I also used their visit to work on my French, the but progress is very slow (ou trop lent pour ceux d'entre vous en France), so I haven't translated the whitepaper. I trust is says good things about Dodeca!
Saturday, March 31, 2012
New Dodeca Whitepaper En Francais!
Our partners at Limpida in Paris have recently published a whitepaper on Dodeca in French! We recently hosted two Limpida consultants in our office here in Huntsville. During their week in Huntsville, we had the opportunity to give them some in-depth training on Dodeca so they can provide quality implementation services back home in France.
I also used their visit to work on my French, the but progress is very slow (ou trop lent pour ceux d'entre vous en France), so I haven't translated the whitepaper. I trust is says good things about Dodeca!
I also used their visit to work on my French, the but progress is very slow (ou trop lent pour ceux d'entre vous en France), so I haven't translated the whitepaper. I trust is says good things about Dodeca!
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Kscope 12 Early Bird Deadline is Almost Here
If you are planning to attend Kscope 12 in San Antonio and you have not yet registered, be sure to register this week as Early Bird discounts end next Monday and the price goes up $150 $300. Better yet, register this week and use the Applied OLAP discount code, AOLAP, and you will save another $100.
Kscope features the world's most intensive learning opportunities for Essbase, Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle Application Express (APEX) and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Register today and I will see you there!
Kscope features the world's most intensive learning opportunities for Essbase, Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle Application Express (APEX) and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Register today and I will see you there!
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Smart View 11.1.2.1.102 Performance Tip
A couple of weeks ago, I was preparing to speak on the new Smart View 11.1.2.1.102 at the ODTUG Hyperion SIG Dallas meeting and found a performance issue when trying to zoom in on large datasets. Here is the sheet I was zooming:
I used Sample Basic and zoomed in to all levels on Year, Measures, and Product. When I zoomed in on Market, Smart View never returned but rather just kept trying to zoom in for a while. After working on it for a bit, I decided to try the same thing in the classic Excel add-in and, guess what? The same sequence of operations is not even possible there as it easily shoots past the 65,535 rows supported by the classic add-in. I tried it in Dodeca and it returned a bit over 172,000 rows in 5 seconds, so it certainly isn't an issue with the Essbase server and large retrieves.
I next talked to one of my friends inside Oracle and found the source of the performance issue. If you have used the classic Excel add-in, you may remember seeing the Use Styles option which formats the cells returned by Essbase based on member cell or data cell attributes. Based on my VBA experience, I can tell you that doing lots of format operations in an Excel worksheet can be quite slow. In Smart View 11.1.2.1.102, there is a new option called Use Excel Formatting which also defaults to false. This setting is conceptually the opposite of Use Styles in the classic add-in. In other words, Smart View 11.1.2.1.102, along with all previous versions of Smart View, automatically formats the cells that are returned. In fact, you can see the formatting in the screenshot above.
To prevent this automatic formatting and speed up your retrievals, set the Use Excel Formatting option to true.
Once I made this change, the zoom in operation on Market did complete and brought back more than 172,000 rows.
Another thing you may note from the spreadsheet is that member labels are repeated. This is another difference between the classic add-in and Smart View. The Repeat Member Labels option has been renamed Suppress Repeated Members and the default behavior has changed. With Smart View, you must select the option to Suppress Repeated Members to see the same behavior you saw by default in the classic add-in. Frankly, I don't remember if this is something new in Smart View 11.1.2.1.102, but just be aware of it. In the screenshot below, I have set the Suppress Repeated Members setting to mimic the classic add-in.
I used Sample Basic and zoomed in to all levels on Year, Measures, and Product. When I zoomed in on Market, Smart View never returned but rather just kept trying to zoom in for a while. After working on it for a bit, I decided to try the same thing in the classic Excel add-in and, guess what? The same sequence of operations is not even possible there as it easily shoots past the 65,535 rows supported by the classic add-in. I tried it in Dodeca and it returned a bit over 172,000 rows in 5 seconds, so it certainly isn't an issue with the Essbase server and large retrieves.
I next talked to one of my friends inside Oracle and found the source of the performance issue. If you have used the classic Excel add-in, you may remember seeing the Use Styles option which formats the cells returned by Essbase based on member cell or data cell attributes. Based on my VBA experience, I can tell you that doing lots of format operations in an Excel worksheet can be quite slow. In Smart View 11.1.2.1.102, there is a new option called Use Excel Formatting which also defaults to false. This setting is conceptually the opposite of Use Styles in the classic add-in. In other words, Smart View 11.1.2.1.102, along with all previous versions of Smart View, automatically formats the cells that are returned. In fact, you can see the formatting in the screenshot above.
To prevent this automatic formatting and speed up your retrievals, set the Use Excel Formatting option to true.
Once I made this change, the zoom in operation on Market did complete and brought back more than 172,000 rows.
Another thing you may note from the spreadsheet is that member labels are repeated. This is another difference between the classic add-in and Smart View. The Repeat Member Labels option has been renamed Suppress Repeated Members and the default behavior has changed. With Smart View, you must select the option to Suppress Repeated Members to see the same behavior you saw by default in the classic add-in. Frankly, I don't remember if this is something new in Smart View 11.1.2.1.102, but just be aware of it. In the screenshot below, I have set the Suppress Repeated Members setting to mimic the classic add-in.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
APS 11.1.2.2 New Feature: Essbase Web Services
APS 11.1.2.2 appears to have a significant new feature, Essbase Web Services. Here is an excerpt from the readme file posted on the Oracle website:
Essbase Web Services
Web services are self-contained, modular applications that one can describe, publish, locate, and invoke over a network. Web services allow access to regular applications using a Web browser. Web services use XML to code and decode data, and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) to transport it.
Essbase Web Services will expose Essbase user and administrative functionality in a services-oriented (SOA) environment via Provider Services, and allow Essbase to be easily integrated with both Oracle and third-party applications.
The APS Admin Guide also posted at the Oracle site has information on the Essbase Web Services and what you can do with them. It appears you can query data and metadata along with performing some admin tasks. One thing that looks useful immediately is the ability to execute a Maxl statement via a web service. This would eliminate the need to install the Essbase client just to run Maxl statements; I have one customer who could benefit greatly from this functionality today.
Hopefully I will get a chance to play with these soon and post some sample code. On the other hand, ten years ago I wrote web services to retrieve Essbase grid data into Dodeca and they are *very* fast, so I don't see myself working very hard on those particular APIs.
Essbase Web Services
Web services are self-contained, modular applications that one can describe, publish, locate, and invoke over a network. Web services allow access to regular applications using a Web browser. Web services use XML to code and decode data, and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) to transport it.
Essbase Web Services will expose Essbase user and administrative functionality in a services-oriented (SOA) environment via Provider Services, and allow Essbase to be easily integrated with both Oracle and third-party applications.
The APS Admin Guide also posted at the Oracle site has information on the Essbase Web Services and what you can do with them. It appears you can query data and metadata along with performing some admin tasks. One thing that looks useful immediately is the ability to execute a Maxl statement via a web service. This would eliminate the need to install the Essbase client just to run Maxl statements; I have one customer who could benefit greatly from this functionality today.
Hopefully I will get a chance to play with these soon and post some sample code. On the other hand, ten years ago I wrote web services to retrieve Essbase grid data into Dodeca and they are *very* fast, so I don't see myself working very hard on those particular APIs.
Essbase 11.1.2.2 Patch Set; Full 11.1.2.2 Update Version Still To Come?
There is a patch set out for Essbase 11.1.2.2 which is apparently in connection with the release of the Exalytics system. According to the docs, however, it appears there may be a full update on the way as well. This is from the Essbase readme file:
About this Patch
This Readme file describes the defects fixed in this patch set (PS) and the requirements and instructions for applying this PS.
Who should apply this patch: This PS contains defect fixes and changes that are specific to the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory machine. You should install this PS only in the following circumstances:
Another note in the readme leads me to believe the Essbase VB API lives! There is a defect fixed in this patch that is described as "API. Update version of esb32.bas file." It looks like we need to get to work on the 11.1.2.2 Outline Extractor and other OlapUnderground tools.
About this Patch
This Readme file describes the defects fixed in this patch set (PS) and the requirements and instructions for applying this PS.
Who should apply this patch: This PS contains defect fixes and changes that are specific to the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory machine. You should install this PS only in the following circumstances:
- You are installing Essbase on the Exalytics In-Memory Machine, or
- There is an urgent need for a defect fix that is included in this PS
Another note in the readme leads me to believe the Essbase VB API lives! There is a defect fixed in this patch that is described as "API. Update version of esb32.bas file." It looks like we need to get to work on the 11.1.2.2 Outline Extractor and other OlapUnderground tools.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Wow! More Than 1 Million Rows of Data per Minute!
As we continue to work on Dodeca, we continue to stretch the limit. Today was certainly evidence of that. Dodeca already has the most powerful relational/spreadsheet technology available in the world, but our development team is not yet satisfied. Instead, they are working on making it even better. Specifically, they have implemented a cursored retrieval that will allow the Dodeca client to request a specified number of rows on each trip to the server.
To test this functionality, our dev team created some very large retrieves. The SQL itself was fairly simple in that it returned only 7 columns of data and joined only 2 tables. The performance we saw, however, was outstanding. In tests conducted on a debug build of Dodeca, they saw over 1,030,000 rows of data, or a total of over 7,200,000 cells of data, retrieved from SQL Server and filled into a worksheet in about 37 seconds. That means Dodeca is processing nearly 195,000 cells per second!
Many people ask me, "Why would you want to retrieve 1,000,000 rows of data into a spreadsheet?" Well, we have customers who retrieve massive amounts of data. We believe that, as a software provider, it isn't our place to second-guess why a customer wants to do something like that. Instead, we focus on allowing customers the freedom to do their business their way; Dodeca just makes it faster and easier. At 195,000 cells per second, I would call it really fast! How would you like to see performance like that when you do an Essbase drill-through?
To test this functionality, our dev team created some very large retrieves. The SQL itself was fairly simple in that it returned only 7 columns of data and joined only 2 tables. The performance we saw, however, was outstanding. In tests conducted on a debug build of Dodeca, they saw over 1,030,000 rows of data, or a total of over 7,200,000 cells of data, retrieved from SQL Server and filled into a worksheet in about 37 seconds. That means Dodeca is processing nearly 195,000 cells per second!
Many people ask me, "Why would you want to retrieve 1,000,000 rows of data into a spreadsheet?" Well, we have customers who retrieve massive amounts of data. We believe that, as a software provider, it isn't our place to second-guess why a customer wants to do something like that. Instead, we focus on allowing customers the freedom to do their business their way; Dodeca just makes it faster and easier. At 195,000 cells per second, I would call it really fast! How would you like to see performance like that when you do an Essbase drill-through?
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Smart View Dialog Positions
There was a question on the Network54 Essbase Board today about the member selection dialog in Smart View rendering off the screen. It seems like I may have read something about this issue and a possible solution, so I decided to spend a few minutes investigating it..
I found that you can close Excel/Smart View, delete the DialogPositions parameter from the registry, and restart Excel and the Member Select dialog will again be displayed centered on the main monitor.
You can make this easier for end users by creating a registration entries file. On my machine, I created a text file and named it ResetSmartViewDialogs.reg. In this file, I added the following lines:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Hyperion Solutions\HyperionSmartView\Options]
"DialogPositions"=-
To run the file, just double-click on it and you will be warned about the changes to be made to the registry. Simply confirm that you want the entries to be made and the offending DialogPositions setting will be removed.
The problem occurs when you have multiple monitors hooked up to your computer, open Smart View, connect to an Essbase database, open the Member Selection dialog and then move it onto your second monitor. Smart View remembers where you moved the dialog and will display it there the next time you open the dialog. The problem is, if you no longer have your second monitor attached, the dialog will display off-screen.
I took a look at the registry and found there is a DialogPositions setting in the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Hyperion Solutions\HyperionSmartView\Options.
I found that you can close Excel/Smart View, delete the DialogPositions parameter from the registry, and restart Excel and the Member Select dialog will again be displayed centered on the main monitor.
You can make this easier for end users by creating a registration entries file. On my machine, I created a text file and named it ResetSmartViewDialogs.reg. In this file, I added the following lines:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Hyperion Solutions\HyperionSmartView\Options]
"DialogPositions"=-
To run the file, just double-click on it and you will be warned about the changes to be made to the registry. Simply confirm that you want the entries to be made and the offending DialogPositions setting will be removed.
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