Essbase 11 and Smart View Books Are Now Available

I Can't Keep a Secret, Apparently

This was supposed to stay quiet until the press release came out in May, but so many people have already discovered it that I thought I might as well fess up. My (along with Tracy McMullen, the best co-author ever) two new Oracle/Hyperion/Essbase books are now available. At the moment, you can only get them directly from the publisher. If you're interested in Essbase 11 (now with more ASO!) or Smart View, you finally have a place to turn.

Look Smarter Than You Are with Essbase 11: An Administrator's Guide

This book has over 300 pages of new content in it, but the book it self stays under 700 pages. How did we manage this, you ask? Well, with the exception of a very brief chapter on Smart View that's used to introduce Administrator's to dimensionality, we've removed all of the end user content from this book. Yes, that means that if you want end user information, you've got to buy a second book, but if we hadn't done this, the book would be close to 1,000 pages. Since we're not trying to re-write War & Peace (now with a new happier ending!), we made the decision to split the end user stuff out.

So how in the name of Thor did we come up with 300+ pages of new information? Well, some of it was due to the new Essbase 11 features like Varying Attributes and Text Lists. A lot more, though, is due to the new Essbase ASO (aggregate storage) content we wrote. In the last few Essbase books, we treated ASO as an after thought only to be considered if you wanted to build truly huge cubes. In the new book, we talk about ASO as your primary default options for new cubes. For the first 350+ pages of the new book, we just focus on building ASO cubes before we finally get to building BSO cubes.

Some of you Essbase people are cheering right now, "thank God, finally a good source for learning ASO!" A number of you are also wondering, "but shouldn't BSO be the default and ASO only used in certain specific cases?" In our opinion, not any more. With the 11x improvements to ASO, it should be the first place you go to build all new databases (even wee lil' ones). BSO (block storage) should only be used if you need sophisticated writeback or complex calculations. While we still cover BSO in the new book, we show ASO first and then eventually show how to do the equivalent things in ASO (and not the other way around, as our previous Essbase books have).

We hope you'll like all the additional content (and we only had to up the price a mere $10 USD). Here's the link to buy your copy:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/look-smarter-than-you-are-with-essbase-11/6402010

Look Smarter Than You Are with Smart View and Essbase 11: An End User's Guide

If you're looking for instruction on how to use the old Essbase Excel Add-In, you'll want to buy our previous end user book, because this one is all about Smart View for over 250 pages. With all the new features in Smart View 11 (Smart Slices, Report Designer, and more), we had to abandon the Essbase Add-In content and just focus on Smart View.

You might notice that "Essbase" is in the title. Don't be mislead: this is primarily a Smart View book and can be used even if you're accessing HFM, Planning, OBIEE, or whatever; however, we had to pick a data source to use in our examples. Since the majority of people using Smart View have Essbase (even if it's just underlying Planning), we chose Essbase for our exercises in the book. So if you've been wanting a book on Smart View, this is the book for you. Best news, the price (for the moment) stays the exact same:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/look-smarter-than-you-are-with-smart-view-and-essbase-11-an-end-users-guide/5570907

Where can I buy a copy?

For the moment, the only place to get the books is direct from our publisher. They will be on Amazon.com in 6-10 weeks, because it takes a while to get new books through their system unless you're a major publishing house. If you're coming to Collaborate, the books will also be for sale at their bookstore, and Tracy and I are doing an official book signing there too. We'll also be bringing some copies of each book to sell at our booth at Kaleidoscope if you're going there instead. If you want to buy more than 5 copies (bulk discounts give you more fun for less money!), you can get them through interRel at 30% off: just e-mail info@interrel.com.

Go ahead and tell your friends that the books are available, but when you see the press release in early May announcing the official release of the books, please try to act surprised. In the meantime, don't say anything to interRel Press' marketing department.