Selecting Dodeca

A small change of plan

My original, and continuing, intent with this series of blog posts is to demonstrate the awesomeness that is Dodeca.

I wrote an outline (yes, this gibberish sadly does not spring from my fingers willy-nilly but in fact is organized, sort of) that started off with a grand tour of the Dodeca interface.

As I began to take screen shots, it occurred to me that there is a lot of functionality to cover.  I don’t think I’ve got a Grand Unified Theory of Dodeca blogging just yet – there’s so much going on.

At least initially, I’m going to focus on functionality across the three products:  the Excel Essbase add-in, Smart View, and Dodeca, and then build from there.

This post is a trip back in time to English Composition class – I’m going to compare and contrast these products.  There is a point to this – you won’t understand the genius of Dodeca until you understand the limitations of its competitors.  J

Member selections

A definition

Member selection in Excel happens when:

1)    An off-grid (classic Essbase add-in) or Point of View (POV) (Smart View) member is selected; only one member can be selected, although in Smart View’s POV manager, you can preselect multiple members and then use the dimension drop down to navigate through the selections.

2)    An on-grid row or column member is selected; one or more members can be selected, either down rows or across columns.

Okay, for those of a pedantic bent whose name isn’t “Cameron”, there are two other kinds of member selection that can happen in Excel without using the Member Select (classic)/Member Selection (Smart View):

• Member selection can also occur simply by typing in the member name on the sheet (you will likely know Scenario, Version, Year, Period, etc. dimension member names or probably your most commonly selected Accounts, Products, Regions, etc.
• And I guess you could argue that member selection can also occur as part of drilling up and down in a dimension and using keep- and remove-only functions to narrow selections.

How do I get there?

Classic

Click on the Essbase menu in the Excel menubar and navigate to Member Select:

If you’re using Excel 2007 (and the above menu screenshot is from that release), you’ll first need to select the Add-Ins ribbon, and then click on the Essbase menu.

Remember how I wrote that if you have lots of automation in Excel you’ll lose it all with Excel 2007?  Remember that cool menu?  Stuck in the Add-Ins ribbon.  Remember that cool toolbar you wrote?  Gone. 

Someone came to the rescue, but you’ll still have to roll your own for your code

The good folks at in 2 Hyperion wrote a ribbon bar for the Classic add-in.  For those of us still using Classic (I hereby give up on the full name “Classic Essbase Excel add-in”), it’s a lifeline till Oracle kills Classic.  Find it here.  Highly recommended for those using Excel 2007, but Dodeca’s still better.

Smart View

It depends

Smart View splits up dimensions between on-sheet and in-POV manager.  When a dimension is on the sheet, member selection works much the same way, i.e., click on a cell, and then begin Member Selection either via the Ribbon (Excel 2007), toolbar (Excel 2003), or Hyperion menu (2003 or 2007).

On-sheet

Ribbon (Excel 2007)

Toolbar (Excel 2003)

Menu

Remember that the Hyperion menu is also available under the Add-Ins ribbon in Excel 2007.

Point of View Manager

Click on the dimension in question’s down arrowhead, select the ellipses, and Member Selection is coming your way.

Dodeca

Dodeca differentiates between the in-built member select dialog box and customizable member selectors. 

Member select = the Classic interface with a few improvements.

Member selectors = totally customizable, incredibly flexible dimension pickers that you could write in VBA, or VB.Net, or whatever, but after you taste Dodeca’s approach, you will give up on in defeat and despair.

Ad-hoc Member Select

This is similar to the way Classic works, but, of course better because Dodeca knows whether the member select is in a row, column, or off-grid dimension and expands/limits functionality to the appropriate position on the grid. 

Just click on the member, then the toolbar button to get the Member Select button.

Member Selectors

Treeview

Simplicity itself – click on the selector box in the report toolbar.

Dropdown

Classic doesn’t know a dimension dropdown selector from its elbow. 

Smart View’s POV selector can use dropdown selectors within the POV.  Dodeca’s are easier and centrally controlled.

What do they look like?

Classic

So what does it look like?  I’ve been using it so long I can almost recite the objects from memory.

Member Select description

Welcome to 1992’s idea of User Interface design.  Time machines are always fun.

What do I mean?  Think about the down arrowheads for expanding down – replace by up arrowheads for expanding up.  It’s a logical metaphor, but try to think of another hierarchical selector that works this way other than Essbase Application Manager – I dearly miss that product, but it’s time has come and gone.  Plus and minus signs seem to be the universal drill up and drill down metaphor.

At the very upper left hand corner, there’s a dimension picker dropdown control.  This is only useful if you’ve selected a blank cell and the right dimension doesn’t pop up (this will always be the first dimension in the outline), otherwise the dimension will be whatever is selected in Excel.  Of course, Classic will let you select the wrong dimension and overwrite valid selections.  Whoops.

You can use the Find button to search for strings, but remember, no leading wildcards.

Information about a member is but a click away.

Dimensionality can be viewed by member name, generation, level name, or even by Dynamic Time Series if you’re dealing with a DTS-enabled Time dimension.

And of course there’s the option of viewing this by member name, aliases by alias table, and the option to place the selections across the rows or before the selected cell.

What’s really cool about Classic’s member selection process is that the selected members can be saved either to the server (stored in the Essbase database’s directory) or locally.  Nice if you’ve defined complicated searches.

Once the selections are made, you can move the selected members to the right hand list box. 

But wait, there’s more

Once a member has been moved over to the Rules list box (betcha never looked at the description – me neither), the member can be right clicked on and member relationship selections can occur.

Right there you can pick Children, Children and Member, Descendants, and Descendants and Member.

But it all gets powerful when Subset… is selected. 

Attribute members, ANDs, Ors, NOTs, generation and level names, patterns – the whole shebang is there.  Powerful selections can be created and then saved as mentioned before.  You can even use this functionality to figure out what Attributes are associated with a member – this is missing in the Member Information button.

But it’s a hard way to find out that Massachusettes has an attribute of Medium_9000000.  At least you can select it.

Smart View

However you get there, it’s the same thing

Whether it’s through an on-sheet member select, or in the POV, the same Member Selection dialog box pops up:

In many respects, Smart View’s Member Selection dialog box is a step forward in functionality from Classic:

• Pluses and minuses are used to drill up and down.

• Filtering of members is easier because you need only pick the member, and then choose the Children, Descendants, Level, Generation, UDA, Attributes, and Subset all from the main dialog box.
• No need to decide if the selections go in rows or columns – Smart View knows the right way.

Filter

See Attribute in the Filter dropdown?  Easier to get to than moving Market to the Rules listbox and then right clicking on it, then selecting Subset, and then finally getting to the Attributes.

But there are some things missing:

• Member information

• Attribute member selections aren’t as detailed as Classic (or Dodeca)

Member information

I don’t know how often you use this – Essbase developers can always go to Essbase Administration Services and find out all we ever wanted to know about a particular member.  For the hoi polloi (that would be your users, not you, dear reader) they’re largely out of luck.  Too bad.

Attribute selection

Attributes are selectable, but not completely.  Whoops.

EAS’ Population

Smart View’s Population

See anything missing?

Classic’s Population

See what’s not missing?

Dodeca

It’s smarter than you.  Or at least it’s smarter than me.

As I was exploring Dodeca member selection for this blog, I found out a couple of cool things:

• In ad-hoc views, member selection is modal – Dodeca knows when a member is in a row, a column, or off-grid, and allows selection appropriately.Dodeca won’t allow stupid member selections that break ad-hoc reports.

• In standard views, member selection is surfaced immediately, without a trip to a dialog box.

• AppliedOLAP spent a *lot* of time figuring out how to customize member selector dialog boxes without you writing code.  I won’t cover this in this post (what, not long enough for you?), but it will be my very next post.  I cannot get over how freaking cool this stuff is.

Modal

Off-grid

Think about this – only one member for a given dimension is on the grid.  Hence, only one member from that dimension should be selectable.  Guess what, Dodeca knows this, and the Member Select dialog reflects that.

Classic breaking retrieves

It’s easy to break a Classic retrieve through Member Selection.  In this case I am selecting the four (sort of) points of the compass.  Note – this doesn’t make sense, but Classic Member Selection isn’t going to save you from yourself.

Place Down the Sheet

Whoops, forgot to untick Place Down the Sheet.

Not Placed Down the Sheet

Nope, that doesn’t work either.

Smart View breaking retrieves

Smart View is a little better at this – it understands rows, columns, and off-grid dimension members, but it will still let you make selections that don’t retrieve.

Dodeca breaking retrieves

Erm, you can’t do it.  Remember how I wrote above that Dodeca knows that a dimension is off-grid and thus does not support multiple selections?  Well, that’s the trick – it doesn’t let you select more than one member and it doesn’t break.  Genius, if you want my opinion.  Or even if you don’t.

On-grid

It’s the same as Classic, with one improvement.

Did you spot them?  Plusses and minuses to expand/collapse the hierarchy. 

No progress?  There are those who would call Classic’s Essbase Member Selection dialog box perfection itself.  And Dodeca improved upon perfection with the +/- controls.

Member Selector

Remember, this is different than plain old member select from an ad-hoc retrieve.  Member selectors have a lot of functionality that you, the developer, customizes as part of a report.  More on this in the next post, I swear.

There it is, right there on the right (position customizable – hey, everything’s customizable).  And the dimension’s available any time you want.  No more clicking on a member and then selecting a menu/toolbar/ribbon and then getting to the dimension to switch from member A to B.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on the below.

             

When I write that there’s surfaced functionality, I mean that without clicking into modal dialog boxes the following functions are instantly available:

• Expand/Collapse

• Find
• Dimensions (depends on how the View is set up)
• Swapping between dimensions

All without writing a line of code.

Conclusion

Oldie but goodie

For those of us who know and love the Classic Essbase Excel add-in (there, I wrote the whole thing), member selection is pretty nice, if somewhat old fashioned looking.  Eh, looks aren’t everything.

It’s pretty easy to break reports, so be careful.

Newer, but curiously missing some functionality

Smart View keeps on getter better and better, but there are some big holes out there such as member information and a decent attribute member select.

Retrieve intelligence is better, but it’s still easy to break ad-hoc retrieves.

Why use anything else?

Ad-hoc analysis isn’t even Dodeca’s raison d’etre, yet it does it flawlessly with Classic’s functionality and none of Smart View’s holes.

Even more importantly, its intelligence around dimension placement means that you can’t break an ad-hoc report through a member select.  This is a Good Thing.  You haven’t lived (if you can call it living) until you walk a user through why the product breaks their retrieve. 

What’s coming next?

Think of this as the first course in a multi-course meal.  You’ve had the starter, but the main plate is to come.  Hopefully your salivary glands are hard at work.

We’ve now set the baseline; the next post will (soon, I swear, just a week, maybe a little longer…) get to the interesting stuff – all of the different ways to customize member selectors in Dodeca.

What Is Dodeca And Why Should You Care?

Everyone knows Tim

You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? 

Over the years, you could hardly have missed him at oh, Arbor Dimensions , Hyperion Solutions, Oracle OpenWorld, OAUG Collaborate, and ODTUG Kaleidoscope.  He’s omnipresent, and gives freely of his time, expertise, and knowledge.  He’s also one heck of a nice guy.  And kind of a rock star.

He’s been deeply involved with ODTUG's board and is currently on the ODTUG Hyperion SIG board.

Did I mention that he has this company called AppliedOLAP?

Did I also mention that when I met his mother, I (for real and for true) told her that I wanted to be just like Tim when I grew up?  (This was at the tender age of 38, I best get cracking).  I’ve never wanted to be like anybody else, ever.  Not in the real world, at least. 

Did I mention that Tim and his team have graciously, generously, and for free taken over maintenance of OlapUnderground’s Outline Extractor, Advanced Security Manager, and Substitution Variable Manager.

Lastly, he’s an Oracle Ace Director.  That honorific isn’t exactly handed out like popcorn at a movie.

So, have you guessed yet?  I hope so – if you haven’t, I wonder if you have a Hyperion pulse.

The drama ends, and for many of you, there wasn’t a bit of a guessing game – the Tim I’m talking about is none other than Tim Tow.

And he has this product that I’m going to spend the next few blog posts reviewing in some depth.  I’m going to do a John Goodwin on this – come back to the same product again and again from different angles.  I think it will be fun.

NB – This won’t be a marketing review of the product, but rather a practical guide to the product and how you can use to build your most awesome Oracle EPM/Hyperion system ever.  E-v-e-r. 

Dodeca – what is it?

Here’s AppliedOLAP’s official description of Dodeca:

Dodeca is software that supports interactive analysis, planning, and reporting activities performed by business users and decision makers at all levels within an organization.

And here’s how I see it:

1)   It is the best Excel that Essbase ever met.

2)   It isn’t Excel.

Simple, eh?  And of course that description doesn’t touch all of the frankly amazing work under the covers that makes it such an awesome tool.  It’s all cool stuff, but from the sharp end of the stick, while it’s important to understand how Dodeca works and why, the most important part is what it can do for you when you implement it.

I’m just wild about Excel

Excel is wonderful, great, powerful, flexible, extendible, and customizable.  It is arguably the most widely used part of Office bar Outlook and more value sits in Excel worksheets than in annoying emails.  I love Excel.  Everyone who works in Accounting/Finance loves it.  It is warm, and cuddly, and just all around great.

And the problem is?

Alas, the “powerful, extendible, customizable” attributes are what causes so much trouble when Excel is used as a reporting tool against Essbase.

I’ve seen (and written) three kinds of Essbase/Excel reporting systems:  templates, templates with a wee bit o’code, and a super-duper locked down environment.

There are problems, big problems, with all three of these approaches, and I’m probably guilty of perpetrating all of them.  Former clients – I’m sorry, I did my best, but all I had was Excel.

98 lb weaklings, or have you thought about protein shakes

These are just templates that users retrieve into, or lock and send from.  Can this be broken?  Oh yes, and how.

The basic kind of “system” is an Essbase database, however derived using Excel files with high level retrieves.

Somehow this workbook, or series of workbooks, is distributed to users.

In turn, they connect to Essbase, retrieve/send, and change the report to their needs.

The Good

• Simple to create.
• Simple (sort of, your users have to understand the add-in or SmartView) to use.  Simple for you, at least.
• No code, so quick to create.
• Er, that’s about it.

The Bad

• The templates can get out of date and need to be redistributed.
• There isn’t a tremendous value in simple reports that need to be manually and uniquely modified by the user.
• It’s easy to break the Excel report with a pivot (or the flip side of not being able to pivot at all) – that will generally blow up the entire report and may really get ugly if you have hidden retrieve ranges and nicely formatted presentation ranges.
• The reports also break (or worse, still retrieve, but give different information than you anticpate) if rows or columns are deleted or even a member in a POV is deleted and replaced with a top-of-dimension member.

Spends time at the gym,  but not enough

Templates again, but with some automation, like an automatic log on and retrieve.  These templates are still rickety and prone to user error.

The Good

• Connecting to an Essbase database is a controlled act – at least you can be sure your users are connecting to Sample.Basic instead of some other database.
• You get to exercise your coding skills.  Do more, and one day you’ll be the Mr. Universe of programming.  This attribute may actually fall under The Bad – one programmer’s dream is another’s maintenance nightmare.
• Did I mention that this stuff is custom code either in the workbook or in an add-in – it has to be distributed, somehow.
• Once you get past the crude automation, the actual creation of reports isn’t too bad.

The Bad

• These reports are still wide open, and are easy to break for all of the reasons listed in the 98 lb weakling section.
• The system is just barely one step above templates against Essbase – your users have to be proficient with retrieves, sends, report writing, etc.  Honestly, was it worth the candle?

Dude, lay off the steroids

A completely locked down Excel environment.  In fact your users wouldn’t even know you were in Excel, save for the grid.

The Good

• You are the Mr. Universe of programming.  Nice code, nice approach, nice functionality.  This is cool stuff.
• Excel is locked down tighter than a drum head.  No user errors are going to happen here.  I don’t even see the File menu.
• You have accounted for every bone-headed/honest mistake a user can make.  This system is solid.

The Bad

• You’ve got to be a really, really good VBA programmer, and spent a lot of time thinking about how retrieves and sends are going to work.
• Did I mention you wrote a lot of code.  A lot.  And it took time.  A lot.  Maybe way more than you anticipated.
• The cool code you wrote is probably a bit specific to the database.  Did you plan for portability to other applications?  Whoops, you forgot.  Yeah, me too.
• Uh-oh, your company just migrated from Excel 2003 to 2007.  Toolbars don’t really work any more, nor do custom menus (okay, they work, sort of, but not the way they used to).  What are your thoughts on the Ribbon UI?
• ·Whoa, you just got hit by a SEPTA bus.  You are hors de combat.  Does your company have a good succession plan?  Who’s going to maintain your ultra cool application?

If you think Excel is good, check this out

No, this is not one of those “Hold my beer and watch this” moments.  Instead I’m going to list the ways Dodeca fixes the above problems.  I’ll end this post with just a list of what Dodeca can do for you with this post – the next one will dive deep into specific features.

Oh, and lest anyone with a reddened neck takes offense to the above link, let me tell you about my time in 4-H.  And the unpasteurized milk (how oh how did we survive?) we used to get from the beefalo that tasted like onions when she ate onion grass.  And all about the tour of Hatfield Quality Meats to see where our 4-H pigs and cows ended up.  That was certainly an education.  Now I know why you never name the animals you eat.  :)  In short, I may look like a geek, but I am from Pennsyltucky, and proud of it.

Okay, so a Yankee redneck (really just pinkish nowadays, I don’t even have a garden) is telling you to forget the beer, hold my coffee, and see how Dodeca solves the problems I listed above:

Distribution

Dodeca pushes Excel templates across the web.  If you’ve got Internet Explorer, you can use Dodeca.

Bulletproof

We’re talking Level IV, baby.  These reports can be just as protected as you like.  Or not.  The power is in your hands.  Did I mention this product is awesome?

POVs, dimensions, subsets of dimensions – these are all customizable and the Dodeca user can have just as much or as little control as you want.

Automation 

Logins, disconnects, multiple databases, user types, sends, calcs, dimension selectors (Ever write one of these?  Somewhat painful, isn’t it?) – anything you can think of, it’s already been thought of by Tim, et al., and frankly, it’s better than what you could do.  A painful blow to the ego for this particular programmer, but I have to bow to superior intellect and effort.  (Be honest, even if you thought you could write a better mousetrap, would you?  Really?  You have nothing else to do with your time?  Yes?  If so, I envy/pity you.)

Code

Nope, Tim, Amy, and the rest of the talented crew at AppliedOLAP wrote lots, and lots, and lots of code so that you can create template reporting systems with no code, unless you want to. 

There is an code framework called workbook scripts that allow you to customize behavior, and the entire product is extensible, but I’ll bet you never have call to go that far.  Unless you want to.  Again, I mention the awesomeness of Dodeca.  It is an implementer’s dream.

Excel Versions

Nope.  Did you miss the bit where it uses Excel templates but doesn’t use Excel?  Magical, isn’t it?

Hard to believe?

Are you a little scared of the time commitment to do all of this?  You shouldn’t be.  It’s still the same Excel templates that you know and love.  Incredible, isn’t it, because you aren’t using Excel one little bit when you’re in Dodeca.

Coming next time

So I’ve made big promises about what Dodeca can do, and why it’s the best Excel you’ll ever tie to Essbase.  Talk is cheap. 

The next post is going to provide a basic view of what Dodeca looks like from a developer’s perspective, how to hook it up to Essbase, and what simple template reports look like.

In the following posts we’ll dive down, down, down into the product and show you how you can make it sing.

This product is the best, and I’m determined to make sure that every Essbase hacker out there knows it, covets it, and implements it.  Thank goodness I don’t set unrealistic goals.  :)

Kaleidoscope for the money and time challenged

Are you skint, broke, busted, busy, unappreciated but still want to go to ODTUG Kaleidoscope?

The question

Can’t experience the full ODTUG Kaleidoscope experience because your company has no budget/that big project tragically coincides with the Conference of the Year/your boss doesn’t appreciate your super genius and won’t cough up the dough?

The answer

For those short of time, budget, or both, you can now attend the ODTUG Hyperion symposium.  What is it?  Tsk, didn’t you read my last blog post?  Of course you did, because you are a super genius, just like me.  

Returning to what you actually care about, Sunday 26 June 2010’s Hyperion symposium is the day where big Oracle acts like a tiny little startup and you’re the Venture Capitalist.  Oh yes, the power feels so good.

What do I mean?  That Sunday will be where Oracle gives we lucky attendees (and that can now include you for c-h-e-e-p, just keep on reading) a preview of where Oracle EPM is going, and if the magic repeats from last year, an opportunity for you to share your Essbase/SmartView/FDM/whatever opinion directly with the people who manage the products.  Perhaps I’m overemphasizing the point, but Sunday may be an unparalleled opportunity for you to talk directly to the product staff.  Speak now or forever hold your peace.  And your office isn’t even on Sand Hill Road.

Setting expectations

Just a bit of a disclaimer – not every product presentation last year was this kind of freewheeling session, but I am hoping to gently nudge all of them into this position through the awesome reader base that this blog commands.  So that would be my mother and Glenn.  And I have to ask her.  I know Glenn just does it for the chance to heckle me and tell me that I’m overly verbose.  Which is true.

Continuing down the may-not-happen-so-don’t-hold-me-to-it theme, Oracle will state in these presentations that they are committed to nothing they present and that whatever they do present is subject to change.  I like that – it’s honest and realistic.  Product futures aren’t written in stone and besides, if Oracle is asking you questions, the whole point is that the direction will change.  Regardless, the peek into the future makes it all worthwhile.

So, what’s your excuse?

Even Scrooge had to give Sunday’s off, and I appreciate that dipping into your pocket hurts (I know people who took vacation or unpaid time off, paid their own way, and shared rooms just to attend last year.  This conference inspires sacrafice.) ,  but look at it this way, you’re getting access that only the largest and most important customers/partners get for the mere pittance of $325 if you sign up before 24 March 2010.  And you don’t even have to miss a single day of that unbounded joy we call work.  I hope to see you there.

More cool stuff at Kaleidoscope 2010

Give back and get from Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope 2010 is coming (which reminds me, I need to write my presentation, but soon, gulp) and there are two awesome prequels to the conference itself, which is no slouch when it comes to awesomeness.

Schooldays

Every Kaleidoscope I’ve ever attended – a grand total of two, but give me time –kicks off with a volunteer day.  I wasn’t able to attend last year because of work pressures, but my bosses’ bosses’ boss was kind enough to take my place (thanks, Edward) so the very worthy alien plant eradication could take place.

These days are really a lot of fun (I did the one in New Orleans, so this isn’t mere puffery) because in addition to donating muscle to a worthy cause, you get to meet people you won’t be seeing during the conference proper as you obsessively shuffle between all of the cool Hyperion content here and here.  You won’t be?  Tsk.  I will.  But that’s my neurosis, so perhaps you should be grateful you don’t share it.  It is a heavy burden.

Yes, Oracle seems to own other products

As hard as it is to believe, it is my understanding that there are actually other technology tracks on offer at Kaleidoscope, although why anyone would leave the warm and cozy world of Oracle EPM is beyond my comprehension.

If you are similarly narrowly focused in your love for all things formerly owned by Arbor Software, this might be your only chance to meet the great people that use those other, obscure, products like PL/SQL…I wonder what it does.

And oh yes, give freely of your time.  See, virtue is its own reward, just like your parents told you.

A Descartesian Three

Nope, this isn’t the Wrong Kind of Join (see, I am not completely ignorant of the black art called CeeKewEl), instead you have three choices, all good.

Unleash your Inner Librarian on the Dewey Decimal System

Oddly, at my dear alma mater, Wossamotta U, the IT degree program was offered in the school formerly known as Library Science.  I am trying to imagine a major that would be less likely to get you a date on Friday night than the double whammy of geek + librarian but I am coming up short.  Of course I can be smug because I got my obsolete degree in MCIS in the business college.  And because I have been told many times that I am the living embodiment of Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and William Holden rolled into one alpha geek.  At least I think that’s what they mean when I get called Walter Mitty.

In atonement for giving librarians (they are so going to revoke my library card and *all* library privileges, forever) and fellow geeks the raspberry, I will likely be that geek librarian and help them sort their books.  So now you know which task to avoid.

Tending to their garden

In keeping with the theme of great Frenchmen of the Enlightenment, perhaps instead I’ll help beautify the grounds at Ronald H. Brown Middle School.

My favorite part of the schoolday, recess

Or relearn hopscotch (in my case, learn it for the first time) and help paint on the blacktop the games of our halcyon youth.

You won’t regret it

It’s a great way to give back, ODTUG makes the transport easy, gives you eats, and you get to rub shoulders with people in very different parts of the technical world.  What’s not to love?

And now the amazing stuff

Would you like to know where Oracle is taking the EPM stack?  See the latest products and not suffer the pain of a beta?  Get product managers to ask for your opinion?  I can think of two ways to do this:

1)    Get a job at Oracle.  Get promoted at a pace so meteoric that the phrase “meteoric pace” is inadequate.  Take John Kopcke’s job.  Now you know all.  Can you do that in one day?

2)    Returning from Cloud Cuckooland, you could instead come to Sunday’s Oracle Hyperion EPM and BI Symposium and have it handed to you on a platter.  No, no thanks are required, this blog is here to help.

Oracle > Hyperion

Yes, Oracle is many, many times bigger than dear old HYSL ever was.  Yet somewhat unbelievably, they act like a small company, at least at Kaleidoscope.

I don’t know if it’s because Big Red really is a warm and fuzzy group of people, or that ODTUG is awfully good at getting to the right people at Oracle, or if it’s just the right alignment of stars, but the mix of altruism, self-interest, and personalities comingles into magic.  By that I mean Oracle comes to show you where they’re going in the near future, where they want to go in the mid to far future, and oh by the way, what do you Kaleidoscope attendees think about it?

We (or at least I) are not worthy

Think about that – Oracle is this enormous company that is asking you what you think of their product plan.  I’m not saying that they will do your every bidding, but it’s pretty astounding to me that they ask and act on comments from the hoi polloi of EPM geekdom.  That’s awesome.  Yes SmartView product team, I’m talking about you.  Thanks again for last year’s freewheeling session.  If I could just think of a word that was awesome * 2 and then apply it to last year’s symposium, I would.

Solutions != Kaleidoscope

I went to (and paid for) every Solutions conference there ever was.  I can’t remember anyone from Hyperion asking me for my opinion on a product.  Ever.  I know that much of the product development staff is the same so I’m going to attribute this welcome change to Oracle’s culture and Kaleidoscope’s awesomeness (there’s that word again).

It doesn’t stop on Sunday

And of course Oracle’s involvement doesn’t end there – they’ll be in sessions all through the conference.  About 1/3 of the presentations are given by Oracle employees.

You are going to be there, yes?

This is *the* conference to go to – amazing content from Oracle, partners, and customers, all those great (ahem) Werewolf games at night, and the chance to give back to the DC public schools.  You can’t miss it.