Thursday, February 12, 2015

Essbase VB API is Officially Dead

It is with a sad heart that bring you the news that, as of Essbase 11.1.2.4, the Essbase VB API is officially dead.  I cut my teeth in Essbase working with that API way back in the mid-1990's, but the writing had been on the wall for some time.  Microsoft stopped supporting VB years ago, so it was only a matter of time before this time would come.  That being said, I haven't used the VB API for any new Essbase work since about 2001; the Essbase Java API is alive and growing so my efforts have been there.

Here is the official notification:













You can read the notification yourself in the Essbase 11.1.2.4 Readme.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does this include the SmartView VB Functions? We are using, for example HypGetMemberInformation, to retrieve attributes associated with a dimension member that we cannot find other ways to get out of the cube? Are all these Hyp-like functions are going away too?

Thanks

Tim Tow said...

The Smart View VBA functions are not going away. The difference is that Microsoft will support VBA to program the Office applications for the foreseeable future, but the classic, standalone, VB 6 language was abandoned years ago.

On the other hand, the VB API functions, which Essbase customers frequently used inside Excel VBA with the *classic* Excel add-in, don't really have much reason to exist now that the classic Excel add-in, and its associated EssV functions are gone.

Note: Watch for a new, high-performance Excel add-in coming from Applied OLAP in the near future.