Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers

Where oh where have I been and why oh why would you care?

2012-01-29T10:48:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed that I haven’t updated this blog in a long time, nor have I been feeding my obsessive need to be on OTN/Network54. And you likely didn’t care, but I’ll tell you where I’ve been regardless. :)

I and 12 other happy souls have been writing a book for the last six months. No, not a book about coffee, or obscure French cars, or my imaginary service in the RAF (my callsign, if I had one, is Biggles 1 and in my imagination I fly this). Instead, we have written something that I think is going to set the Essbase world on its collective ear – the first advanced topic Essbase book: Developing Essbase Applications: Advanced Techniques for Finance and IT Professionals.

No, you can’t buy it, yet, as it just went to the publisher as a first draft. I hope it will be available by KScope12 but it will likely be available by Oracle OpenWorld. We’ll see – this is the first book I’ve ever written and I have no real yardstick to compare times, effort, etc. against. Yes, it has been quite the learning experience.

Again, who cares? Why would I read this book?

You’ll read Developing Essbase Applications because:

That advanced topic orientation I talked about. For the time being, you’ll simply have to trust me on this, but I am quite confident that you will find this book interesting. Nope, I take that back, you will find this book revelatory, revolutionary, and amazing. Hype, right? I don’t think so – there is content in this book that exists nowhere else. Some of it will blow your mind – really. We’ve peer reviewed this beast and have received very positive feedback. We’ve also gotten back the comments, “Wow, that’s really hard/amazing. How did you guys figure that out? I thought I knew Essbase and I didn’t know that.” This is not a beginner’s book. I’m not even sure it’s a midlevel developer’s book. There’s Good Stuff inside the covers.
A good practices approach. We’ve seen bad Essbase implementations. We’ve (long, long ago) even been responsible for bad Essbase implementations. The lessons from those bad systems were absorbed and the bad practices assiduously avoided. Instead, we show you nothing but the right way to do Essbase. Our internal motto during the writing of this book was, “We love Essbase and hate to see it done wrong.”
We do more than just tell you how to do something, we tell you why. It’s like having a team of seasoned consultants in a book and they’re 100% dedicated to knowledge transfer. More than a few people in on the secret have said, “Are you telling the world too much?” If there was a finite amount of Essbase knowledge out there, then yes, maybe I’d be worried about writing ourselves out of a job. Happily, Essbase is alive, well, and growing. Making you grow is Developing Essbase Applications mission.

I am ever so slightly interested. So what’s in it?

Developing Essbase Applications covers every area of advanced Essbase practice there is:

Essbase infrastructure
Data quality
Essbase Studio
BSO in depth
BSO to ASO conversions
Designing ASO for performance
Practical MDX
Essbase Java API
Automating with Groovy
Advanced Smart View
Implementing and administering Essbase

Who wrote the book?

An excellent question and oh how I do love writing these leading questions. See if you recognize any names: Dave Anderson, Joe Aultman, John Booth, Gary Crisci, Natalie Delemar, Dave Farnsworth, Cameron Lackpour, Michael Nader, Dan Pressman, Robb Salzmann, Tim Tow, and Angela Wilcox. Jake Turrell edited. Many more people contributed with their edits, comments, and ideas. This was the group project to end all group projects and I am obliged to each and every one of you.

So you’re just one of 12. What’s the big deal?

I was the editor in chief of this project. What does that entail? An editor in chief, at least within the context of this book:

Lands the publishing contract. The Oracle ACE program helps. No, this is not an endorsement of the book by the ACE program. Oracle wants ACEs to write and they provide the all-important introduction to publishers.
Handles all of the legal issues. I now know more about copyright than I ever wanted to.
Project manages the writing. I will freely admit that project managing this large a group of what are essentially volunteers (yes, we are getting royalties, but split that 13 ways and figure the number of hours and it’s pretty close to volunteerism) was challenging, to say the least.
Helps edit each and every one of the chapters along with Natalie Delemar, Dan Pressman, Angie Wilcox, and Jake Turrell.
Writes a fairly awesome (ahem) chapter on data quality.
Lives, breathes, eats, sleeps, and anything else you can think of nothing, but nothing, but this book for the last two months.

The writing process has been exhilarating and exhausting. I’m happy to have done it and equally happy that it is finally over. I need to go find billable work.

So what’s next?

I and my fellow coconspirators will keep you up to date with more information about Developing Essbase Applications as it gets closer to actual publication. Like I wrote, we aren’t exactly doing this for money. We wrote it to drive the art of practicing Essbase further, much further. So think of the drip, drip, drip of news about this book as a service, not a marketing campaign. ;)

We’re tremendously proud of what we’ve written and think you will find it tremendously valuable.

Stupid Programming Tricks #9

2011-12-17T15:42:00.002-05:00

Keeping it G-Rated

I have a focus problem – no, that’s not the part that is G-Rated. My focus problem is that I jump around so many technologies I sometimes tie myself into knots trying to figure what should be, and maybe are, simple things. No, that’s not bragging, more like an expression of frustration. But it’s all fun, right? Right? My hat is off to those who find this stuff easy, ‘cause that for sure ain’t yr. obdnt. srvnt.

So with the warning to myself to keep both the whinging and the cursing to a minimum, let us proceed with an ODI Stupid Trick.

Going faster miles an hour

Oh dear, that version is NSFW. But you have to give the Pistols artistic license. And it’s a fairly good comment on how much this issue frosted my cookies.

So I am working on my Essbase Special Project using ODI 11.1.1.5 and all is going swimmingly, sort of. I’m even doing it all in the Cloud. So what?

I had a Procedure that logs process status to a table (too many steps for emails). I wanted one of the fields to be appname.dbname with those values passed by #VAR_AppName and #VAR_DbName. I had these defined as Alphanumeric variables, No History, with a default value initially of ASOSamp and Sample; I subsequently set these to blank because I wanted to assign them via a Load Plan. In any case, these were set to Declare Variables in my Package and off I went.

The problem
Except that some of the Procedures that used these variables didn't change their value. Odd. I deleted the variables from the Package and readded them and regenerated the Scenario(s). Nope, still stuck, actually, no, only one of them. Huh?

The Stupid ODI Trick, and yes, it was just luck that I found it
After a lot of experimentation which I believe included scratching my head and rubbing my belly while typing (that's hard to do with one’s nose but I managed it), I was just about ready to delete the silly things (this would NOT have been a trivial exercise as they are used through the Project) when I came across this (unanswered) post on OTN’s ODI forum by Steve Truesdale:
https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=9973095&#9973095
Which then led me to these two (instructive) links:
http://public.sttruesdale.fastmail.fm/ODI%20Variables%20-%20with%20History%20-%20Prompt%20at%20Runtime.png
http://public.sttruesdale.fastmail.fm/ODI%20Variables%20-%20No%20History.png

Simple, right? :) Just like everything else in ODI.
Nuke the entire site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure
Channeling my inner Ripley, looking at the diagrams made me think -- I can't get that !@#$ing variable (whoops, so much for the G-rating) to change its value -- what if I changed its type from Alphanumeric to Numeric or Date or Text? One of those ought to be an illegal type conversion and make the value GO AWAY.

And so it was.

Sigh.

At least the variables value now in the Load Plan, just the way they ought to. That was NOT intuitive, but at least it worked.

Two (no three) tips from Oracle Support

2011-12-07T23:33:00.003-05:00

Introduction or who am I, anyway?

I like things that come in threes. Perhaps my OTN handle should be “RD” instead of “CL”.

By the way, Rene Descartes had three dreams that drove him to pursue science. FWIW, I had dreams (all too real) of working in a mainframe Adabas shop (that was subsequently off-shored) forever – I ran to the tender embrace of OLAP just as fast as I could. I wasn’t always an idiot as a recent college graduate – just mostly. As for what I am now I leave it for you to decide. Good grief, what a digression that was. Okay, the rest of this post is actually useful stuff.

Information Center

Would you like to have all of your EPM (and related BI) Support goodness wrapped into one package so you didn’t have to chase hither and yon, looking for specific articles? How about a single location that’s even more consolidated than the Master Note Indexes and Oracle Advisors? What, you like searching through Support? Uh-huh, you were only joshing me.

There is now one single place to get:

EPM/BI Release News

And there’s more than the above, a lot more. I think I could easily spend a month (or maybe more like a quarter) exploring all of the goodies on this page.

Pretty nifty, eh? And how do you find this treasure trove, that is, by the by, updated every quarter?

Go right here to find out more:
EPM and BI Support Newsletter Current Edition - Volume 2 : December 2011 (Doc ID 1347131.1)

ODI is left out, but there’s still great stuff for it

I’m working on a Special Project using ODI right now and it has been an interesting experience. I’m pretty sure productivity in ODI = being beaten down by the product’s obtuseness, arbitrary nature, and just plain weirdness and then getting built back up by its awesomeness. I guess it’s sort of like the Army’s BCT except we ODI developers don’t run around to a cadence march or yell Hooah! I digress yet again. Regardless, ODI really is very powerful but anyone who doesn’t use it as part of his "normal" (can normal be used with me?) job can use all the help available.

ODI isn’t part of the EPM and BI newsletter, but here are three articles for you to obsess about. What, you don’t do that when I post this stuff? For shame.

There is a lot of good information in these notes – I wish I had known about them before I began my Journey of Pain that is ODI 11.1.1.5.

HTML rules, Flash, not so much

Oracle Support has this whiz-bang, super-duper web site full of all kinds of nifty interface functionality. This is good.

If you are on a slow PC or a slow internet connection, it is S-L-O-W. This is bad. Do it on a laptop tethered to your mobile phone as an internet gateway and it is beyond slow. Pouring molasses on a cold New England’s winter morn comes time mind as a barely-adequate analogy.

There is another way to get into Oracle Support’s web page and if you clicked on the above link, you’ve already experienced it – it is https://supporthtml.oracle.com. All of the same great content, 100x (it is possible I am employing hyperbole to make the point, but it is fast) the UI speed. What’s not to like?

And that’s it, for now

Yet again, Oracle Support does their very best to make our lives a little bit easier. I for one am thrilled that this kind of consolidated information is making its way to us. These products are ~~complicated~~ sophisticated and poor old implementation consultants like me need all the help they can get.

I don’t know who in Support is responsible for supporthtml.oracle.com, but whoever that is – thanks, you are a life saver.

AWS tricks #2 -- Treating that AWS instance as a real server

2011-11-27T09:29:00.003-05:00

Introduction

I really like Amazon Web Services for development purposes. It’s fast (enough), big (more than enough), and flexible (ah, just right) for my purposes. What do you do with it? Have you given any thought to treating that AWS EC2 instance (that’s an Amazon Web Services Elastic Computing Cloud virtual machine for the uninitiated) as a full-fledged server?

Splendid isolation

One approach, per the my earlier post, is to install all client software, including Microsoft Excel, on the server and just use Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) to connect to that EPM cloud instance. This is a great approach if you are the only user of the instance (like me in my development/kick the tires/play with the product till you understand it usage). But what happens when you want to collaborate with someone else or have multiple users check out the awesomeness that is your Essbase/Planning/HFM/Profitability/Close Management/Profitability/Studio/ODI/etc./etc./etc. work?

No geek is an island

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is predicated on servers, and after all the EPM software is server-based – why not treat your instance like a server and your PC like a client? While connecting as a client to your EPM instance in the cloud is slightly harder than connecting to a server down the hall, it is easier than you think and requires just a few changes to the AWS Security Group.

And of course there is a huge benefit – more than one person, e.g., your customers, be they internal or external, can connect to the EPM server. You do like to share, right?

Requirements

You must have:

A valid AWS id
An already created security group
A PC with Excel 2007 or 2010 (2003 is also supported but the examples show 2007/2010’s ribbon interface)
Already read the most-read (Google Analytics tells all) post I have ever written
Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection (RDC). This client is standard in Windows; Macintosh users go here: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/remote-desktop-client)
Time and a willingness to experiment :)

Make sure you do not have Smart View installed as its download and installation is covered below.

Understanding AWS Security Groups

Ports

Security groups are used to define the open ports between an Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance and its clients. By default all server ports are closed by Amazon’s firewall. These ports must be opened for a client to connect to the instance.

As was illustrated in the “Yeah, yeah 11.1.2.1 is here, so what?” instructions, managing the AWS Windows instance required port 3389 to be opened to allow RDC to connect.

IP addresses

AWS provides a powerful method to limit unauthorized connection to an instance – internet protocol (IP) address filtering. In essence, AWS allows you to do define which client external IP addresses will connect to a given instance. It can be the whole world, or it can be just the EPM users in a given location or company.

This external IP address is not the same as your PC’s internal address on the LAN – it is the address the outside world sees and interacts with; usually one address is shared for a given organization or location. Sophisticated AWS security is beyond the scope of this post (not to mention my abilities) but to get a taste of what is possible, investigate Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud and the Elastic IP component of Elastic Compute Cloud for more information.

For simplicity, this document will use a 0.0.0.0 IP address, as did the 11.1.2.1 instructions. In AWS, a source IP address of 0.0.0.0 allows connectivity from and to all client IP addresses on the internet, including the ones belonging to those nasty people who do nothing but troll the ‘net looking for vulnerable servers. You do not want to use this completely open IP address range for anything other than training purposes. Figuring out your public IP address is easy; here is one site that provides this free service: http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup

One final note on wide open IP addresses -- when the authors connect to AWS, whether it be from work or home, they always use their public IP address, never 0.0.0.0.

Opening up the ports

A good test of true client/server connectivity is Smart View against Essbase. Smart View uses ports 19000 for shared connections and 13080 for Essbase private connections. If you set up your security group as described in the post-I-am-mentioning-yet-again, the only open port in your AWS security group will be Remote Desktop’s 3389.

Modifying the Security Group

You will need to expand the open ports by first logging in to AWS’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) console and then clicking on the Security Groups link:

Once in the group, in this case it is called KScopeTest, click on the Inbound tab:

Adding port 19000

You will see port 3389 already open. To add port 19000, type in the port number in the Port range field and then the Add Rule button:

Adding port 13080

Do the same for the private connections on port 13080:

You can click on the Apply Rule Changes button at any time to commit the new port number; you must do so at the end of the port addition steps.

Knowing when to connect

As you know, it can be hard to determine when an AWS instance has started up after launch from an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). The AWS console instance information is limited to four states: terminated, stopped, pending, and started. Started means just what it says – the instance is started, but all that really means initially is that the server has been turned on, not that you can connect.

When an instance has not fully booted, it cannot accept connections; the only way to know if you can connect or not is to try.

Ping comes to the rescue

One way to gain some insight into whether an instance can be connected to is to see if basic networking protocols can be used, e.g, pinging the box using the ping utility. However, by default AWS instances can not be pinged because the protocol that allows ping and traceroute is disabled. Thus a further modification of the security group is required to allow ping from your client to reach the AWS instance.

To do this, click on the Create an new rule dropdown and select Custom ICMP rule:

When you select Custom ICMP rule, the Type dropdown automatically switches to All.

Click on the Add Rule button to add the ICMP ports. You must also click on the Apply Rule Changes button to commit the port changes.

Once committed, the Security Group should look like the following:

Port review

Port	Purpose
ICMP/All	Allow ping, traceroute, etc.
3389	Allow Remote Desktop connection
13080	Smart View private connections to Essbase
19000	Smart View shared connections, Workspace, etc.

We have only opened the ports required for connection: ICMP, 3389, 13080, and 19000.

As an example of port access, if your EPM instance were to support the classic Essbase Excel add-in, add port 1423 to allow connecting to Essbase and ports 32768 through 32778 to allow connections to the Essbase agent and databases.

As a general rule of firewall security, only open the ports needed for your work.

Launch that instance

The detail and rationale behind the steps required to launch an instance were covered in the post-whose-name-must-not-be-mentioned-lest-we-all-go-mad; refer to it for background. If you dare.

Which one?

For the purposes of this example, John Booth’s free and public EPM 11.1.2.1 AMI will be used. You can find out all about the AMI at http://www.metavero.com.

3…2…1…launch!

To find and then launch that AMI, enter the AMI id ami-de2bd4b7 in the filtering textbox in the AMI section of the EC2 console and click on the Refresh button.

Once it appears, right click on the AMI name and select Launch Instance. Make sure you use the Security Group KScopeTest you previously created.

Follow the Launch Instance wizard (see the below for the kinds of selections you should make) and at the Review step start the instance by clicking on the Launch button.

Two ways to see if the instance is really ready

Approach #1 – Check System Log

Right click on the instance and select “Get System Log”.

Review the log

Remember, you are firing up a Windows 2008 server. It is not going to be fast. Give yourself time to get a cup of coffee. In fact, you can likely dump the grounds, scrub the filter basket, put in a new filter, measure out the coffee grounds, put in fresh water, and hit the start button and wait for that delicious pot of Life Blood. In other words, there is likely a 10 to 15 minute wait ahead of you.

You will eventually see something like the below; you may need to check back several times. When you do see it, the log is telling you the truth – you can now connect via RDC.

Approach #2 – Ping the server

Checking the system log is all very well, but it can require multiple tests to ascertain if the instance is strated.

Instead, the familiar ping command can be used to go against the instance – when Windows has booted, the ping command will be echoed back to your client.

Get the DNS name

Once the AMI is launched, grab the public DNS name by trying to connect to the Instance. Yes, that instance will almost certainly not be ready to connect to – you are just going through the motions to get the address.

Right click on the instance name and select Connect.

The AWS console will show the DNS name. Copy that to the clipboard.

Ping from the comand line

Start up a command window, and then enter ping DNSname. In the case of the above DNS address (every launched instance will have a different one and yours will not match the above), the command would be ping ec2-184-73-120-11.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Although a successful reply from the instance is not complete proof that Windows is ready receive Remote Desktop connections, it is a good gauge that the EC2 instance and related Elastic Block Storage (EBS) drive have been created from the AMI and that the OS is in the process of booting up.

This is one of those differences between a GUI and a command line – the GUI requires you to act again and again, while the command line just keeps chugging away until it receives a reply. Which would you rather do?

Connect via Remote Desktop

Once you get a reply from your ping command or from the Get System Log menu, connecti via Remote Desktop by going back to that AWS dialog box and then clicking on the Download shortcut file link.

In Firefox, Remote Desktop will open the .rdp (a config file for RDC) file.

A scary message will ensue. Ignore it – this has nothing to do with AWS and is intead a feature of Windows 7/Remote Desktop.

Enter the password “epmtestdrive”.

Another scary message pops up – again this can be ignored by clicking on the Yes button.

When you have connected to your instance, minimize your Remote Desktop window as you will now connect from your client PC.

Connecting to an EC2 EPM image from your PC

Prove that Workspace is running

On your client PC, launch a browser instance (this example shows Internet Explorer as Workspace is optimized for that browser) and create a url to launch Workspace.

The normal Workspace url is:

http://servername:19000/workspace/index.jsp

The public DNS name of this instance is ec2-184-73-120-11.compute-1.amazonaws.com.

Incorporate the DNS name into the url as follows (remember, in your case the DNS name will be whatever Amazon assigns to the instance):

http://ec2-184-73-120-11.compute-1.amazonaws.com:19000/workspace/index.jsp

Type that url into the browser’s address bar and hit the Enter key. If all of the services are running on the AWS instance, you should see the below Workspace login screen.

Enter a username of admin and a password of epmtestdrive and you will see the familiar Workspace home page.

Download SmartView

The goal is to connect Smart View, not Workspace. Navigate to the Workspace Tools menu, select Install, and then Smart View. This will begin the download to your client PC.

NB – This guide assumes that Smart View is not installed. If it is, unistall it to follow the remaining steps.

Internet Explorer will prompt for a save location for Smart View.exe.

Install Smart View

Once saved, navigate to the same location and right click on SmartView.exe and select Run as administrator.

Vista and Windows 7’s User Account Control will ask if you really want to run this file – you do.

Click on Run and the installation process will begin.

Pick a language – in the case of this guide, that is English (United States) and click on OK. The installation process will begin.

The installation process begins…

Follow the wizard all the way through to the end.

Launch your PC’s local copy of Excel – you should see the Smart View ribbon.

Defining the Application Provider Services (APS) address

After going to the Smart View ribbon, click on the Open button and then the Shared Connections link in the Connection Manager. Smart View will surface a dialog box asking you to modify the url for Shared Services. Smart View connects to Essbase through APS – this is the address you are really providing.

In the case of this EPM instance, all services are installed on a single server.

The default url is: http://server:port/workspace/Smart ViewProviders

Using the same DNS name that was used to ping the server and to connect to Workspace, change that URL to (again, your DNS name will differ from the below):

http://ec2-184-73-120-11.compute-1.amazonaws.com:19000/workspace/Smart ViewProviders

Paste it into the Shared Connections URL dialog box in Smart View’s Options dialog box.

Smart View will then show the Connect to Data Source dialog box. Enter the same username and password of admin and epmtestdrive and then click on Connect.

Now go into Connection Manager and click on the server drop down to define an Essbase server.

Then click on the Add new server dropdown.

Paste in the public DNS name of: ec2-184-73-120-11.compute-1.amazonaws.com and click on OK.

Smart View will show you the Essbase service in your instance. Below are the sample applications that come with Essbase.

From here on out, you can connect to Essbase just as if the server was in your data center.

It’s the same Essbase you know and love, only in the cloud. It really is that easy.

When you are done

AWS instances are billed by the hour – if there is no usage, nor is it anticipated, it might be in your best interest to stop the server.

If you want to retain your work you have two choices:

1) Stop (not terminate) your server via the EC2 console. This is akin to shutting down your server. You can bring it up at any time and will incur small storage costs based on size of $0.10 per gigabyte month.

2) Create an AMI (coming soon on this blog) from the instance and Terminate the instance. Charges for AMI storage are slightly less than EC2’s EBS model, but mean that you have to launch the AMI and manage multiple AMI copies.

If this was throwaway work, simply terminate the instance. Remember, there is no going back to the data once the instance has been terminated.

DNS changes

Once you stop (or create an AMI and terminate the source instance) the instance, the public DNS name will be lost. On subsequent startup, you will need to rename Smart View’s APS server name.

One way around this is to use AWS’ Elastic IP service; find out more about it here: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ Elastic IP will allow you define a static IP address and AWS will map the dynamic IP address to that static one so that clients do not have to change their server names; there are further configuration steps beyond the scope of this guide – search the web for more information.

Two alternate DNS providers are:

http://www.no-ip.com/

http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/

Conclusion

What do you now have?

A fully functioning Essbase server in the cloud that you, and your colleagues, can use for any purpose Essbase might fill.
A test server that can be created in minutes for experimentation when your development server is unavailable.
A platform for learning the features of the very latest EPM release.
A server that can be almost instantly adjusted, whether it be the number of CPUs, the amount oF RAM, or the hard drive size.

All for mere pennies an hour.

Eye Sea Sea Bee Are Sea Eye

2011-11-19T08:11:00.003-05:00

Introduction

Everyone has heard and/or used phonetic alphabets even if you haven’t been in the Services. You know, it’s the word that sounds like the letter you’re trying to say, e.g., A-Alpha, B-Bravo, C-Charlie, etc.

Pendant alert – according to Wikipedia (and we all know that an encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to is of the highest possible quality) it turns out that these alphabets aren’t phonetic but instead are acrophonic, which makes them the very opposite of phonetic. But I digress yet again.

While I personally plan on adopting the Royal Navy’s standard of 1917 so no-one ever figures out what I’m up to, thus ensuring that my evil plans for world domination (which, admittedly, are progressing somewhat behind my original schedule as I am in control of precisely nothing – I do however own a cat, or perhaps he owns me) can continue unabated.

A language for Essbase geeks

But perhaps I’m wrong in adopting the standard of Jack Tar in the Great War. Essbase geeks do their own thing, in their own way. C’mon, we’re unique. And awesome. Aren’t we? Please say yes.

And if we’re awesome, we surely need our own acrophonetic alphabet. Guess what? We have one, courtesy of the ASO wizard, Dino, aka Dan Pressman.

Without further ado, here is his mad genius.

Letter	Pronunciation	Example
A	R	How are you?
C	Q	Pool cue
D	W	Double U
E	I	Eye
F	Weigh	“There’s no F’in way”
G	N	Gnat
H	Ah	Hour
I	E	Iwo Jima
J	H	Jose
K	N	Know
L	Y	Llama
M	N	Mnemonic
O	W	One
P	N	Pneumonia (or Swimming – the silent P)
Q	Key	Quay
S	C	Sea
T	Z	Tse-Tse
W	Y	Why
Y	U	You

Why Tse-Tse There’s No F’in Way

One man’s madness is another man’s genius. I think it’s absolutely brilliant. Your reaction may be “Whisky Tango Foxtrot.”

Stupid Planning queries #8 -- More text queries than you can shake a stick at

2011-11-14T09:30:00.002-05:00

Introduction

Thanks to a thread over on LinkedIn, I’ve been inspired to dust off, update, and generally tweak some Planning queries for getting text out of the application repository.

One of the things that Planning does rather better than Essbase (Gasp, did I just write that? Sigh, I did, as it’s true) is integrating textual information with the numbers in Essbase. Planning does this by storing said text in the Planning application repository and then marrying that up via web forms, Smart View (when using a Planning data source), and Financial Reports (ditto on the Planning data source).

Of course life wouldn’t be complete if there wasn’t a completely unauthorized, totally unsupported, and generally cool (Cool? Really? For whom? Oh well, I think it’s cool.) series of queries to get this out.

As always with these queries, they are 100% unsupported by Oracle and there’s a tremendous chance that I’ve gotten them wrong, so test, test, test and remember that you are hacking the tables and if anything blows up you are completely on your own. Got it? Good, let’s begin.

And oh yes, we’ll go into some detail about how Planning handles text Accounts as that is handled somewhat differently than the other text types.

What does it look like in Planning?

This is 11.1.1.3 (I am too lazy to fire up my cloud instance and I have 11.1.1.3 at hand, there’s no difference in functionality or the back end), so not the latest and greatest, and it illustrates three Account annotations, cell text, and attached documents) out of the five different kinds of textual information, but this will do as a start. I’ll get to text Accounts and Planning Unit/Form Instructions (believe it or not, they’re in the same table). So just a start, be patient, and all will be revealed in due course.

Tiny little icons that really matter

Planning tells you that there’s cell text and/or cell-level documents by putting a tiny little blue (cell text) or red (cell-level document) in the upper right hand corner of the cell in question. You can also hover over the cell to see what’s in a given cell. The above shows that in PA, DVD Recorder, Plan, Working, FY10, Price, and Feb there is both cell text and a cell-level document. The Supporting Detail is for free, and will be the subject of another blog post.

What does Oracle consider cell text?

Per the help:

If you have read access to a cell, you can add annotations called cell text to the cell at any level. You can add cell text at the summary time period level and across multiple dimensions at any level. You can also add cell text for non-level 0 members (bottom-up versions), calculated cells (dynamic calc), and read-only cells. For example, you can add explanations for data analysis of variances and rolling forecasts.

Cell text

It’s a bit difficult to see, but look at the icon highlighted in red:

Click on a cell, then click on that ABC icon, and you will see:

There is a limit of 2,000 characters for cell text. How do I know? I took a look at the table HSP_CELL_NOTE_ITEM and see that the field CONTENTS has that length. See, SQL is good for you, or at least poking around and trying to figure things out is. See if you can find that limit in the docs – nope, it isn’t there. You’re welcome, no thanks are necessary. :)

Extracting cell text

--    Purpose:    Extract Cell Text from Planning
--    Modified:    11 November 2011, Cameron Lackpour
--    Notes:        LEFT OUTER JOINS aren't necessary in a
--                single Plan Type app, but might be when
--                there's more than one.
SELECT
    P.TYPE_NAME AS 'Plan Type',
    O1.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Scenario',
    O2.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Account',
    O3.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Entity',
    O4.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Period',
    O5.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Version',
    O6.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Currency',
    O7.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Year',
    O8.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Segments',
    I.CONTENTS AS 'Cell Text'
FROM HSP_CELL_NOTE N
INNER JOIN HSP_PLAN_TYPE P
    ON N.PLAN_TYPE = P.PLAN_TYPE
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O1
    ON N.DIM1 = O1.OBJECT_ID
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O2
    ON N.DIM2 = O2.OBJECT_ID
LEFT OUTER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O3
    ON N.DIM3 = O3.OBJECT_ID
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O4
    ON N.DIM4 = O4.OBJECT_ID
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O5
    ON N.DIM5 = O5.OBJECT_ID
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O6
    ON N.DIM6 = O6.OBJECT_ID
LEFT OUTER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O7
    ON N.DIM7 = O7.OBJECT_ID
LEFT OUTER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O8
    ON N.DIM8 = O8.OBJECT_ID
LEFT OUTER JOIN HSP_CELL_NOTE_ITEM I
    ON N.NOTE_ID = I.NOTE_ID
SELECT * FROM HSP_CELL_NOTE

Cell text result

Enabling text in forms

Excuse the not quite the last version of Planning – the settings are the same in the latest and greatest, but they do look somewhat different.

Cell-level documents

What’s that URL doing in the text output (for those of you without the eyes of eagles, it’s in the second row)? It turns out that Planning stores the links to the cell-level documents alongside cell text.

Documents can be attached to cells via an icon the right of the ABC cell text button.

According to the help docs:

If your administrator selects the Enable Cell-Level Document property for the data form, from data form cells, you can add, replace, and view EPM Workspace documents. These documents can be a Web site or any file type (for example, an .XLS or .PDF file). For example, you could associate a cell with a document that explains your assumptions behind the cell's sales data.

Did you catch the important bit? The bit that makes the link to this fantastic blog (ahem) completely pointless? The help reiterates the point:

Before you add a cell-level document, the document must be added to the Workspace repository. See Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Workspace User's Online Help.

Ohhhhhh. Bummer. The docs have to be imported into Workspace to be accessible.

However, I’ve discovered that if you have a URL link in that on the Open Document icon, Planning will in fact open a new browser window. Huzzah, For he’s a jolly good fellow, & c. So you see, that link isn’t pointless after all. But you still can’t link seamlessly to, oh, say an Excel document. I don’t know what to make out of non-documented functionality, or even if it works in other releases. Proceed With Caution.

And of course you can still pull the references via the query. Do you feel a little better?

Account annotations

Again, these have to be enabled for a given form, but once enabled, click on a row, go to View->Edit Account Annotations and type away.

Extracting Account annotations

--    Purpose:    Extract Account annotations
--    Modified:    11 November 2011, Cameron Lackpour
--    Notes:
SELECT
    O1.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Scenario',
    O2.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Version',
    O3.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Entity',
  ISNULL((SELECT OA.OBJECT_NAME
      FROM HSP_ALIAS A
      INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT OA
      ON A.MEMBER_ID = D.ENTITY_ID AND
      OA.OBJECT_ID = A.ALIAS_ID), '') AS 'Entity Alias',
    O4.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Account',
  ISNULL((SELECT OA.OBJECT_NAME
      FROM HSP_ALIAS A
      INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT OA
      ON A.MEMBER_ID = D.ACCOUNT_ID AND
      OA.OBJECT_ID = A.ALIAS_ID), '') AS 'Account Alias',
    D.CONTENTS AS 'Account Annotation'
FROM HSP_ACCOUNT_DESC D
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O1
    ON D.SCENARIO_ID = O1.OBJECT_ID
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O2
    ON D.VERSION_ID = O2.OBJECT_ID
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O3
    ON D.ENTITY_ID = O3.OBJECT_ID
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O4
    ON D.ACCOUNT_ID = O4.OBJECT_ID

Account annotation results

Scenario	Version	Entity	Entity Alias	Account	Account Alias	Account Annotation
Plan	Working	E01_101_1130		Units		An Account annotation for Units
Plan	Working	E01_101_1130		Price		This is an account annotation.

Where oh where are the other dimensions

There are lots of dimensions *not* displayed. I’m not being stingy with the dimensions, Scenario, Version, Entity, and Account define where an Account annotation is stored and displayed. So these annotations would hold for FY09, FY11, etc., for instance. Switching to FY09 supports this:

Where oh where are my aliases?

I will share with you that I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out where the heck the aliases were for E01_101_1130 which should be PA, aka the Keystone State and Price are.

Shared members and no alias

The E01_101_1130 in this form is shared. Shared members don’t have an alias.

Here’s the form definition:

And here’s what it looks like in the Classic (the one and only) dimension editor:

I won’t embarrass myself by stating how long it took me to figure it out. I was sure my code was wrong. Nope, I just forgot Planning 101. <blush>

Text Accounts

It’s easy to create a text Account:

The text member gets surfaced in EAS:

The “+” doesn’t make a lot of sense – I would tag it as Never Share – “^” because as we’ll see in a minute, there’s a numeric value stored there. Oh yes, interesting.

What does it look like in Planning? Oh, beautiful.

And in Essbase (not in Smart View with a Planning data source) there is data, but not of a textual nature. Planning seems to be adding a kind of counter to the cell that is pushed to Essbase. I wonder why they bothered:

There’s a sting in the tail

What happens when you delete a text value? It’s gone, right?

It looks that way in Planning:

And Essbase:

What happens when you add another text value back into Feb?

5? What’s going on? Planning is incrementing the text counter. Number 2 is dead and buried. Or is it?

So what’s the big deal?

The query to get this stuff out is as easy as 22/7:
--    Purpose:    Extract text Accounts
--    Modified:    11 November 2011, Cameron Lackpour
--    Notes:
SELECT
    *
FROM HSP_TEXT_CELL_VALUE

Text account result

Text Account data is like the Roach Motel – Planners can enter textual information but it will never, ever, ever come out. No big deal with small amounts of data, but definitely something to bear in mind if you use this functionality a lot. There is no TRUNCATE function.

2^nd big deal

Did you note that there are two fields in this query? How do you know what the intersection to the data is? You know, all of the dimensions? It is more than possible that I have this wrong, but I’ve taken a few passes through the tables – I can’t see it. AFAIK, this is handled in the application layer by Magick, I think. Please show me the error of my ways and I’ll update the post.

Planning Unit annotations and form instructions

Planning Unit annotations and form instructions together? Yes, that surprised me as well. I guess this is sort of like the way cell text and cell-level documents are stored together?

Form instructions

Planning Unit annotations

Extracting annotations

--    Purpose:    Extract Planning Unit and Form Instructions
--    Modified:    11 November 2011, Cameron Lackpour
--    Notes:
SELECT
    O1.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Object',
    O2.OBJECT_NAME AS 'User',
    A.CREATED AS 'Date',
    A.TITLE AS 'Annotation',
    A.CONTENTS AS 'Contents'
FROM HSP_ANNOTATION A
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O1
    ON A.OBJECT_ID = O1.OBJECT_ID
INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O2
    ON A.AUTHOR_ID = O2.OBJECT_ID
ORDER BY 'Date', 'User', 'Contents'

Annotations result

It would be nice if the Planning Unit annotations included the items that make up the Planning Unit – Entity, Scenario, and Version – but it doesn’t seem to be there in the table. Is this again something that’s handled in the application layer? Correct me via the comment function and I’ll improve the query.

Oooh, I just had a thought -- could the "PU52602" (which I did *not* enter) be a key with PU = Planning Unit and 52602 being the OBJECT_ID? I will look into this for a future blog post -- I've spent enough of my free time on this post for this week.

Conclusion

What do we now know about Planning and text?
1) Planning does text better than Essbase. Groan, but it’s true.
2) A few simple queries can pull out that textual information.
3) Some Planning text data seems to get associated with other members in the application layer or I am too stupid to see where that dimensionality resides. The truth is likely the latter rather than the former. So tell me where I’ve gone wrong and I’ll fix it.

You can’t say I haven’t taken you on a trip down the rabbit hole. Happy Planning hacking!

Resolving EPM and BI support issues faster

2011-11-06T10:23:00.002-05:00

Introduction

Is this what your brain feels like when you’re dealing with difficult EPM and BI issues?

I think I’m the compressed spring, but pick your own poison. Check out the original right here.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could resolve them faster than you do today? Well, it would, right? Unless you like pain. In which case it’s time to go look at something else that sort of defines ouchie-owie.

Alas, pain killers don’t fix Essbase

Oracle Support is here to help make that pain go away. How? With a webcast for both the Americas and a separate one for EMEA/APAC (hey, if you live in Oregon and want to wake up at 2 am, no one will stop you except your good sense).

When is it?

Americas: November 22, 2011 at 9 am PT, 10 am MT, 12 pm ET, 5:00 pm GMT

EMEA/APAC: November 22, 2011 at 10:00 GMT, 5 am ET, 3 am MT, 2 am PT

Just in case there’s any doubt about this:

Americas: How to resolve your EPM and BI technical issues faster - US [ID 1372777.1]

EMEA/APAC: How to resolve your EPM and BI technical issues faster [ID 1371449.1]

As always, yes, you have to either be a customer with a support contract (Why else would you watch a webcast on how to work more effectively with Support?) or a paid up partner.

What’s on the menu?

I am going to crib the below straight from the Americas Support note.

Resolving technical issues yourself. The quickest way to resolve EPM and BI software problems

How to effectively search KM. The latest My Oracle Support features. Where to find documentation, when to use it
How to use communities and other resources

Logging a Service Request. How to efficiently work with support and speed up resolution process.

What information to include, when logging an SR
What happens when SR is logged. View from inside for customers to better understand process.
When and how to escalate SRs.
What happens when you encounter a software defect. What is the bug fixing process?

Troubleshooting your EPM and BI software.

Troubleshooting resources for main EPM and BI products
Which logs to analyze. How to identify correct log files for the issue?
General tips and tricks for troubleshooting

So are you excited yet?

Did I mention that there’s a demo at the end like all good presentations (if applicable)?

This is good stuff.

And free.

And it helps you do your job better.

What’s not to like?

See you there.

Stupid Planning queries #7 -- User Variables

2011-10-30T13:12:00.002-04:00

Introduction

You use User Variables, right? That’s the functionality typically (only?) used in Planning forms to allow the user to select the member he wants to drive the form. I use these when dimensional security doesn’t work or when the form gets too large.

Set and forget

It’s easy to set them by going to File->Preferences->Planning->User Variable Options as shown below.

How do you use them in forms?

They look just like Essbase Substitution Variables, right down to the “&” in front of the User Variable name.

NB – I like to stick a “uv” in front of the name to differentiate them from Substitution Variables, so instead of &CompareScenario it would be &uvCompareScenario. This isn’t a big deal when you’re building the form, but aids in identifying what’s what later on. Or when you bounce from client to client, and app to app, and barely know what state you’re in. The glamor of consulting. :)

In any case, as this is the Planning Sample Application, I’m not changing it. But you did get a Cameron Good Practice suggestion there for free.

So how do I know who has what?

There’s really no good way to know in Planning what’s been defined by user except by asking said user. As that could be a trifle exhausting (and inaccurate) in anything other than a teensy-weensy application, SQL comes to the rescue again.

Standard disclaimer

As always with these queries, they are 100% unsupported by Oracle and there’s a tremendous chance that I’ve gotten them wrong, so test, test, test and remember that you are hacking the tables and if anything blows up you are completely on your own. Got it? Good, let’s begin.

User variables query

--User variables
--    Purpose:    Get the User Variables in a Planning application
--    Modified:    30 October 2011, first write
--    Notes:        This is a simple one, isn't it?
SELECT
    O.OBJECT_NAME AS 'User',
    U.VARIABLE_NAME AS 'Variable',
    O2.OBJECT_NAME AS 'Member',
   -- Use SQL Subquery to get aliases.
   -- NB -- The overall SELECT from HSP_MEMBER ensures that members with
   -- and without an alias are selected.
   -- ISNULL puts in zero length string in place of NULL
   ISNULL((SELECT OA.OBJECT_NAME
       FROM HSP_ALIAS A
       INNER JOIN HSP_OBJECT OA
       ON A.MEMBER_ID = O2.OBJECT_ID AND
       OA.OBJECT_ID = A.ALIAS_ID), '') AS 'Alias'
FROM HSP_USER_VARIABLE_VALUE V
LEFT OUTER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O
    ON V.USER_ID = O.OBJECT_ID
LEFT OUTER JOIN HSP_OBJECT O2
    ON V.MEMBER_ID = O2.OBJECT_ID
LEFT OUTER JOIN HSP_USER_VARIABLE U
    ON V.VARIABLE_ID = U.VARIABLE_ID
ORDER BY 1, 2

And the output

User	Variable	Member	Alias
Biff	Allocation Expense	330000	Minority Interest Income
Biff	Allocation Quarter	Q1
Biff	CompareScenario	Forecast
Biff	CompareVersion	Working
Biff	Current Version	Working
Biff	CurrentScenario	Forecast
Biff	My Region	E01_0	North America Corporate
Biff	My Segment	BAS	Bookshelf Audio System
Biff	Revenue Measure	411100	Operating Revenue
hypadmin	Allocation Expense	312100	Interest Income
hypadmin	Allocation Quarter	Q4
hypadmin	CompareScenario	Plan
hypadmin	CompareVersion	Final
hypadmin	Current Version	Working
hypadmin	CurrentScenario	Forecast
hypadmin	My Region	E01_101_1110	MA
hypadmin	My Segment	Seg01	Electronics
hypadmin	Revenue Measure	400000	Gross Profit

Conclusion

Yet Another Planning Query (YAPQ), pronounced Yap Que, hits the dust. I know there are other people there doing these. I wonder why I never hear from them. Am I doing something akin to an arch-villain exposing the inner works of the Guild of Calamitous Intent? This stuff is so easy, even a Planning consultant can do it? No matter, I forge onwards.

AWS tricks #1 -- How to get rid of terminated volumes

2011-10-24T08:25:00.002-04:00

Introduction

I spent this weekend figuring out how to install ODI 11.1.1.5 using SQL Server 2008 not Oracle 11g as the database back end and I now know two things:

I really ought to be doing this on Oracle instead of SQL Server as all of the blogs seem to cover the settings for Oracle. I find it interesting that the 10.1.3.x blog posts seemed to be oriented around SQL Server and 11.1.1.x around Oracle. However, as my environment was SQL Server, not Oracle, I was stuck with figuring it out.
I am not very good at installations. This may not come as a shock to anyone, especially me. :)

In an upcoming blog post, once I am convinced that I have everything working tickety-boo, I will document the settings and required downloads to make ODI and ODI Studio work in a 64-bit Windows server context.

Putting aside the additional grey hairs and general agita installing ODI caused me, this exercise got me back into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud and that was a life-saver. Just like a virtual machine, I could spin up as many instances of the server as I needed to blunder my way through the install and could snapshot it when I had something halfway working. Unlike a virtual machine running on my laptop, I had 17+ gigabytes of RAM, super-fast networking (you haven’t lived till you switch from DSL to whatever AWS runs – I was getting 39 megabit per second downloads from Oracle’s website), and real server power.

However, as I was looking at my AWS account, I saw that I had a bunch of AMIs, snapshots, and volumes that I couldn’t really account for. Oh, I created them all right, but I hadn’t used them in ages and I was getting billed each month for them. A mass culling ensued but it occurred to me that this is a good time for some basic definitions.

AWS definitions

One of the (many) things that confuse me about AWS is the concept of “volumes”. Simply put, a volume is a hard drive.

Then there are these things called “snapshots”. Snapshots in AWS’ Elastic Block Storage (EBS) world are just what they sound like – snapshots of volumes that you can restore back to at any time.

It is very important to note that the hard drive of an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) (a predefined server you can start) is ephemeral, i.e., your laptop’s hard drive this is not – when the instance is killed, the hard drive is gone. It’s very easy to blow away all of your work if you don’t understand how AWS treats volumes.

This post will cover what a volume is, and how, when, and why you would get rid of a volume (you get charged for each one) as they have a way of piling up when least expected.

What’s ephemeral, and what’s not

A really good explanation of AWS’ drive ephemerality can be found here: http://shlomoswidler.com/2009/07/ec2-instance-life-cycle.html. If you cannot be bothered to jump to a well written blog, the gist is that EBS-backed instances have volumes that persist as long as the instance is not terminated.

And how does that affect you?

Well, when you stop an instance (Stopping an instance is akin to powering down a server) the volume is still extant. It makes sense (to me at least) that a volume hangs around when a server instance is stopped.

When you terminate (Terminating an instance is like you shut down the server, ripped it out of your data center, and naively took it to a recycling center which then had the hardware shipped tout de suite to Liberia for completely unsafe disposal.) an instance, there is a chance the volume will still hang around. But why is it still there when an instance is terminated? Doesn’t that destruction of the instance sort of imply that the hard drive volume should be trashed as well?

Remember, if you started your stopped instance back up, whatever changes you made to your boot drive are still there.

But what about the volume that is the product of a terminated instance? If you reattached it to a new instance, are your changes there? Nope, all of the changes you made are gone.

An example

Let’s pretend that you fired up John Booth’s EPM 11.1.2.1 AMI (go to http://www.metavero.com), did cool stuff, and then terminated the instance. Guess what – that C: drive is still around, and you’re getting billed for it.

Not deleted till it’s detached

Here’s what the web console to my AWS account looks like with four volumes attached to stopped instances and one 100 gigabyte volume from a terminated server instance.
What is that volume doing there? Did I really terminate that instance?

As I wrote, I’m being charged (not very much, but still) for storing that 100 gigabytes. I want to make that unloved hard drive go away.

It’s dead, Jim

That instance is deader than dead. That drive volume is in AWS purgatory.

What’s going on?

That volume is going to hang around till you delete it.

Why? A little searching of the tells us that the AMI must be set up to delete the volume on termination. If it’s not, then the volume must be manually deleted.

NB – A future blog post on launching an AMI from a command prompt will explain how to launch an AMI with that parameter; if the AMI has been set up to not delete the volume on termination, you must manually delete the volume as shown below.

How to delete a volume

Luckily, this is an easy process. Simply right click on the available volume and select “Delete Volume”.

You get one more chance to change your mind.

AWS will take a short time to delete the volume:

If you get impatient (it can take a while to delete a volume and the bigger the virtual drive, the slower the delete), you can click on the Refresh button to see the current status.

Until the volume is finally gone.

Conclusion

If the AMI is not set up to delete the volume on termination, you must do so manually, or modify the AMI via the command line interface to delete upon termination.

Set up your AMIs to delete volumes on termination or remember to check and delete available volumes – remember, you are being charged to store drives you no longer use.

Cameron's Blog For Essbase Hackers

Where oh where have I been and why oh why would you care?

Again, who cares? Why would I read this book?

I am ever so slightly interested. So what’s in it?

Who wrote the book?

So you’re just one of 12. What’s the big deal?

So what’s next?

Stupid Programming Tricks #9

Keeping it G-Rated

Going faster miles an hour

Two (no three) tips from Oracle Support

Introduction or who am I, anyway?

Information Center

ODI is left out, but there’s still great stuff for it

HTML rules, Flash, not so much

And that’s it, for now

AWS tricks #2 -- Treating that AWS instance as a real server

Introduction

Splendid isolation

No geek is an island

Requirements

Understanding AWS Security Groups

Ports

IP addresses

Opening up the ports

Modifying the Security Group

Adding port 19000

Adding port 13080

Knowing when to connect

Ping comes to the rescue

Port review

Launch that instance

Which one?

3…2…1…launch!

Two ways to see if the instance is really ready

Approach #1 – Check System Log

Review the log

Approach #2 – Ping the server

Get the DNS name

Ping from the comand line

Connect via Remote Desktop

Connecting to an EC2 EPM image from your PC

Prove that Workspace is running

Download SmartView

Install Smart View

Defining the Application Provider Services (APS) address

When you are done

DNS changes

Conclusion

Eye Sea Sea Bee Are Sea Eye

Introduction

A language for Essbase geeks

Why Tse-Tse There’s No F’in Way

Stupid Planning queries #8 -- More text queries than you can shake a stick at

Introduction

What does it look like in Planning?

Tiny little icons that really matter

What does Oracle consider cell text?

Cell text

Extracting cell text

Cell text result

Enabling text in forms

Cell-level documents

Account annotations

Extracting Account annotations

Account annotation results

Where oh where are the other dimensions

Shared members and no alias

Text Accounts

There’s a sting in the tail

So what’s the big deal?

Text account result

2nd big deal

Planning Unit annotations and form instructions

Form instructions

Extracting annotations

Annotations result

Conclusion

Resolving EPM and BI support issues faster

Introduction

2^nd big deal