It was a very busy week in the EPM space. We had several patches released along with a large amount of great blog content.
Patches and Updates:
HPCM 11.1.2.4.120 has been released. Looks like a lot of bug fixes and some new features.
Hyperion Tax Provision gets patch 11.1.2.3.701.
The long-awaited 11.1.2.4.200 patch is out for HFM. There are a lot of new features…but it looks like they didn’t manage to include web-based meta-data management. I have verified this in my test lab…sigh.
Disclosure Management 11.1.2.3.815 is also available. It seems to be purely bug fixes.
New Blog Posts:
This week I got back to PowerShell with a focus on Hyperion Planning and the Outline Load Utility.
Vijay posted his first in a series of posts on the DRM Batch Utility. I look forward to the rest of this series.
Philip has a guest post on Cameron’s blog about PBCS and Valid Intersections. When will they finally give this to the on-premise users?!
Neha shows us how to upload Smart Lists in PBCS and Hyperion Planning using the web-based interface.
Dmitry has posted the second part of his EPMA and ODI integration series.
Tony helps us understand how to perform process log analysis in FDMEE.
For a little bit of BI blogging, check out a BICS introduction to projects over at ArtOfBI.
Rodrigo shows us how to dynamically export objects from ODI.
Jake came out of blogging retirement to show us how to use the REST API in PBCS with Groovy. Great stuff as always.
Henri has a great post about the previously mentioned 11.1.2.4.200 patch for HFM.
Blogs from the Past:
This is a new section of our week in review. Basically, if I used a blog post for something, I feel like I should give people credit for great work. So this area will just bring up older blog posts that maybe you missed or just that I found helpful.
I was working with the Essbase JAPI and I made use of Jake’s post about Groovy and Dmitry’s post on his outline scrambler. Without these posts, I’m sure it would have taken me days to figure it out. Thanks guys!
Other News:
123OLAP is having a great sale on EPM training. See more here and be sure to let them know that Brian @ US-Analytics sent you their way!
Brian Marshall
March 5, 2016
This just came for me in the mail:
I now have a pin, a sleeveless fleece sweater, and a shout-out on the Oracle ACE twitter account…I must be a real ACE Associate!
Now how do I get one of those fancy ACE or ACE Director sweaters?
Brian Marshall
March 2, 2016
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
Brian Marshall
February 29, 2016
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:
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.
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:
You should get something totally useful like this:
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.
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
| Parameter | Description | Value |
| -F: | Specifies the password file that we just generated so that we don't need to enter a password. | PasswordFile.pass |
| /A | Specifies the application that we are connecting to. | Vision |
| /U | Specifies the username that we are connecting with. | admin |
| /I | Specifies the file that we will be importing. | admin_ExportedMetadata_Product.csv |
| /D | Specifies the dimension that we will be loading. | Product |
| /L | Specifies the file to log our results to. | Product.log |
| /X | Specifies the file to write exceptions to. | Product.exc |
So what happens?
Success! And how about our log and exception files?
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!
Brian Marshall
February 29, 2016
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!
Brian Marshall
February 27, 2016
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.
Brian Marshall
February 23, 2016
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!
Brian Marshall
February 20, 2016
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 Docs | Essbase Tech Ref | Essbase DBAG | Planning Admin Guide | HFM Admin Guide | FDMEE |
| 11.1.2.4 | 
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| 11.1.2.3 |
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| 11.1.2.2 |
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| 11.1.2.1 | | | | | | |
| 11.1.1.4 |
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| 9.3.x | | |
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| 9.2.1 | | |
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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.
Brian Marshall
February 16, 2016
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 Marshall
February 13, 2016
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!
Brian Marshall
February 11, 2016