• PBCS March 2016 Update: FR Web Studio Is Almost Here

    // Brian Marshall // PBCS 1 Response

    If you are a PBCS user, you should have gotten or will be getting an e-mail from Kash with the March release of PBCS. The headline to this release is the new Financial Reporting Web Studio. I’ll have a full post once the patch hits my PBCS test instance (very soon). In the meantime, have a look at the docs:

    http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/fr-webstudio-2874377.pdf

    While we were all expecting the new web-based FR studio, I didn’t realize they were overhauling the charting engine.  It’s about time!  Here’s another doc on that:

    http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/fr-charting-2874649.pdf

    One thing that I was hoping for but see no mention of…Attribute Dimensions.  I’m guessing we are waiting for a significant Smart View update for this to become a reality.  So we’ll continue waiting.  And just in case you haven’t gotten the e-mail yet or are just curious, here’s the actual release documentation from Oracle:

    RCD_PBCS_March_2016

  • PowerShell and Hyperion: The Outline Load Utility

    // Brian Marshall // Hyperion Planning, PowerShell 2 Responses

    I was reminded recently that I promised to continue with PowerShell in my last PowerShell blog post, but that I hadn’t done it yet.  I may have gotten a little caught up in my home lab series.  So, if you were waiting and waiting for this, my apologies.

    Now that we have a little bit of PowerShell working knowledge and we have it working with MaxL, let’s get serious about some of our other batch commands.  Today we’ll focus on the outline load utility for Planning.  If you’ve used this utility in your batch commands before, you can probably skip the first part of this blog post.  If not, let’s first talk about what the outline load utility is.  It may be the worst named utility that I’ve ever used.  The outline load utility doesn’t actually load an outline at all.  And to make matters worse…it’s not even just a meta-data tool.

    The outline load utility allows us to load meta-data, numeric data, text-based data, build smart lists, and generally manage the back-end of Hyperion Planning from a batch script (or PowerShell).  Today we’ll focus on getting the utility working in PowerShell.  So where is this mythical utility?  You should be able to find it here:

    <epm install drive>:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\Planning\planning1

    You will actually find quite a few utilities in this directory.  There are utilities for imports, exports, running business rules.  This directory is why I will never wake up one day and say “I wish I had something to blog about.”  I’ll literally never run out of content with all of these hidden gems out there.  Here’s a sample:

    OutlineLoad1

    Next we need to decide what we want to do with the utility and give it a shot.  There are so many things that we can do with it, I’m going to stick with something really simple and use the 11.1.2.3.500 Sample Vision app for the demonstration.  This way you should all be able to reproduce what we are doing.

    So let’s first log into our Vision sample app and take an export of the Product dimension.  Once inside our app, click on Administration then Import and Export and then Export Metadata to File.OutlineLoad2

    Select our Product dimension from the list and click Run and we should have a great file to start playing with.  When prompted, just save the file away and we’ll come back for it later.

    Now let’s get back to our Planning server and start up PowerShell.  Once we have our window open, let’s just change our directory and run the CMD file and see what happens:

    OutlineLoad3

    You should get something totally useful like this:

    OutlineLoad4

    Before we go any further, we need to go ahead and generate a password file for the load utility.  This will allow us to execute our PowerShell script without needing to enter a password each time.  To do this we just type in PasswordEncryption.cmd PasswordFile.pass.  It should prompt you for a password.  This will be the password to the username that we will eventually tell the load utility to use.  Enter your password, press enter, and the file we need should be produced.

    OutlineLoad5

    Now we are ready to load the file that we exported earlier from Workspace.  I placed my exported file directly into the planning1 folder with the utility for my first execution just to make things simple.  So first let’s look at the command, then we’ll pick it apart:

    .\OutlineLoad.cmd -f:PasswordFile.pass /A:Vision /U:admin /I:admin_ExportedMetadata_Product.csv /D:Product /L:Product.log /X:Product.exc

    ParameterDescriptionValue
    -F:Specifies the password file that we just generated so that we don't need to enter a password.PasswordFile.pass
    /ASpecifies the application that we are connecting to.Vision
    /USpecifies the username that we are connecting with.admin
    /ISpecifies the file that we will be importing.admin_ExportedMetadata_Product.csv
    /DSpecifies the dimension that we will be loading.Product
    /LSpecifies the file to log our results to.Product.log
    /XSpecifies the file to write exceptions to.Product.exc

    So what happens?

    OutlineLoad6

    Success!  And how about our log and exception files?

    OutlineLoad7

    Great…they are there.  Now let’s make this something worthy of PowerShell.  To do that, we’ll make everything into a variable.  I’ve created a folder on my Planning server to store my files and referenced that file in the following PowerShell script:

    ###############################################################################
#Created By:	Brian Marshall
#Created Date:	12/16/2015
#Purpose:		Sample PowerShell Script for HyperionEPM.com
###############################################################################

###############################################################################
#Variable Assignment
###############################################################################

$PlanningPath = "C:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\Planning\planning1"
$PlanningUsername = "admin"
$PlanningPasswordFile = "PasswordFile.pass"
$PlanningApp = "Vision"
$PlanningDim = "Product"
$PlanningDimFile = "admin_ExportedMetadata_Product.csv"

$PlanningWorkingFolder = "C:\Data\HyperionEPM\PowerShell"

###############################################################################
#Outline Load Utility Execution
###############################################################################

& $PlanningPath\OutlineLoad.cmd -f:$PlanningPath\$PlanningPasswordFile /A:$PlanningApp /U:$PlanningUsername /I:$PlanningWorkingFolder\$PlanningDimFile /D:$PlanningDim /L:$PlanningWorkingFolder\$PlanningDim.log /X:$PlanningWorkingFolder\$PlanningDim.exc

    Along with the file above, I’ve placed the Product file that we exported from Workspace.  I’ve set the PlanningWorkingFolder variable to reflect the name of my folder and I should be ready to execute my new Product PowerShell script.  But wait…I don’t want to schedule this process to run on the Planning server and another process to run on the Essbase server.  I need them to run from the same place.  We’ll cover that exact need in our next post…stay tuned!

  • The EPM Week In Review: Week Ending February 27, 2016

    // Brian Marshall // EPM Week In Review No Responses

    This week was a little slow in the patch department, but plenty of great blogging going on.

    Patches and Updates:

    None!

    Blog Posts:

    This week I posted the final installment of the Building a Hyperion Home Lab series.

    Michelle encourages us to actively participate in user groups.  I’m a huge fan of ODTUG and the local NtxHUG, so listen to Michelle and join in the fun!

    Cameron walks us through the process of migrating to the cloud with PBCS.

    Celvin has a new update to his NUMSys Web Edition utility.  I haven’t had a chance to play with this tool, but it looks pretty cool.

    Tim is on his soapbox about crossjoins…and he’s right!  Please read his blog post to help make MDX a safer place for all of us.

    Opal has been busy this week with not one, but two blog posts.  First she tells us how to get back our missing Smart View ribbon.  Next she shows us how to provide feedback to Oracle in both BICS and PBCS.  She claims that Oracle even reads the feedback…and responds!

    Dmitry posted the first part of his step-by-step guide to EPMA integration with Essbase Studio using ODI.

    Other News:

    I also updated the site this week to include new pages for Quick Links, Presentations, and Latest Patches.

    ODTUG has announced the Thursday Deep Dives sessions for KScope16.  See you in Chicago!

  • Latest Patches, Quick Links, and Presentations

    // Brian Marshall // Site Updates No Responses

    I’ve been tinkering with the site lately and now I think most of the content should be ready to publish.  First, I had someone recently ask for a few of my older presentations, so I figured it was time to organize all of my old presentations and give them a final place to live.   So if anyone went to one of my presentations and wanted the slide deck or addendum, they should all be here going forward.

    Presentations Page

    As I was going through all of these presentations, I realized just how bad I used to be at PowerPoint (and still am) and how awful some of the Kscope templates have been over the years.  With that, I decided to move on to tweaking the Quick Links pages to move the environment links into a table and generally format things better.

    Quick Links

    Finally, I decided to add a new page that tells us first, what are the most recent patches and second, what are ALL of the patches 11.1.2.4.  So here it is…

    Latest Patches

    I managed to capture everything from 11.1.2.4, but I did not venture back to 11.1.2.3 or earlier.  So if you are looking that far back…I prioritized sleep over compiling that giant list.

  • The EPM Week In Review: Week Ending February 20, 2016

    // Brian Marshall // EPM Week In Review No Responses

    Two weeks…two weeks in review.  Let’s see how long we can keep this up!

    Patches and Updates:

    The Essbase 11.1.2.4.007 patch has been released.  This comes with a server patch along with the various client patches.  There are a few interesting features including the QUERYRESULTLIMIT for preventing stupid ASO user tricks and a few other ASO related bugs.  Now if they can just release .008, which has a bug I need fixed…that would be great.

    Financial Reporting 11.1.2.4.006 has been released.  Nothing too interesting here…just bug fixes.

    Blog Posts:

    This week I discussed storage for your Hyperion Home Lab.  I also posted about the Admin Console and created a new Quick Links page on the site.

    Dave reminds us that our grace period for 11.1.2.3.700 is coming up soon here.

    Harry let’s us know that he has released a new version of his cubeSavvy Utilities.  He lost me when he started speaking Russian…but hey I barely speak English.

    Dmitry has an interesting write-up on Drill-Through performance in Essbase here.

    Sarah gives us a nice lesson in UNIX and Windows Interoperability.

    Tony shows off a very detailed guide to using DRM and PBCS.

    For those in the cloud that can use Valid Intersections, Celvin shows us that they can be automated!

    Other News:

    ODTUG is now accepting applications for their Women in Technology Scholarship.  You can find out the details to the program here.  Applications are due in a little over a month on March 22, 2016.

    As always (twice anyway), if I missed a great blog post or a patch release, let me know and I’ll either update this post or add it to next week’s post.  Have a great weekend everyone!

  • New Quick Links Page

    // Brian Marshall // Uncategorized No Responses

    I decided to add a new Quick Links page to the site.  Like many of you, I go from version to version and environment to environment a lot.  This page includes links to all of the active documentation libraries on the Oracle site.  This page also includes the links to the various harder-to-find products like the EAS web console and the Financial Reports mobile site.  You can find it here:

    Quick Links

    And a preview:

    Full DocsEssbase Tech RefEssbase DBAGPlanning Admin GuideHFM Admin GuideFDMEE
    11.1.2.4
    11.1.2.3
    11.1.2.2
    11.1.2.1
    11.1.1.4
    9.3.x

    9.2.1

    I’d love to expand this page to include other useful information, so feel free to speak up and let me know what I’m missing!  I actually already used this page tonight…twice before getting it fully posted.

  • The EPM Week In Review: Week Ending February 13, 2016

    // Brian Marshall // EPM Week In Review No Responses

    Welcome to the inaugural post of what I hope to make a weekly post collecting all of the news and information that was produced in the past week.  We’ll see how this goes…

    Patches and Updates:

    DRM 11.1.2.4.330 has been released.  It does require a password to download, but it is supposed to include the DRM Analytics that many have been waiting for.  Check it out here.

    Hyperion Shared Services 11.1.2.002 has been released.  Check it out here.

    Blog Posts:

    This week I discussed chassis and power supply selection for your Hyperion Home Lab.

    Sarah showed off the new data export command that allows for data to be sanitized.

    Tim tells us what we can expect when working with block density.

    Cameron is letting Philip take over his blog again, this time discussing Smart Push in PBCS.

    John Goodwin continues his excellent series around Essbase Web Services.

    Kevin over at In2Hyperion shows us how to map Smart Lists to dimensions.  This is a handy feature in PBCS until we finally get real attribute dimensions (I hear this is coming in March).

    Other News:

    Tony has a new book out on FDMEE.  This one will definitely be in my Amazon cart soon.

    Note bad for a first try at a weekly re-cap…if I do say so myself.  If I missed a great blog post or a patch release, let me know and I’ll either update this post or add it to next week’s post.  Have a great weekend everyone!

     

     

  • Brian @ KScope 16

    // Brian Marshall // Kscope No Responses

    As the year rapidly passes me by, I realize that KScope isn’t really that far away.  I hope to meet many of in Chicago this June!  I’ve been very fortunate to have two presentations selected again this year:

    PBCS Is Still Hyperion Planning

    Date, Time, and Session # TBD

    With Oracle’s release of PBCS, many services companies have started releasing their one-size-fits-all implementations. The unfortunate truth is that PBCS is still Hyperion Planning. This presentation discusses the best practices around implementing PBCS and how to avoid the pitfalls of implementations offered at insanely cheap (and underestimated) pricing. Attend this session if you don’t want to have your PBCS project “land and expand.”

    The Planning Repository Revisited: Beyond the Basics

    Date, Time, and Session # TBD

    If you’ve enjoyed my past presentations on the Planning repository, you should enjoy this presentation even more. We’ll take a step beyond the basics and provide a whole new set of examples that take a leap into real-world use. Whether it’s synchronizing metadata across applications or deleting dimensions, this presentation will dive deeper than ever before into the repository. But wait…there’s more. This presentation will have full samples in both Transact SQL for SQL Server users and PL/SQL for Oracle users. That’s two languages for the price of one (shipping and handling not included).

    And here:

    http://kscope16.com/presenters/presenterlist?last_id=137

    I’ll update this post once we have dates and times.  Looking forward to Chicago!

  • Building a Hyperion Home Lab: Choosing Your Motherboard

    // Brian Marshall // Hyperion Home Lab No Responses

    Before we get started, here’s the entire series in case you need to look back (or ahead):

    At this point, hopefully you have decided on what processor you would like to go with.  But, if you haven’t, perhaps this post will help you with that decision.  As we look at different motherboard options, we’ll stick with the plan of desktop and server options with budgets for low, medium, and high.

    So how do you select a motherboard?  When it comes to Hyperion, we are interested in memory capacity first and foremost, then storage options, and finally general expansion.  The entire purpose for our home lab is to learn more.  Learning more generally means we have more virtual machines running more versions of Hyperion.  This means we need more memory to keep those different virtual machines running.  In our desktop options, we’ll see that we will be limited to four (4) memory slots that will max out at 64 GB of RAM.  We should see some better options once the next generation of high-end desktop processors and motherboards come out, but for now, this is what we have to work with and it is still double what most laptops will offer.

    But…that still might not be enough for you.  That leads us to our server options.  Basically if you want more cores and more memory…go the server route.  Now on to the options:

    Desktop High Budget

    As we look at each of our desktop budget options, the main difference will be the chipset that each motherboard is based on.  For our high-budget option, we’ll be looking at an Intel Z170-based motherboard from ASRock.  The ASRock Z170M Extreme4 is a Micro ATX (this will be important when we get to chassis selection) motherboard with four (4) memory slots, Intel LAN, three (3) PCIe x16 slots, USB 3.1 support, and an Ultra M.2 slot.  This means we have the best expansion options available.

    Additionally, with Intel LAN, ESXi now supports this motherboard.  The Z170 also supports overclocking, if that’s your thing.  The Z170M Extreme 4 is priced at $124.99.

    Desktop Medium Budget

    Our medium budget option is very similar to the high budget option, but at a significant cost savings.  Based on the Intel H170 chipset, the ASRock H170M Pro 4 is also Micro ATX.  This board has four (4) memory slots, Intel LAN, two (2) PCIe x16 slots, and an Ultra M.2 slot.  So with one less PCIe slot and no USB 3.1, it has less capacity for expansion.  The H170M Pro 4 is price at $84.99.

    Desktop Low Budget

    Our low budget option is basically the minimum required to set up your home lab.  Based on the Intel H110 chipset, the ASRock H110M-HDS is also Micro ATX.  This board has four (4) memory slots, Realtek LAN, and one (1) PCIe x16 slot.  Basically we lose Intel LAN (necessary for ESXi), another PCIe slot, and an Ultra M.2 slot.  We can basically only add one significant device to this board (either a PCIe SSD or a different network card).  But, at $51.99, at least it has low cost going for it!

    Server High Budget

    Interestingly, our high budget option does not give us the highest level of performance.  As you will see once we get to the medium budget option, Ebay can be a powerful tool in the construction of a home lab.  For those that are not comfortable with used hardware and would prefer to just get new gear quickly from Newegg or Amazon, this option is for you.

    Based on the Intel C612 chipset, the Supermicro MBD-X10DRI is our selection for the high budget option.  This board is Extended ATX (massive) and is packed with plenty of features including sixteen (16) memory slots, dual Intel LAN, USB 3.0, three (3) PCIe x16 slots, and three (3) PCIe x8 slots.  Given the number of PCIe slots, the exclusion of the M.2 slot isn’t surprising.  Chances are, if you go with this option, you will be looking at Intel PCIe SSD’s anyway.

    All of our server boards will also have something called IPMI on board with KVM over LAN.  This is basically a web-based management system that allows you to power your server on and off, reset it, see vital statistics, and even have access to the mouse, video, and mouse over the network.  This enables our servers to be completely headless (no monitor, or any other devices for that matter).  So if you wanted to say, stick it in a closet…no worries.

    The X10DRI is priced at a hefty $429.99, but again, it has great features and will last a really long time.

    Server Medium Budget

    This is my favorite options.  The ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16 motherboard is based on the Intel C602 chipset and also includes a great many features.  It also has sixteen (16) memory slots (though DDR3 instead of DDR4), quad Intel LAN, four (4) PCIe x16 slots, and one (1) PCIe x4 slots.  As with all of our server options, this board is also equipped with IPMI and KVM over LAN.  At $309.99, it makes for an excellent match to our Ebay-purchased E5-2670 processors.  And as we’ll see in our upcoming memory post, there are some great deals to be had for memory that works in this board.

    Server Low Budget

    For our low budget option, I’ve chosen a single-processor motherboard to support our Xeon V5 processor.  The Supermicro X11SSH-F-O is based on the Intel C236 chipset and supports socket 1151 processors (include Core i5 and Core i7 processors).  The board has four (4) memory slots, dual Intel LAN, USB 3.0, one (1) PCIe x16 slot, and two (2) PCIe x8 slots.  So why would this board be better than our desktop models?  First, it is a server board, that’s what it was made for.  Second, it has IPMI and KVM over LAN.  This feature alone makes its far superior if you want a truly headless system.  Third, it supports ECC RAM.  Clocking in at $218.48, it is also the cheapest board by far of our server options.

    Tiny Server

    Finally, if you want a really tiny server that packs a punch, we have our Tiny Server option.  Based on an integrated Intel Xeon-D 1540, the Supermicro MBD-X10SDV-4C-TLN2F-O (wow…nice name), packs a lot of punch in a tiny format.  With four (4) memory slots, dual Intel LAN, USB 3.0, and one (1) PCIe x16 slot, this board still has quite a few options.  It also support IPMI and KVM over LAN along with a maximum memory size of 128 GB.  It does have very limited memory support to reach that capacity, but we’ll get to that soon enough.  Clocking in at $0.00, since it comes with the processor ($489.99), this board is a steal!

    There are also other variations of this board with 10 GB LAN and an eight (8) core processor, but the price is nearly double that of this board.

    That’s it for motherboards.  Here’s a quick summary of the motherboards in a table:.

    MotherboardPriceLink
    ASRock Z170M Extreme4$124.99Newegg Link
    ASRock H170M Pro4$84.99Newegg Link
    ASRock H110M-HDS$51.99Newegg Link
    Supermicro MBD-X10DRI$429.99Newegg Link
    ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16$309.99Newegg Link
    Supermicro X11SSH-F-O$229.99Newegg Link
    Supermicro MBD-X10SDV-4C-TLN2F-O$0.00Newegg Link