t agree with everything the authors say, but we are entitled to differing opinions. I even learned a little about Oracle OLAP so they must have done something right.

First I will talk about the good, and there was a lot of good about this book.

The book is well thought out and put together. It flows in a logical and concise manner. The discussions are well thought out. Even if you know nothing about Oracle OLAP and Essbase, you would walk away with a general understanding of the products.

I liked the first couple of chapters which discussed OLAP in general, the strengths of each product, The product suites and more.

I really like the section on reporting. It walks through considerations when determining a reporting solution and is a must read for any reporting development project even if Essbase and/or Oracle OLAP are not part of the solution. It covers the basics of what one should consider when designing a reporting solution then delves into product specific solutions to meet those requirements. I thought interesting (and brave) for the authors to include non-Oracle solutions in the discussion. For example, For Essbase reporting and analysis, they discussed Dodeca from Applied Olap which I believe is one of the finest reporting tools available!

While I think the Authors cheated (See my rants below), I did like the approach for Essbase of showing how to build a cube using Essbase studio. This tool is the direction Oracle is heading for all administrative aspects of Essbase. While the chapter concentrates on Studio, The authors do tell you there are some things you still have to do in EAS and walk through some of them. I’m sure for a long while it will still be necessary to know EAS, knowing how to do things in Studio will help you a lot, especially if you plan to use OBIEE as a data source for Essbase cubes.

Unlike the last book I read, this book had no real misinformation. Remember I’m an Essbase developer, so if they lied to me about Oracle Olap, I would not know. For Essbase, I say no real misinformation because I don’t agree with a few things said. I would call them differences of option instead . The examples were good and easy to follow. The screen shots and illustrations were applicable and added value to the text.

Now for the bad about the book, (remember my disclaimer – point 3 to be exact). I find it easier to find fault and complain about things than I do to relate the good. For the record, I don’t think I can really call the items below bad just personal observations.

I think the authors cheated a little as pretty much two of the main chapters were lifted from existing work (at least a good percentage). The chapters that demo building Oracle OLAP and Essbase cubes are from existing documents. I know a good part of the Essbase demo build is taken from the “Dare to Olap” series and The Oracle OLAP references where the tables and additional documentation can be found. I would guess the Authors originally helped put these modules together so I don’t think there is anything wrong. I also think most of the readers of this book will never have seen these demos before so it is probably not a real bad thing.

The book was very redundant. I would read about something only to have parts repeated in the next paragraph or in the next chanpter. Did I say the book was redundant? well it is.

The third thing I did not like is the way the pigeonholed the products. IT supported implementations should use Oracle OLAP, User supported applications use Essbase. While in general (and historically) this might be true. I have seen a great many projects where The Essbase has been initiated and supported by IT ( I can’t speak for Oracle Olap, but would imagine that they would all be IT supported). Now that Essbase is owned by Oracle, IT has gained a respect for what Essbase can do and is embracing it. I think a better generalization would be “If all your data is in Oracle, use Oracle Olap, if you have multiple sources or need complex calculations use Essbase”. Of course if you want the additional functionality like Planning or write-back, use Essbase as well. Damn, I guess even my generalizations are bad as I can think of a number of exceptions to my statement.

Finally, this is a VERY dry read. Yes it provides all the information you need, but with my A.D.D., I really had to concentrate to get through it.


While I don’t think you could become a developer from just reading the book, I do believe it is a good read for an understanding of both products, their ancillary products and the various use cases for the products. I think after reading the book, you would still need a class on the
product(s) to be even somewhat proficient, but I don’t think the authors’ intent was to create a how to book. In order to do either product justice and cover the topics in detail would require a book that the airlines would charge me overweight fees on. I would suggest, reading this book as an overview and then if you are developing for Essbase read the Look Smarter than you are with Essbase 11 book to give you more details (I would make the same statement even if I did not work for interRel). I don’t have the knowledge to recommend an Oracle OLAP centric book as a follow up. Of course it would be even better to take a course to get the expertise of the instructors.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the authors for spending the time and energy to put together this book for us. I know the amount of energy, blood, sweat, tears, late nights, drunken fits and blood curdling screams that go into writing a book like this. This was a great job. I know I don't have the skill, time or patience to write a book like thig. To all the authors, Thank you from the OLAP community for sharing your expertise with us.

FREE Oracle SoCal Roadtrip Conference Jan 26th

For any of you in the So Ca area, On Tuesday Jan 26th, I will be joining Oracle and other speakers on a one day mini-conference in LA. It will be a great event and you won't want to miss. it.
I'll be talking about Essbase optimization tips. Other sessions include:
Best practices in consolidation
Hot Topics in Financial Reporting
Secrets of Customizing Hyperion Planning
Creating an Oracle EPM center of excelence
Taking control of your hierarchies with DRM.

The keynote will be from Tobin Gilman on the EPM roadmap for 2010 and beyond. It is a free event that you should not miss. The complete agenda is available at Agenda

and to sign up go to Register

For more information you can contact Danielle White at dwhite@interrel.com

Did I mention that it is free and you could win door prizes?

as a teaser, I have my review of the new book "Oracle Essbase & Oracle OLAP, The guide to Oracle's Multidimensional Solution" almost done. I'll be posting it in a few days. Check back, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Just a few musings to show you I still exist since its been a while since I last posted. I don't know how some people (John Goodwin) have the time or energy to post as often as they do with such good information.

First, as mentioned on Edward Roske's blog, the ODTUG board elections were announced and Essbase's good friend Tim Tow was not reelected, while we have Mark Rittman on the board, Tim is/was the Hyperion advocate on the board and I'm sure he will be missed. We owe a big thank you to Tim for all his hard work to get Hyperion included in the Kaleidoscope conference. It is truly the best home the products have had.

Second, in conjunction with item 1, the Kaleidoscope conference dates and location have been announced. It will be held in Washington D.C. on June 27th to July 1st(2010). While I am not on the Hyperion SIG board this year, I did get a peek at the list of submitted abstracts and they look awesome. I don't know what the final selections will be, but it looks like there will be some great topics. I recommend doing whatever you can to go to that conference. You will not be disappointed. From what I understand, there might even be a track with more intoductory topics and case studies for people who want to start learning more about the product.

Finally, I am anxiously awaiting my copy of the new book on Essbase and BI. While I don't remember the name, I know some of the authors and I'm guessing it will be a good read. As soon as I read through it, I'll put a review here.

Open World 2009 Day 2

Oracle Open World Day 2.
This has been a hectic morning with my needing to deal with some issues at clients so I missed this mornings Keynote. As I looked at the schedule as I did not preregister for any sessions (which is a mistake), I noticed that all of the Hyperion related sessions are in the Intercontinental Hotel on the 5th floor. Interestingly all of the Hyperion Vendor Kiosks were outside the rooms. What a great idea. Not huge booths, but a place to talk to vendors associated with the products you are looking at. Aside from the interRel Kiosk, there was one for Applied OLAP (and their Dodeca product) and Star analytics who has a couple of great products as well. The other booths were competitors, so I guess I won’t mention them. In total I think there were about 8 Kiosks.
I wanted to go to the session on EPM Roadmap, but when I looked on the board, I saw it was overbooked, so I figured I would have no chance to get in. There were people standing off to the side who had been shuffled there by the door wardens ( A thankless job). I figured what the hell, so I got into line expecting to be pushed aside. I got to the door warden, he scanned my card and let me in. I figured out afterwards, that my Blogger pass is worth something. Thank you Oracle.
The session was led by Bill Guilmart and Al Marciante. Like ALL of the sessions here, the first slide was a disclaimer saying nothing they say (or for that fact, my reporting of it) is reality and may never be delivered. So take what I say with a grain of salt or a pound and rub it into your open wounds.
The session first talked about the existing releases since Open World last year and since that is all old news, I won’t repeat any of it here. As they got to talking about new features, there was a these I have seen yesterday OK. I get it, the theme for the conference seems to be “Complete Open Integrated” and the real theme for the session was Unify intelligence from Transactional , BI and Management systems.. Toward that end, the topics would be
· Complete Integrated Close
· Extending the Planning Platform
· Expanded ERP integration
· Ease of use enhancements
· Integration
· Portfolio wide improvements
What does all this mean? I’ll go through what I was able to jot down while actually trying to listen at the same time (because of this my notes are not complete)
Financial Close Management is a four piece enhance,ment
1. A financial Calendar to let everyone know the schedule and task deadlines
2. Process monitoring – A dashboard to show how the close is going
3. Task Management. Lots of improvement including integration with Oulook task lists and calendar
4. Account Reconciliation This includes
a. Internal/ External reporting
b. Disclosure management (10Q, XBRL, SEC filings)
It will work with MS office and other products to provide consistent reporting and accountability

Planning
· It too has enhanced process management including reassigning of tasks(delegation)
· A New Form designer
· Composite forms
· Web form enhancements including
o Conditional formatting
o Ad Hoc Data entry forms
o Formatting options (freeze frame, sorting, filtering,, etc)
o Better member selection
o And Built in validation rules
Public sector Planning. This section went too fast for me to get the info, but it looked good

Smart View
· Enhanced Excel experience
· Task lists
· Composite forms from Planning
· Context sensitive ribbon bars
· Enhanced 2007 look and feel
· Better Log in
· For HFM
o Smart slices
o Report designer
o Cascading reports
· For Essbase
o Drill through to ERPI
Shared Service.
Alas, I was not able to get everything down they talked about, but good stuff is coming including
· New security deployment configuration
· 2 way SSL
· SSL offloading
· (I missed the rest of the points sorry)
EPMA
It looks like they are doing a lot of work on EPMA to make it really usable, this is a good thing.
· Enhanced Essbase support
o ASO and BSO
· HCPM Validations
· Smart mapping of Planning lists to ASO cubes. OK, This means Planning will create ASO reporting cubes. It sounds like it turns smart lists into dimensions (attribute???) as Al talked about 25 dimension cubes for reporting
· Batch updates
· The ability to purge transaction log files
· HFM copy application ability
Calculation Manager
While 11.1.1.3 enabled calculation manage to work oncubes outside of EPMA, it is getting better
· Procedural calculations on ASO cubes (Allocation and others)
· Template ability. Create one and use anywhere
· Parameter passing
Data Relationship manager
· Browser based
· Unicode support (Multilanguage)
· Role based
· Multiple applications per server
· Validations in real time and in batch
· Improved Nnavigation
ERP Integrator (Part of FDQM)
In general improvements in functionality
HFM
· Starter Kits – IFRS, Japan, ….
· Enterprise extracts in HFM format
· Integration with Government/Risk
o Segmentation of duty
o GRC manager
· Integration with OBIEE Answers
FR
· Related content enhancement
· Grid level and POV passing enabled for snapshots and books
· MS word integration as Word tables
· LCM support to migrate
· Diagnostics and logging
IOP
This is a fairly new product and was not integrated into the suite. The major work being done will make it similar to the other products including SSL, Diagnostics and logging

HPCM (HCPM) I’ve heard it both ways.
· Expanded Driver functions
· Standard Cost drivers
· Sequence dependent drivers
· Expense assignment functionality
· Exp Model navigation
· POV management
· Improved performance
o 10-20 times better for direct drivers
o 3 times for genealogy
o 140 times from Allocations
And last but not least Essbase
· Improved EPMA deployment
· Improvements in LCM
o Outline compare
o Project naming
· Access ability(they put the number 508 in parens after it, I don’t know what that means)
· Functional enhancements
o Username/character length allowability
o ASO Formula editor
· Web services
· Studio Usability
· Diagnostics and logging
They covered a lot in 1 hour and could not go into a lot of depth, but as you can see, the products look like they are going in the right direction. It’s nice to know that Oracle thinks they are worth all the work.

OpenWorld 2009 Sunday

After an on and off and on again scenario, I actually made it to Open World. I got asked to sit on the Customer Advisory board for Essbase (CAB). So if there is anything on your wish list for Essbase or one of its related products (studio, PBIEE integration, etc) let me know and I’ll see if I can get your voice heard.
After a long day in CAB listening to things I’m not allowed to talk about, I’m sitting here with thousands of my closest friends waiting for the opening keynote address. One nice thing, they have set up an area for press and bloggers with tables so I don’t have to try to type in my lap. I hope there is some amazing tidbit about the Hyperion products I can tell you, but I’m not hopeful.
The session is starting with Scott McNeally from Sun Microsystems. His theme is innovation. He started of with a top 10 list of Engineers gone wild. His list is cute, but not worth repeating. (although I did like his sushi USB drives and Nobel prize for Gas Mask Bra ,no more funny than other Nobel prizes. ) He then went into the top 10 innovations from Sun (not a funny list, but interesting). The list includes the following,
Sparc, Solaris, Opensource, Java, Open Storage, Blackbox Datacenters( in containers for 3rd world countries), different chips, multithreading, etc.
I won’t go into them, but Scott talked about them all. And more.
Scott Fowler talked about Sun Systems, integrated systems, Java. Security.. He announces that Sun SPARC/Solaris is the number 1 in all the commercial Benchmarks including Hyperion.. He talked about the Sun Oracle Database machine (Didn’t I see a similar presentation from Oracle and HP last year?). $00 gig of flash on a card that won’t wear out like old flash and a nore Flash array. A single rack equates to 1000s of disk with 4X the throughout .
It was a real love fest from Sun about Oracle.
Larry Ellison then came out and the love fest continued with him talking about why He supports the Sun products and will not get rid of parts. He talked about his commitment to beat IBM. Expect to see ads why Oracle and Sun have a 25% better processing than IBM being 6 times more green.

After the keynote, I headed off to the Oracle Ace dinner. I met some old friends and met some new ones and had a nice mean (Thanks Oracle). While I was at the dinner, The rest of the crew from interRel was at the Partner awards presentation. interRel won the EPM Titan award for a second year in a row. Congratulations to Edward, Eduardo and everyone who was associated with the project