Websphere support in 11.1.2.1?

While 11.1.2.1 has not been released yet, I was looking through Oracle support to see if I could sneak a peek at anything about it. I found a Statement of direction for Websphere support in a document dated 04-Jan-2011. It says:

“Statement of Direction
EPM System release 11.1.2 did not include support for IBM WebSphere Application Server. This was done only as a short-term and temporary condition. Current plans call for full certification of IBM WebSphere Application Server with EPM System release 11.1.2 Patch Set 2, with availability planned for 2HCY2011. Please note that customers who have deployed EPM System release 11.1.2 or 11.1.2.1(when available) will be able to apply this patch set to those releases.
Oracle maintains its commitment to supporting Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management System on the broadest spectrum of software and hardware platforms. It is expected that IBM WebSphere Application Server as well as IBM DB2, AIX and Tivoli Directory Server will continue playing an important role in this regard and will continue to be supported in our roadmap of EPM System releases.”

So those of you who have been waiting for the patch, it does not appear websphere will be supported – Yet. I’ve heard rumor that 11.1.2.2 won’t be available until late this year (and based on how long it has taken 11.1.2.1 I would not hold my breath waiting for it).  I am going to predict that 11.1.2.1 will be released late this week or early next week, but it is just a guess.

When the patch comes out, I’ll try to review the important fixes and enhancements in it (aside from the ability to migrate apps).

Kaleidoscope Early Bird Discount is Expiring

On March 25th the early bird discount for Kaleidoscope will expire. I know a number of you are “saying big deal, it always gets extended” or “its only a little bit more after that”, but it can be a big deal to register early. I’ll tell you why.

First, if you register before March 25th, you will save $300. If you use the partner code for interRel IRC you can save even more. I don’t know if the IRC code will offer a discount after March 25th. Why take the chance.

Second, The Hands on Labs are now open for registration. In a meeting yesterday, I was told the Hyperion related labs are already at 60% capacity. Signups are on a first come- first served basis. If you register now, you can also sign up for the labs. Going to a lab is like going to a free class. This IS a big deal. Think of how much you save over going to classes.

With the Sunday symposium, the sessions, the Hands on Labs, the Hyperion midnight madness (10pm Monday night). the social events, and being in beautiful downtown Long Beach in June, this is a conference that should not be missed. 

Some of you are saying, “This conference is too technical for me”. I will agree that the conference has some of the best technical presentations of any conference, but we have expanded the scope of the conference to include sessions for the less technical users. You can see what is being offered at sessions and symposiums So bring your HFM and user compatriots.

Heck, it is so close to Southern California attractions like Disneyland,  Knott’s Berry farm and beautiful beaches come to the conference then take the family on a mini vacation. Think of the brownie points you will earn from the kids.

You can register at Kaleidoscope Registration  I look forward to seeing you there.

Oracle listens

Recently, I noticed a new Oracle forum title Documentation.It is under the Business Intelligence Foundation (just like Essbase and Smart View, so I figured it was for the BI product line.

I went into this forum and noticed there were no postings. Looking at it further, I discovered it is a forum monitored by the development and document teams to report errors in documentation. The forum can be found at http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=1319

Not being shy, I decided to post to the forum with a few things I’ve found in Essbase Studio. I submitted my post on Jan 24th and promptly forgot about it. On Feb 1st, I got a notice that someone had posted to the thread. It was one of the document managers who said he was forwarding it to the EPM document team.

Today(Feb 15th) I go a notice that the thread was updated again. I looked and the document acknowledged my comments and were correcting the documentation.  They ever told me what the changes would be.

I am impressed, not only did they listen, but they took action and provided feedback. This means we don’t have to live with errors and omissions in the documentation any more.

If you find an error in the documentation, report it so the rest of us don’t have to spend days figuring out what you already have. They are listening to us, so raise your voice so the doc team hears.

Please note, This forum will not answer technical questions as there are other forums for that. They are just concerned with getting the documentation right. 

Technorati Tags: Oracle documentation,EPM documentation,Essbase,Documentation

Essbase Studio Book

I have been quiet for a while on my blog and there is a reason for it. I have been busy working on a new book titled “Look smarter than you are with Essbase Studio” It is a companion book to the Look smarter with Essbase series. I have completed the writing and it is now off to the editors to make it coherent and to obliterate my attempt at humor. Like (or unlike depending on your viewpoint) the other Look Smarter books, I attempted to make  the book a fun read. I of course am prejudice, but I think it came out pretty good. I am hoping it will be GA around the first of March from Lulu.com. I’ll post again when it is.

One or two of you who read my blog have seen snippets of the book and I had favorable feedback about it. When it is released, I’ll ask a few of my fellow bloggers to give honest reviews of it. I won’t even pay them(not that I ever would).

I will say if anyone asks you to write a technical book, turn and run and keep running. I can’t believe how much harder it was than I ever thought it could be.

On a related note of Essbase Studio. At Kscope11 I will be presenting a session on Essbase Studio Advanced topics and have been asked to co-present on an intro to Essbase Studio session. So if you bring the book you will have bought by then, I’ll sign it for you. It won’t make it worth any more, in fact it will most likely lower its value, but I will have gotten my 15 seconds of fame. Coming to get you book signed is worth the cost of the conference alone not to mention all of the great sessions for more talented speakers than me.

Fragmentation in ASO Cubes

It seems Everything old is new again. For years we have been defragmenting BSO cubes by exporting the data, clearing the cube and then re-importing the data. When ASO came along, I thought “Great since there are no blocks I won’t get fragmentation and don’t have to worry it any more” . Turns out I was wrong.
I was at a client and needed to make a copy of their 50 gig  production cube  onto their test system to do some work with it. I exported the data, copied the outline over to test and re-imported the data. I looked at the file system during the load to see how far along and was surprise when the cube stopped loading the .Dat file was only 9 gig. I ran the materialization of aggregations using a saved aggregation from query tracking and the cube grew to 25 gig. About half of the size of the production cube.
There are a couple of things to know.

1. During the year, the client deletes some data out of the cube by deleting the members (old years)
2. The cube contains no slices
3. The cube gets an incremental update multiple times a month by clearing out the current Month/Year and reloading the data
4. The cube has been in production for about a year and the outline gets new members added on a regular basis.

Since this worked so well on test, we took the original exports and cleared the production cube and its size is now comparable to the test cube (we actually added additional aggregations which makes it a bit larger).  OK lesson learned, the client will now be adding a process to periodically rebuild their ASO cube. I did not do a compress of the outline, but this is something else they can add to their process. Who would have thought!

ASO Dimension Deletion Limit

Did you know there is a maximum number of times you can add and delete dimensions in an ASO cube? Neither did I until recently. I have a Essbase Studio model the was deleting the dimensions from my cube before rebuilding them. This was necessary because I have a number of shared rollups that can move around and the best way to deal with this is to rebuild the dimension.I t was working fine until one day it gave me error messages about not being able to add a particular dimension. I removed it from my build and the next dimension popped up with the error. After investigation, I found the error “1060190 Cannot Add Dimension – too many dimensions have been created and deleted”. It turns out the maximum number of dimensions you can have is 255 (or add and delete). Each dimension added is tagged with a dimension ID that increments. Once you reach that limit you are in trouble.

As a work-around, one solution is to create a “dummy” model. Using Studio, create an application from the same Essbase Model as your regular app but instead of deleting members first, select to delete and restore database. This will give you a fresh copy of the outline. Then stop your production application and copy the outline from your dummy cube over the production one. Since it was built from the same model, we can assume the dimensionality and members are the same. Starting the app should activate the new outline and you should be set to go. A couple of things to realize

1. There is no MaxL function to copy the outline, I do this through the file system in my batch file using copy commands

2. You should always backup the original outline and data prior to doing this. Remember even if you did the deploy directly into the production app, if members are dropped you lose the data. Safety first!

3. As always Test, Test, Test. Don’t take my word on it, make sure you don’t blow up your production application by listening to me or anyone else. Two particular areas to check out are Security and drill-through reports (in addition to data integrity)

4. While you should be able to get around this issue by not specifying delete all members, and just doing an incremental rebuild on the specific dimensions, I encountered problems doing it, thus I went the delete members first route.

5. Associated with #4 *nix systems have some issues with the deploy command causing issues.

 

A second solution would be to export the data (now that you can in 11) delete and rebuild the outline then import the data and re-agg.

Someone asked me if this is also the case for BSO cubes and I can’t say that I know. I’ve never encountered the issue on a BSO cube, but then again, I have not used the Studio Delete members first as much on a BSO cube.

ODTUG Election results

For those of you who have been following my pleas for you to vote in Hyperion representation to the ODTUG board, I want to thank you. The election results are in and the Hyperion community is now represented by two people on the board. Interestingly the elections closed on Nov 2nd . I guess this was so the results could be announced with the other minor elections that are taking place across the contry. The 4 new board members are :

• Mike Riley, Hortica Insurance
• Tim Tow, Applied OLAP
• Cameron Lackpour, CLSolve
• Barbara Morris, Idaho National Laboratory

 

Two of these Tim Tow and Cameron Lackpour are from the Hyperion community and Mike Riley has been an ardent supporter of Hyperion. He is the one that invited the Hyperion group to Kaleidoscope the first year.

They will be joining the following continuing members on the board.

• Bambi Price, Park Lane Information Technology
• John King, King Training Resources
• Mark Rittman, Rittman Mead Consulting
• Monty Latiolais, SCGTS

 

Congratulations to all. It looks like the board is stronger than ever. I look forward to the coming year.