Debugging the EPM Configurator

I installed WebLogic today and ran the EPM Configurator to deploy APS in WebLogic.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work the first few times I tried.  It seemed to work except it finished very, very quickly. I never before had a problem with the Configurator so it was a bit surprising, as well as a bit perplexing, as to where to turn next. I did a little Googling and didn’t find anything so I turned to the last resort for us geek-types, ‘reading the instructions’.

Somewhere in the docs I found a reference to the %HYPERION_HOME%\logs\config directory. A quick check of that directory and, sure enough, there were some files with a new timestamp including the configtool_err.log. Here is the entry that logged the error that was causing me problems:

(Dec 17, 2009, 04:37:42 PM), com.hyperion.cis.config.Configurator, ERROR, Error:
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.hyperion.ess.APSAppServerConfigurator

ClassNotFoundException is almost always caused by an incomplete CLASSPATH. It took me a while to find the class. What I finally found was the %HYPERION_HOME%\common\config\9.5.0.0\product\aps\9.5.0.0\aps_1.xml file.  It contains information the Configurator uses to understand how to configure APS. This file contained, among other things, the following entries:

<classpath>
 C:\Hyperion\products\Essbase\aps\lib\essconfiguration.jar
</classpath>
<productappserverdeployer>
 com.hyperion.ess.APSAppServerConfigurator
</productappserverdeployer>

Bingo! A quick check of that directory showed the essconfiguration.jar file was not there. Fortunately, that jar file was present in a number of other Hyperion directories. I copied the jar file to the proper location and I was off and running.

When I get a chance, I am going to go explore those xml’s more to see what I can learn..