OLAPUnderground Outline Extractor on 11.1.2.1 - Updated Path Requirements

We are starting to get OlapUnderground users who have installed 11.1.2.1 and are seeing problems with the Outline Extractor.  We also had issues with this version of the Outline Extractor.  Some of the typical symptoms were that Essbase dialogs, such as the login dialog, did not work.  In fact, I saw this same behavior in the classic Excel add-in on my machine; it did not work.  My QA team went to work and found a couple of interesting things about Essbase API applications in 11.1.2.1.

First, there is a new requirement for another directory in the path statement.  After a bit of searching, our QA guys found the following article on Oracle's MySupport site (Document ID 1322496.1):

Problem : Running a 32-bit VB API on a 64-bit Essbase Server Fails With "ERROR: Essbase Initialization Failed, StatusCode = 1030803

This document explains that the "environment has to use the bin-32 directory to get 32-bit VB API programs to run on the 64-bit server."

There is a new directory that must be in the PATH environment variable!  As I am running the 64-bit Essbase server on my machine, I didn't want to change the PATH of the operating system on the chance it would break the Essbase server.  Instead, I created a cmd file to set the appropriate environment variables and run the Outline Extractor.  Here is the complete command file:

@rem This command file uses the 8.3 filename format.  
@rem The 8.3 filename may vary between machines, so 
@rem be sure to check the paths carefully.  Use dir /x
@rem to find the filenames in the 8.3 format.

set EPMHOME=C:\Oracle\MIDDLE~1\EPMSYS~1

set ARBORPATH=%EPMHOME%\common\ESSBAS~2\1112~1.0
set ESSBASEPATH=%ARBORPATH%
set ESSLANG=English_UnitedStates.Latin1@Binary

set PATH=%ARBORPATH%\bin;%EPMHOME%\bin-32;%PATH%

start C:\PROGRA~2\OLAPUN~1\ESSBAS~1.2\EXPORT~1.EXE 

Note that I used 8.3 filename format.  I quickly tried using double-quotes around long filenames to these directories in an attempt to make it run without the 8.3 filenames.  I didn't get it right the first time and didn't put any more time into it; the script with 8.3 filenames worked the first time.

A second thing we noticed about the Essbase 11.1.2.1 VB API is that the VB supporting files, most notably esb32.bas declarations file that defines the functions in the dll's, do not appear to be in the distribution.  We did find esb32.bas in the samples, but they were from Essbase 9.3

Finally, due to the missing esb32.bas, we have not yet shipped an official version of the Essbase Outline Extractor for 11.1.2.1.  The likely case is that no declarations changed and we can just use the 11.1.2.0 version with an updated ESB_API_VERSION variable.  Until we do that, when you run the Essbase Outline Extractor with Essbase 11.1.2.1, you will see a dialog that warns you are using the incorrect version of Essbase.

If you are using the Essbase Outline Extractor for 11.1.2.0, you can ignore this warning and the Extractor should still run successfully.

Note: I will follow up with a similar post on how I got the classic Excel add-in working on my machine.