Looking Forward to Kscope13

On June 9, the rates for Kscope13 go up $300 per person (basically, you're going up to the last minute, I-don't-know-why-I-waited-but-now-it-costs-a-lot-more price).  If you haven't registered yet for what is by far the best Oracle EPM, BI, Hyperion, Business Analytics, Essbase, etc. conference in the world, go right now to kscope13.com and register.  It'll be the best training experience of the year: you're basically getting 4.5 days of training that you won't see anywhere else the entire year... for the price of 2 days of training at an Oracle training center.

And when you register, don't forget to use promo code IRC to save $100 off whatever the current rate is.

The conference is June 23-27 in New Orleans though my favorite day is always the opening Sunday, so make sure you fly in Saturday night.  On Sunday, they turn the sessions over to the Oracle Development team to talk about everything they have planned for the next 1-3 years.  It's the one time each year that you can hear right from the people who are building it what you're going to be seeing in the future.  There's generally an hour on each major product line (an hour on Essbase, an hour on Hyperion Planning, an hour on mobile BI, etc.).  The keynote this year is Balaji Yelamanchili, the head of Oracle BI and EPM development for Oracle.  My only semi-complaint about this year's BI/EPM Symposium is that there's so much content that they're splitting it into three concurrent symposiums: Business Intelligence, EPM, and a special symposium for the EPM business users.

This year will be somewhat bittersweet for me since I am no longer actively involved with the chairing of the conference.  This means that I get to focus on going to sessions, learning things, playing/leading Werewolf games, and of course, presenting a few sessions.  Here are the ones I'm personally teaching:

• Using OBIEE to Retrieve Essbase Data:  The 7 Steps You Won’t Find Written Down.  This is in the BI track and it's basically all the quirks about connecting OBIEE to Essbase in a way that uses the strengths of each product.

• What’s New in OBIEE 11.1.1.7: Oracle on Your iPhone & Other Cool Things.  This is also in the BI track and it's an overview of all the things that people will like in 11.1.1.6 (for both Hyperion and relational audiences).

• Everything You Know About Essbase Optimization  is Incomplete, Outdated, Or Just Plain Wrong.  This is in the Essbase track and it's the one I'm most looking forward to delivering, because I get to break all of the optimization rules we all have been accepting as gospel for close to 20 years.

• Learn From Common Mistakes: Pitfalls to Avoid In Your Hyperion Planning Implementation.  This is a vendor presentation hosted by interRel.  I get to sit on the panel and answer Planning questions from the audience while talking about blunders I've seen during Planning implementations.  It should be fun/rousing.  Since it's all interRel, I wouldn't be surprised if a few punches were thrown or at minimum, a few HR violations were issued.

• Lunch and Learn: Oracle Essbase Panel.  This is an Oracle Technology Network panel during lunch on Tuesday.  I am chairing the panel and asking probing questions of a bunch of Oracle ACE Directors in the Essbase field.

• Innovations in BI:  Oracle Business Intelligence against Essbase & Relational (parts 1 and 2).  This is also in the BI track (somehow I became a BI speaker???) and I'm co-presenting this session with Stewart Bryson from Rittman Mead.  We'll be going over OBIEE on Essbase on relational and compare it to OBIEE on relational directly.  Stewart is a long-time friend and Oracle ACE for OBIEE, so it should let us each showcase our respective experiences with Essbase and OBIEE in a completely non-marketing way.

• CRUX (CRUD meets UX): Oracle Fusion Applications Functional UI Design Patterns in Oracle ADF.  This is in the Fusion track and I'll be talking about how to make a good user interface as part of the user experience of ADF.  No, this doesn't have a thing to do with Hyperion.

I am looking forward to all the wacky, new things Mike Riley (my replacement as Conference Chair for Kscope) has in store.  My first Kscope conference was in New Orleans in 2008 (back when they called it Kaleidoscope and no one was quite sure why it wasn't "i before e") so this is a homecoming of sorts albeit with 8 times as many sessions on Oracle BI/EPM.  If you're there (and let's face it, all the cool kids will be), stop by the interRel booth and say "hi."  It's the only 400 square feet booth, so it shouldn't be hard to find.

#1. Oracle Acquires Hyperion

Was there any doubt about number one? By far the most significant event of the last ten years if not the entire history of Hyperion was announced in March of 2007: Oracle was buying Hyperion for $3.3 billion US dollars. It led to a wave of consolidation activity within the next few months: SAP bought Outlooksoft (and then Business Objects when the world was underwhelmed with the Outlooksoft purchase) and IBM bought Cognos. In 2007, the three largest BI/EPM vendors were gone.

The Hyperion acquisition was one of the smoothest I’ve ever seen thanks to a couple of factors. Oracle extended offers to 92% of the Hyperion workforce so all the key personnel made it into Oracle. Oracle also put some great Hyperion people in charge of BI and EPM at Oracle including John Kopcke and Robert Gersten. While the old Oracle BI/OLAP guard was not amused, I’m sure, Hyperion provided new life to the BI group at Oracle when they were put over the top of the existing leadership (rolling up to Thomas Kurian in Fusion Middleware).

Oracle has made some great decisions since the acquisition: Essbase got its name back (may “Hyperion System 9 BI+ Analytic Services” burn in the 7th circle of hell for eternity) as simply Oracle Essbase, Smart View became the Office standard for BI products, Hyperion Planning became the standard for budgeting at Oracle, Financial Management became the strategic direction for financial consolidation, and more. The only negative things I can really say about the acquisition are the loss of the annual Solutions conference and the disappearance of the Hyperion User Groups, and by this point, I’m almost nitpicking.

Like it or not, Oracle’s acquisition was by far the most significant event in Hyperion’s decade. While I never thought I'd say this, I thank God that Larry Ellison decided to forgo buying a bigger yacht in favor of a $3.3BB EPM software firm.

#10. Release of Version 11

First in the Series

This is the first in the "Top 10 Hyperion Events of the Decade" series. Remember to check back every Monday as we countdown the Top 10. Feel free to comment, discuss, or debate these items in the comments. Hurray for free speech and all that jazz.

#10. Release of Version 11

Oracle wanted their first major post-acquisition release of the Hyperion product line to be more enterprise friendly while adding features across all the products. In the summer of 2008, almost exactly one year after Hyperion ceased its independence, Oracle released "EPM System, Fusion Edition" and the world was impressed.

Oracle EPM 11x was the most revolutionary version of Hyperion in many years. While all the products were extremely enhanced, Essbase in particular was substantially improved to include text & dates inside the cube, attributes that change over time, and the new Essbase Studio product. Oracle even introduced a new application: Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management application.

While all was not perfect with the release (it was definitely not bug-free and the first version of EPM 11 was English- and Windows-only), it showed that Oracle would be investing a great deal of research and development into the former Hyperion products.

Oracle ACE Director Briefing

I'm in Redwood Shores, California at Oracle HQ. I'm here for the semi-annual Oracle ACE Director briefing. Today's topic is the new Fusion Middleware 11g release that comes out on July 1. I haven't figured out yet if this will include the new OBIEE product releases (Answers, Dashboards, Publisher, etc.) that have the better Hyperion & Essbase integration. Since no one's saying anything about it, I'm guessing the answer is "no."

I thought I'd be the only one Twittering about today's briefing, but it seems Twitter is quite popular amongst Oracle ACE Directors. Half the people in the room were twittering wildly for the first 90 minutes until the NDAs (Non Disclosure Agreements) arrived. If you want to amuse yourself, read this feed from the bottom up and notice the volume of tweets (and the content of the tweets) change dramatically once the NDAs got passed around:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23Aced

The NDA is fairly unrestrictive as these things go. It only keeps what we hear confidential for the next 12 days. Once launch day (July 1) arrives, we can tell everything we were told today (when it becomes public information anyway). In exchange for signing the NDA, we were all given 8 Gb flash drives containing all the pre-release software. I'm thinking of selling mine on eBay.

I got to the Sofitel a little before midnight and then I had to be here for the briefing at 8AM. It's supposed to end at 6PM. We're then going to take a party bus to Monterey for the ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference. Follow this blog if you want to follow along with the conference. If you want live updates during the days (and you're a glutton for random @#&^ that occurs to me during the day), follow me on Twitter.

Hyperion Strategic Finance 11x is Finally Released

7 months (almost to the day) after Hyperion 11x was released, Hyperion Strategic Finance Fusion Edition (11.1.1.1.0) was finally announced on February 11, 2009.  The delayed release of HSF 11 made many speculate that the product was being discontinued though most believed that the delay was simply due to the difficulty in fully integrating Crystal Ball for predictive forecasting.

In addition to Crystal Ball integration, the new HSF 11 has better integration with Hyperion FDM (Financial Data Quality Management), Oracle Essbase, and Hyperion Planning.  There are also a number of user interface improvements.  Personally, I've seen the new UI, and it's much better than the System 9 version of HSF.  Check out http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/090211/aqw004.html for a list of the new features.

#1. Release of Oracle EPM, Fusion Edition (Hyperion 11x!)

In 2005, Hyperion System 9 was released, and the world was... not impressed.  While there were some neat centralizing of certain functionalities in System 9 like Workspace, Smart View, and Shared Services, the core applications were barely enhanced going into System 9.  Planning 4 looks a whole lot like 9.0 Planning.  Same goes for HFM.  Essbase 7.1.6 is almost identical to Essbase 9.0 though there are some important enhancements to Essbase ASO.

9.2 fixed a lot of the bugs in 9.0 and it did add some neat functionality, but again, nothing was revolutionary.  9.3 (and subsequently, 9.3.1) added a lot of functionality.  Frankly, it added more than the initial release of 9.0 did.

In July of 2008, almost exactly one year after Hyperion ceased operations as a separate company, Oracle released "EPM System, Fusion Edition" and the world was impressed.

Oracle EPM 11x was the most revolutionary version of Hyperion in many years.  While all the products have been extremely enhanced, Essbase in particular was substantially enhanced to include text & dates inside the cube, attributes that change over time, and the new Essbase Studio product.  Oracle even introduced a new application: Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management application.

Some expected Hyperion 11x to be bug-free, but with all the new functionally, there's no way it could have been.  There has since been a patch issued for it, and at interRel, we do have clients adopting it, but it's still not as stable as 9.3.x.  If a client bought Hyperion today, I'd definitely install 11.1.  If a client wanted to upgrade from 9.3.x, I'd make sure that they wanted some of the new 11x functionality.  If they didn't, I'd tell them to stay on the more stable 9.3.x platform.

Simply put, Hyperion 11.1 is the killer app that System 9 was supposed to be.  It makes a very compelling reason for those pre-System 9 holdouts to finally pay their enablement fee and upgrade to 11x.  If you haven't seen the list of new features, look on this blog and elsewhere, because you will be impressed.

Well, that brings to an end my Top 10 Oracle EPM (Hyperion) stories of 2008.  I'm curious what 2009 will bring, but since I'm writing this while on a cruise ship, I have to stop now.  Carnival's world famous "Men's Hairiest Chest Contest" starts at 3!

#8. Delayed release of EPM/Hyperion 11x for Unix

On July 12 of 2008, Oracle released the most significant release of the Hyperion products (particularly the updating of Essbase) in years. And while the policy of Hyperion always was to release the Windows and Unix versions at the same time, Oracle EPM System, Fusion Edition (AKA Hyperion 11x) was available only for Windows... and only in English. Linux, HP/UX, Sun Solaris, and AIX users were left as frustrated as Sisyphus (of "stone pushing up hill only to have it roll back again" fame).

And Hyperion 11x stayed Windows-only until the middle of November: four months of daily scorning of the desires of Unix admins everywhere to install EPM 11x. While Hyperion (and Arbor before that) was often really slow with 64-bit and Linux releases of its products, never have months gone by before any Unix editions of a major version were made available. Yes, I know that some products have always been Windows-only (Hyperion Financial Reporting Print Server, for instance), but for the products supported on multiple platforms (like Essbase), Windows and Unix were always in lockstep.

One of the bright spots about the English-only Windows 11x release was that almost all of the applications were also available on 64-bit. 64-bit Windows is the way of the future (and many would argue, the way of the present) and running Hyperion on Windows 64-bit is important for Oracle to keep their dominance in the EPM space. Many of the products that compete with Oracle EPM are either not fully 64-bit or they may run on 64-bit but are not optimized for it.

As of this writing, Hyperion 11x is still English-only. Since the release was around 6 months ago, this is just weird. I'm told that the release of the localized languages versions (numbered 11.1.1.2, most likely) is imminent, but originally it was due before the end of 2008. Let's hope so, because we want the whole world to share in the Hyperion 11x love.

I'm told that the delayed Unix release was a one-time occurrence.  With another major updating of Oracle EPM slated for summer/fall of 2009, we'll see.

BREAKING NEWS: EPM 11.1.1.1 Is Available (AKA Hyperion on All Platforms with Bug Fixes)

Oracle EPM 11.1.1.1.0 - Generally Available

Well, that certainly took long enough.  On July 12, Oracle released the newest version of Hyperion (so called 11.1.1.0.0) and all was great and wonderful except for one thing.  For the first time in my recollection, it was only released for Windows platforms.  The versions for other platforms (Unix and the like) were supposed to follow shortly after.

Then months went by with only Windows to keep us warm.

Finally, during the wee hours last night approximately 4 months after the Windows release of Hyperion 11x, we now have the full platform release.  To download the other platforms, go to http://edelivery.oracle.com/ and click on the product pack for "Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System."  You'll now see that there are multiple platforms available:

• HP-UX (32-bit and 64-bit)
• IBM AIX (only 64-bit)
• Linux x86 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Sun Solaris (only 64-bit)
• Windows (32-bit and 64-bit)

Lots of bugs are fixed

You'll also notice that the Windows media packs now come in two versions: 11.1.1.0.0 and 11.1.1.1.0.  The version with the extra "dot one" has patches for some of the more egregious bugs.  I've read the Read Me file for 11.1.1.1.0 and there are 8+ pages of defects fixed in this release.  Some of them seem fairly major.  There are still 13+ pages of known issues in this release.  Personally, I like when the list of bugs fixed exceeds the known bug list, but with a version this major, I'm just happy as can be that they're actively fixing the major bugs.

For those of you who already installed 11.1.1.0.0, Oracle has been kind enough to allow us to install the patched version (with the extra "dot one") without reinstalling (hallelujah, by the way).  If you've already installed the initial 11 release, just make sure you select the "Apply Maintenance Release" option when you rerun the EPM System Installer.

New Features

You may be surprised to find out that there are some new features in this version (minor, but they're there).  I'm going through the Read Me files right now, but here are the new features I've spotted so far:

• Essbase
• Block storage cubes can now have the same date/time member intelligence that ASO began supporting in 9.3.  This also means that there are some new block storage calcs to work on these members: @DATEDIFF, @DATEPART, @DATEROLL, @FORMATDATE, and @TODATEEX.
• When Essbase log files reach their maximum size (normally 2Gb), the log file will begin writing to a second file (or more than that).  This is simple but impressive.  Older versions of Essbase would just crash when the max file size was reached, but now they will keep generating new log files while preserving the old ones.
• Visual Explorer is dramatically enhanced and now supports perspectives, has enhanced workspace capabilities, enhancements to dashboards, and most impressive of all, can be used to generate data mining scenarios (it even writes MDX for you).
• Also, there is at least one feature that's been removed in this version: reference cubes are no longer supported for speeding up of @XREF calculations.  
• Essbase Studio
• Netezza is supported as a data source.
• Migration is now supported (of metadata) from EIS (Essbase Integration Services) to Essbase Studio.
• Financial Data Quality Management
• Drill back from HFM, Strategic Finance, Essbase, and Planning to FDM.
• Drill back from FRM to Oracle eBusiness Suite.
• Support for Shared Services for user provisioning and authentication.
• New adapters for Strategic Finance and Oracle eBusiness Suite.
• Other random front-end enhancements.
• Hyperion Financial Management (HFM).  So far as I can tell from the Read Me, there are no new features.
• Hyperion Planning.  The Planning Outline Load utility has been updated and may now actually be helpful for building dimensions.
• Profitability and Cost Management.  There are pages and pages of new features for HPCM.  I'll refer you to the hpm_11111_readme.pdf for more information on this.  Needless to say, someone was very busy adding features to HPCM since its initial release in July.
• Reporting and Analysis (FR, IR, SQR, WA).  Nothing, so far as I can tell.
• Smart View
• Firefox is now supported for the web client.
  
• Essbase substitution variables can be used in Excel spreadsheet retrieves.
• There's a new "Disconnect All" menu item that disconnects from all data sources.
• There's a new POV Control that can be used in the Report Designer (the new dashboard-like interface in Smart View 11x).  The POV control allows for greater member selection capabilities than the Slider control.  POV controls and sliders cannot both be used on the same report (they're mutually exclusive).

There are also some enhancements to some of the more minor supporting products that I didn't bother listing.  As you can tell, there aren't a lot of impressive features, but there are more than you'd think considering the minor updating of the version number.

What's Missing?

EPM/Hyperion 11.1.1.1.0 is still English-only.  The last road map I saw in a public forum (i.e., that I'm able to talk about) said that the localized versions of the product should be out by the end of 2008.  With there being only 6 weeks until the end of 2008 and Oracle just getting around to the platform release in English, I seriously doubt we'll see Hyperion in Spanish, Japanese, and the like until the first quarter of 2009.

Also, there's no 11.1.1.1.0 version of either Strategic Finance or Performance Scorecard.  I have no idea on when these will be released.

How long until Oracle informs everyone?

If you want to amuse yourself, see how long it takes for Oracle to let their users (and their own sales force) know that the full platform release is available.  I'm betting it's not until at least next week (if at all).

EPM 11x - Generally Available

After months of development, testing, and delays, it looks like "Oracle EPM System, Fusion Edition" (also known as EPM 11x or Hyperion 11.1) has officially been delivered:

http://edelivery.oracle.com/

First of all, unlike all prior Hyperion releases, you don't select "Hyperion Performance Management and BI" as the product pack. There's a new product pack for "Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System." Once you select this, there are two platforms available. Both are for Windows: the only difference is in 32-bit vs. 64-bit. The other platforms should be out towards the end of this quarter and possibly not until Q4.

According to the eDelivery site, the full 32-bit media pack is ~11 Gb and contains 29 parts (64-bit media pack is 17 parts and 7.3 Gb) . Hyperion 9.3.1 was 57 parts making up 14 Gb. Anyone have any idea how they added more features, more products, and somehow shrunk the download size? All I can think of is that it's because it's only English, and the download will grow once they add the localized versions to the mix.

The Read Me's (and Installation documents) are only 33 Mb. I encourage everyone to download part #V-13499 just to learn more about the new 11x features. It's amazing what you stumble across in Read Me files. For instance, I just now discovered that Strategic Finance is missing along with all the integrated Crystal Ball functionality. The Read Me says that for Strategic Finance, you should "see 9.3.1 media pack" which I guess means that there isn't a Strategic Finance 11.1.1.0.0 at the moment.

I haven't had time to read all of the Read Me files. I opened the Essbase one first. There are 3 1/2 pages of Known Issues with Essbase 11.1.1.0.0. Some of them are kinda surprising to me. For instance, the MDX Parent function has this problem (yes, this is an exact quote):

Running the MDX Parent function does not return the member's parent.

Well, on the one hand, I guess I'm glad someone noticed. On the other hand, what the hell does this function do if not to return the Parent? This known issue is also kinda fun (it's an issue between the Spreadsheet Add-In and Windows Vista):

Launching Query Designer from Spreadsheet Add-in causes Excel to terminate abnormally.

I guess we'll either not use Vista or just tell our users not to click on Query Designer.

That said, there are hundreds of positive features and bug fixes in "Oracle EPM System, Fusion Edition" (rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?). For instance, here are the bullets from the 16 page New Features in Essbase 11.1.1.0.0. Read Me. Each one of these items summarizes paragraphs of new features and this is just Essbase:

• Installation and configuration
• Lifecycle management
• Typed measures
• Format strings
• Varying attributes
• Strategy for backing up and restoring BSO databases
• Methods for clearing data from specific regions of ASO databases
• Environment variables used in the calculation scripts and formulas of BSO databases
• Optimization of the replication of ASO databases
• Grid expansion during queries of transparent partitions
• Log transaction response times from transparent partition target
• Grid size limits for ASO transparent partition target
• Batch insertion as data is exported to relational databases
• Unicode support for ASO
• Common logging
• Implied share override
• XOLAP
• Performing multiple SQL data loads in parallel to ASO
• Calculation functions (13 new functions)
  
• MDX functions (12 new functions, 1 new clause, 1 new directive)
  
• Report writer commands (7 new commands)
  
• Essbase.CFG configuration settings (12 new settings)
  
• MaxL statements (11 new statements)
  
• API Functions and structures (60 new functions and types)
  

And Essbase isn't the only product with a boatload of new functionality. The Planning new features PDF is 12 pages long. HFM has 8 pages of new features. Performance Scorecard has 16 pages of new stuff. Hyperion Reporting & Analysis (what they used to call "BI+) has 16 pages. Smart View has 8. Even Shared Services has a couple of pages of new features. This is definitely the most important Hyperion-wide update in this millennium (far more relevant than the helpful to the planet than the release Hyperion System 9).

If you are going to upgrade your development environment to 11.1.1, here are the current supported paths:

• 9.2.0.3 to 11.1.1
• 9.2.1 to 11.1.1
• 9.3.x to 11.1.1

Per the documentation, if you're on an earlier version, you must go to one of these three versions first, and then upgrade from there. Now to point out the blatantly obvious, please don't use any of the new 11x products in production YET. Wait for a patch or two (or three or...) to come out before you spring this on your end users. In the mean time, download and install EPM 11x, and then come back here to discuss your findings. If you're crazy enough to install this new version in anything other than a very limited development environment, may God have mercy on your soul.

A lot of people have been asking me for more details on the new Profitability Management application that sits on top of Essbase. It's been demoed for months now, but all the demos are very light on specifics. Thankfully, Jennifer Toomey from Oracle has put together a "statement of direction" for what they're calling "Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, Fusion Edition."

It's only 4 pages long, but it goes into more detail than I've seen anywhere else on exactly what features are going to be in the product:
http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/hyperion-financial-performance-management/docs/hyperion-profitability-and-cost-management-sod.pdf

Per the PDF, here are the key features of Profitability Management:

• Business user driven profitability management
• Flexible allocation platform
• Traceability maps
• Business rules engine
• Model validation reporting
• Hierarchy and dimension management
• Multidimensional allocation
• Powerful analysis and reporting
• Integration with other EPM apps

Have a look at the PDF and come back here to discuss what you think about the new application.

Kaleidoscope - Sunday

3:00 AM - Poker and Shopping Carts
We played poker until about 1AM. I was up several hundred dollars and decided to call it a night. While I like the poker action in the Harrah's poker room, I smell disgustingly like an ashtray. The poker room is nonsmoking, but it's in the middle of the smoking-encouraged casino floor. It's times like this that I miss the nonsmoking California card rooms.

I called my business partner, Eduardo Quiroz, to meet me at a small grocery/convenience store by the Sheraton. We needed to stock up our hospitality suite (curiously named the "Huey Long Suite") for the next few days. Eduardo and I filled two entire shopping carts with chips, dips, other snacks, and lots of "beverages."

We got to the front and paid before we faced the question: how do two guys not in very good shape carry two shopping carts full of stuff back to the hotel? We proposed multiple trips when one of the store employees volunteered to go with us back to the Sheraton. He was a nice young lad with a partially shaved head, a mohawk/mullet, 10+ body piercings, and a beard that resembled Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Eduardo and I pushed our bright red shopping carts up Canal Street with the upstanding youth in tow. We assumed he would walk us to the entrance of the hotel so we could transfer the items to a luggage cart, but he assured us that people regularly pushed shopping carts through Sheraton lobbies. We rattled across the lobby getting a couple of waves from the bellman and front desk personnel who really did seem like this sort of thing happens every day. On the elevator ride up to the suite, Piercing Boy said that normally the shopping carts were used to transport Bourbon Street drunks back to the hotel, so the Sheraton people were probably happy to see food and beverages in our carts.

Once we got to the 48th floor, we unloaded everything into the suite (which is huge with a great view, by the way). We tipped America's Future twenty dollars for his efforts, and he wheeled the carts out of the suite assuring us that he would see us tomorrow. Eduardo and I spent the next 90 minutes reviewing the conference so far before heading off to our respective, adjoining rooms to sleep.

It's 3AM, so I think I will have to miss the general session ("Web 2.0 meets the Enterprise" by Vince Casarez from Oracle). I don't want to miss Robin Hazel's Essbase keynote at 10:30, so I'm going to stop typing and sleep a mite.

8:00 PM - Welcome Reception
I got talking to people and missed the keynote from Tom Kyte: "How do you know what you know?" Apparently, it was quite entertaining. There are a few other people blogging about Kaleidoscope who you might want to follow this week (because these people do things like attend keynotes):
- Mark Rittman at http://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/
- Blogging About Software Development at http://www.bloggingaboutjava.org/2008/06/odtug-kaleidoscope-2008-the-pre-conference-conference/

Mark Rittman refers to New Orleans Bourbon Street as a cross between "Amsterdam and Animal House." True dat.

I did make it to the welcoming reception held in the exhibit hall (which was kinda small but this is a much smaller conference than OpenWorld, Collaborate, or Solutions). The entertainment for the reception was ad-hoc: they asked ODTUG members to get up on stage and jam. There was a fellow who did some nice jazz piano, but he's the only one I heard play.

The food was stellar (and my expectations are getting rather high). I won't detail the entire menu again, but it's worth noting that there was a pasta bar. I love pasta bars and this one was entirely vegetarian (which is rather odd) which made me love this pasta bar even more. There were also several appetizer stations (many serving hot food) and several open bars. Like everything else so far at this conference, this is world's above and beyond Collaborate.

I just finished sitting down at the reception to eat what basically amounts to dinner with a Gary Crisci, Glenn Schwartzberg, and Doug Bliss. A few people want to go play poker at Harrah's, and I have been known to play on occasion, so I just might join them.

5:00 PM - Developer Panel
There was a developer's panel that Al Marciante put together. These panels can be helpful or disastrous. Sometimes people ask really off-the-wall, totally off topic questions. Sometimes they're remarkably enlightening. I'll paraphrase the questions/answers as best I can.

Q: What's the plan with the APIs?
A: The Java API is the go forward direction. The VB API is being kind of ignored. The C API has to be paid attention to because Essbase is written in it.

Q: How difficult is the upgrade from System 9 to 11.1.1?
A: It should just be an install in place (overwrite). It should be easy than Essbase 7x to System 9.

Q: Is there a global option to turn off implied shares?
A: Yes, there is in Kennedy, 11.1.1.

Q: [Really long-winded question about a specific Planning problem that pretty much no one could understand and was really specific to the questioner's company]?
A: [Great answer from Steve Liebermensch] I'm really not here to solve your specific implementation issue from up on the panel. [which is why I love Steve Liebermensch]

Q: Is ODI (Oracle Data Integrator) the replacement for HAL?
A: Yes, and if you own Planning, you can use a limited copy of ODI for free. The Essbase adapter, we think, is free, but you'll have to pay for ODI to load data into your straight Essbase apps.

Q: Does Oracle do concurrent ports?
A: No, just named and CPU licensing.

Q: Pre-acquisition, SAP was looking to put Essbase on top of BW? Is that still happening going forward?
A: Yes, as part of Oracle's push to surround and conquer SAP.

Q: What's the methodology for requesting enhancements? How do go about requesting changes?
A: Submit through support and it will get put into "Orion," Oracle's enhancement system.

Q: What versions of Office are dropped in Kennedy?
A: Office 2000.

Q: Is Kennedy Windows only?
A: Yes, it was the first slide of the day, actually.

Q: Is it supported across all the application servers then?
A: Yes, it is. All app servers (WebLogic, WebSphere, Tomcat) and both Firefox and Internet Explorer. If it runs on Windows and we traditionally support it, we'll support it in the first release of Kennedy.

Q: Are Financial Reporting, Web Analysis, and the like still being developed?
A: Yes, but we're Essbase developers, so we can't talk about it in detail. Ask Robin Hazel tomorrow since Robin will be talking more about that.

Q: Will Smart View support both member names and aliases in rows like the Essbase Add-In already does?
A: Parity between the add-ins needs to happen. It's trying to be in there for the Talleyrand, mid-2009, release.

Q: Is Block Storage going to be a passive technology in the background as ASO becomes the go-forward direction?
A: Yes, that's something we're looking at. Those conversations are happening but they're very far off.

Q: When will members on the fly be supported?
A: That's something that the team has looked at in the past and will probably be resurrected.

Q: Does Larry Ellison really like his new $3BB toy called Essbase?
A: Larry learned what he bought from Vaishnavi Sashikanth in December and he seems to be a big fan of Essbase. He enjoys the product now and Thomas Kurian, manager of the middleware group, really likes Essbase and wants to use it within all the Fusion apps. We have more to do than we have bodies to do it.

That's not an exhaustive list of questions, because I couldn't write them all down quickly enough. It was a pretty good panel though it went on a bit too long. Since I'm the one that scheduled a 2 hour developer's panel, this is definitely my fault.

Now we're all off to Tom Kyte's keynote "How Do You Know What You Know..." followed by a welcome reception (and jam session!) in the exhibit hall.

3:30 PM - Break
We had a brief snack/recharge break. The ODTUG food planners graced us with tasty beignetes covered in powdered sugar. They also had soft drinks for sugar boosts!

3:00 PM - JDeveloper
David Mellor and Duncan Mills from Oracle development gave a thorough demonstration of JDeveloper's Essbase access. JDeveloper is a long way off before it will be the primary development environment for Essbase web-applications. It's already there for other products, but it's a bit too... complicated right now for traditional Essbase development. I guess it's no more complicated than Hyperion Application Builder (or AlphaBlox, if you can remember that far back).

JDeveloper is the IDE for Oracle for J2EE applications, Web Services, WebCenter, Oracle database, XML, and someday Essbase. It has built-in version control. The editors include a visual editor (looks like a flow diagram), a dialog editor, and a code editor.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that JDeveloper is free. It sounds like the Essbase component of JDeveloper is currently in beta. David started to say that it would be out this summer, but Duncan said that the development team would not say any more definite release date than "by the end of 2008." Both of these should be available (check OTN, I think he said) by the end of the year.

2:00 PM - Essbase Studio
I'm in post-lunch euphoria (and ready for nap time). The presentation I just saw was from a nice (and somewhat funny, though not as funny as Al) product development fellow named Subhash Gaur. He went through some Essbase Studio slides and then concluded with a demonstration of Essbase Studio that was a little difficult to follow but showed the power of the studio.

Essbase Studio is the next generation Essbase application building and administration. It's a graphical environment that seems at least as easy to use as EIS (though more IT-centric than EAS). One of the things that I saw today for the first time was "artifact lineage" which is basically impact analysis: when I change this dimension, which cubes will be changed?

I really like how ES (which replaces EIS immediately, but EAS not so much) creates rules files that can be kicked off independently of the studio. In other words, you can build a cube with data load and dimension build rules in studio, but then launch those rules independently via MaxL or EAS.

On a replacing EAS note, there's definitely a lesser need to use the Data Prep Editor in EAS. Essbase Studio lets you do a lot more rule-type activities than EAS does, but Subhash did admit that not every load rule function is in the studio. Future versions (Subhash referred to "Kennedy+") will replace a lot more EAS functionality including viewing/editing outlines, creating calc scripts, editing report scripts, and so on. There was no timeline listed for these enhancements.

Subhash went into detail about creating drill-through reports. Some of the nice things include dynamic association of reports (no more having to rebuild the cube to add reports), reusability of reports across cubes, and the expanded data sets for building cubes (RDBMS, flat file, Essbase, EPM Architect, and SAP R/3).

He talked about the future of Essbase Studio beyond the current release. Some of the planned enhancements include drill-through reports from cube to cube (so called "drill across" reports), localization, import/export XML (like EIS has now), the ability to cancel long tasks, and adding Netezza as a data source.

Next up is a look at JDeveloper's new Essbase access.

1:00 PM - Best Lunch I've Ever Had at a Conference
I almost skipped lunch, and that would have been my biggest mistake of the conference: lunch was truly amazing. I had the nice company of several people from the Hyperion track (including Al Marciante, John Rambeau, and Val Blackburn, all 10+ year veterans of Arbor Software out of the Dallas office). While company was nice, the food was superb and no, I don't just mean in comparison to the gruel from Collaborate.

Lunch was hot, you were given water or ice tea in real glasses, the tables had tablecloths, the silverware wasn't plastic, and it was served in a ballroom with high ceilings, skylights, and a gorgeous view of New Orleans. There were people coming by the tables to clear them and help you with any needs you might have. While all those things were 10 times better than Collaborate's attempt at lunches, check out today's menu (v for vegetarian):
-Smoked corn macque choux salad (v)
-Vidalia onion and creole tomato salad (v)
-Creole roasted new potatoes (v)
-Scane roasted spaghetti squash with julienne carrots and asparagus slivers (v)
-Pasta primavera with sundried tomatoes, olives, and capers (v)
-Grilled chicken with pecan rice, black eyed pea salsa, and roasted red pepper sauce
-Catfish fillet stuffed with crawfish and corn stuffing
-Gumbo ya-ya with chicken and sausage
-Super-soft dinner rolls

Oh, and did I mention that dessert was bourbon pecan pie with nutmeg creme anglaise? Recall that Collaborate gave out 3 Oreos for dessert (yes, THREE Oreos per person). I can metaphorically say I've died and gone to food heaven. I am really extremely impressed at how strikingly good everything I tried was (though I had to skip the sinfully good looking pecan pie since it's not vegetarian). While part of is the hotel doing a good job on the food, ODTUG spared no expense paying for lunch.

I know it's only half way through the first day, but I love this conference. Everything is so far done very professionally (though on a smaller scale attendance-wise, of course, than Collaborate or OpenWorld). Lunch today proved to me that the ODTUG people are not out to make a profit on this conference. I genuinely feel that ODTUG is putting the vast majority of the conference admission fees right back into the conference attendees.

I can't believe I'm writing this, but I can't wait for lunch tomorrow.

12:00 PM - Essbase 11.1.1 New Features
My mind is officially blown. Al's been talking for 2+ hours on all the new features in Essbase 11.1.1. He started off by covering the release schedule. Right now, Essbase 11.1.1.0.0 (the Windows only, English version) is scheduled for July 8. The code will be done by the end of June, but it won't push out until July 8 (subject to change, of course). The non-Windows version (code named "Kennedy 2" and was formerly code named "Shelley") is due out in the second half of 2008 and will be called 11.1.1.1.0. The Dickens version will support localization in the second half of 2008 and should be version 11.1.1.2.0.

There were several screen shots of the new Installation and Configuration product. It definitely seems simpler. There are four main screens and it does a good job of installing the products in the correct order and then auditing the install to make sure it actually works. On an "under the covers" note, there is now a single HYPERION_HOME location for all applications. Products will be under HYPERION_HOME\Products while application server deployments will be under HYPERION_HOME\Deployments. There are are also a few new environment variables including ESSBASEPATH which seems to actually replace ARBORPATH after 10+ years.

Lifecycle Management (LCM) is going to be part of Shared Services and launched through there. LCM is the product that allows an administrator to move objects (Planning, Essbase, Business Rules, HFM, EPM Architect, etc.) from environment to environment (like Development to Production). LCM will not migrate data from Essbase or HFM between servers. It does give you a nice report on what successfully migrated and what didn't. You can also run a report that compares environments and there's even an audit report that shows you a history of migrations. Apparently, you can migrate between different shared services servers which is a nice surprise You can't migrate between versions unless both shared services versions support LCM. Since right now the only version that supports LCM is 11.1.1.0.0 (not yet released), this is really only helpful moving forward.

There were a couple of minor enhancements mentioned. All the new logs (across all Hyperion products) will be in one common directory which should make it easier to troubleshoot issues that show up. Also, the default security for Essbase in 11.1.1 is not native (Essbase.SEC) security but rather it's Shared Services. Since Essbase native security is very insecure (remind me to show you some tricks one of these days on how to hack Essbase security), I'm glad they're trying to push people to Shared Services (and by extension, external authentication).

There was a lengthy discussion of Varying Attributes (AKA Slowly Changing Attributes) which is the ability of an attribute to vary across the intersection of 2 or more dimensions. For instance, the manager of a product may change from year to year. I took a ton of bullet notes on this:
- Can look at point-in-time (show me the relationships as how things were in January of 2007)
- Must build through Essbase Studio or manually through EAS. Not exposed through DimBuild rules in 11.1.1.
- There's a new outline property of a member: "Varying Attributes Enabled"
- Can do ranges (like "Bob was the manager from 2002-2005") without having to specify every member in the middle. It does this by going in outline order from Member X to Member Y.
- Appears as an attribute dimension
- Don't need to run a calc: they're dynamic like attribute dimensions

The discussion on Date and Text measures in Essbase was extremely lengthy. Suffice to say that "Text in an Essbase data cell" is the greatest enhancement to Essbase since Aggregate Storage (and maybe since Dynamical Calc members). Here are my bulleted notes:
- New Outline property: "Typed Attributes Enabled"
- Basically a text measure is a number used in a "VLookup." Because of that, you would never use text measures to store, say, an address for each customer, because every value would be unique to one lookup. You need a limited range of text measures.
- Dates are stored as numeric, so there are no limits to the dates allowed
- Writeback is allowed to a text/date measure
- Must create a "Text List" object (very similar to a SmartList)
- Can import in a mapping table of numerics to texts
- Date type measures can be used with new Text functions
- Supported in Smart View, Web Analysis and classic Add-In
- Al's not sure if text/date measures are supported in Financial Reporting 11.1.1
- Lookups are stored in a separate file referenced by the outline (OTL) in Essbase
- There are API calls for
- Maximum for text is 255 characters
- Users can't type in their own text: they have to select from a pre-established list
- 1024 different values in a Text List and NoData and OutOfRange
- Dates are recognized in Excel as dates (not text, very cool)
- Can use text measures instead of attributes or UDAs for member selection
- Can now format measures/accounts (and dynamic calc members of other dimensions) as a string using new property "Associate Format String"
- Dates stored as seconds since 1970 so dates are limited to 1970-2038. This will be corrected in future releases.

There are new MDX Time Intelligence functions that went by too quickly for me to note them. Suffice to say that there were at least 10 new functions. There were also some new calc script functions:
- @LANCESTORS (all the ancestors for a list of members)
- @LDESCENDANTS (all the descendants for a list of members)
- @SHIFTSIBLING (nth sibling of a specified member)
- @NEXTSIBLING (nth forward sibling of a member)
- @PRIORSIBLING (nth prior sibling of a member)
- $ (used to get an environment variable for the operating system into a calc script)

The new backup, transaction logging, and replay feature in Essbase BSO was explained further. It will record everything done to an Essbase cube such as outline changes, calc scripts run, data loads initiated, dimension builds, and lock&sends. You can then rollback specific transactions or replay specific transactions. You can't exactly cherry pick specific actions to replay after a crash, but you can specify, say, "everything from this time onward." It's basically a super-ramped up improvement/replacement for the old Essbase SSAUDIT setting.

Most of the items above (like date/text measures and varying attributes) are applicable to both BSO and ASO, but there are a few ASO specific improvements:
- Unicode support. Previously, only BSO cubes could be unicode.
- Partial data clear. You can set a region of data to 0 or #Missing using either a physical clear (it actually blanks out the members) or a logical clear (it creates a slice with a reversing entry in effect making the intersection equal to zero). On one of their test clients, a logical clear was 30 times faster than a physical clear, but a logical clear does add some time to the retrieval.
- Target of a partition. Data can now be transparently partitioned into an ASO cube.
- Writeback to level 0. You can now send data into the bottom intersections of an ASO cube (like BSO) although in ASO, data sent to upper levels is ignored.

There were a couple of slides on xOLAP, the technology that allows an entire Essbase cube to be stored in relational database. Why would one do this? A cube could be real-time on RDBMS data, for one. For another reason, doing this would allow the underlying table to still be accessible via standard SQL queries, if you're into that kind of thing. There wasn't a demo of the functionality and I haven't tried it out. My main concern has to do with speed. As some of you may recall, IBM once allowed storage of Essbase data in DB2 (it was one of the storage options in IBM DB2 OLAP). Everything ran slower (by about 3 times) when you tried storing data relationally. I just can't believe that RDBMS storage of cubes could be as fast as native storage, but maybe it won't be terribly much slower?

There was an interesting question from someone about whether there would be an Essbase Add-In for OpenOffice or Google's spreadshet. The answer was that right now, there were too few calls for it. While I agree, it would be nice for Essbase to be "the first BI application to allow ad-hoc analysis through Google's spreadsheet." I suspect that if they do this, it'll be a long while off.

Al showed a brief demo of the new Smart View Connection Manager and Smart Slice functionality. It seems extremely easy to set up a "starting view" of the cube using Smart Slices. The demo had to be cut short, sadly, because everyone in the audience was losing consciousness from lack of food, want of drink, and need of toilet.

Off to lunch, and I pray to the conference gods that it not be as bad as what Collaborate served us.

10:00 AM - Keynote on the Future of Essbase
Al Marciante just gave the keynote address "The Future of Essbase: Code Name Kennedy and Beyond" in place of Robert Gersten who was called away at the last minute to an Oracle event in EMEA. Al started off by giving a history of Essbase (and to a lesser extent, Hyperion as a whole). It's impressive to realize all the things where Essbase broke new ground (first to meet Dr. Codd's rules for an OLAP database, first to have a thin client, first to have a 64-bit server, first to have a Linux server, and so on).

Since today is all about the future of Hyperion, Al gave the standard "don't hold us to anything we're about to tell you" disclaimer slide. He then went into his three themes for today:

• New applications & ERP Integration.
  Al started by talking more about Profitability Management 11.1.1. I've talked about this product before (it's basically a nice graphical tool for creating allocation models). He did mention today that HPM (Hyperion Profitability Management) is built entirely on Essbase. It actually creates calc scripts behind the scenes and utilized a multi-cube architecture (one for calculating and another for reporting).
  
  On ERP Integration, Oracle has resurrected the old PeopleSoft PeopleTools product that used to integrate PeopleSoft data with Essbase. It hadn't been updated in a long-time (as of Essbase 5 or 6), but starting with PeopleTools 8.49, it will support current versions of Essbase. PeopleSoft 9 will even be able to build cubes directly. The new version of Hyperion will also support seamless drill through to Oracle EBS (eBusiness Suite).
  
  
• Comprehensive Analytic Application Framework
  Essbase is the new analytics standard for Oracle Fusion. In other words, all the new Fusion apps will use Essbase (most likely in a "lights out, behind the scenes" version) as the supporting database. Essbase will be integrated in the near future with all the financial, CRM, and procurement applications.
  
  JDeveloper will be the new front-end development tool against Hyperion going forward. Al wasn't exactly sure about the pricing for JDeveloper, but his opinion was that the "Essbase adapters" for JDeveloper would be free. What he wasn't sure about was if JDeveloper costs money to Essbase users or would be free. I'd be surprised if they didn't charge for it, because it looks like a very powerful, Java-based, Oracle-aware development tool.
  
  Al talked briefly about some of the newer features in Smart View. The three coolest things (which I've previously talked about) are the new Connection Manager (it's a tree now instead of bizarre URLs), Smart Slices (AKA personal cubes or making cubes seem like they have fewer dimensions than they really do), and what they're currently calling Report Designer which is the ability to make a dashboard in Microsoft Office of Hyperion-aware things like grids, tables, charts, and sliders.
  
  
• Advanced Analytics
  There were two major points on Advanced Analytics. First was that Crystal Ball (that product Hyperion bought just before Oracle bought them) would be integrated into Hyperion for forecasting and optimization. Crystal Ball Predictor and OptQuest are being integrated with Smart View (and exposed through the web) for forecasting and optimization scenarios.
  
  The other major point was that data mining models will now be able to be created and visualized through HVE (Hyperion Visual Explorer). This is very cool, because right now data mining models have to be set up using a really kludgy interface in EAS.
  

After Al's talk, he released us for a brief break so we could catch up on our blogging (presumably).

9:00 AM - Welcome and Kickoff
We just finished kicking off the day. During our kickoff, a massive storm hit New Orleans. It gave the talk a lot more gravitas to have thunder cracking everywhere and lightning flashing outside the window.

Tim started off by polling the audience about their Essbase experience. It impressed me that there were 4 people in the audience who went to the very first Arbor Dimensions conference back in 1995. Tim was the only one who had an ESSBASE vanity license plate on his jeep. I did write a musical about Essbase, though, so I think I've also earned my Hyperion geek cred.

John Jeunette (President of ODTUG) and Mike Riley (Head of Kaleidoscope) both stepped forward to say a few words of welcome to the Hyperion attendees. I have been genuinely impressed at how welcoming the ODTUG people have been. Even though Hyperion is new to the ODTUG party, they've done a great job of making the new users feel at home.

I was assigned to give some announcements about the Hyperion track as well as Hyperion in general. I walked everyone through the "themed days" we'd be doing at Kaleidoscope and then briefed everyone about the ramifications of Kopcke's letter from last week. I introduced Al Marciante (Senior Director of Product Management in the Hyperion space) who'll be doing the keynote for the "Developer's Symposium" and then hurriedly sat down to write this blog.

8:30 AM - Preparing for the day
Tim and I are trying to do last minute preparations for our "Welcome and Kickoff for the week" presentation, but we keep stopping to talk to people we know. The problem is that we know darned near everyone hear. My rough count shows over 100 people here which considering it's Sunday morning (and Father's Day, no less) is fairly impressive. I was worried we'd have around 11 people and that would include the 6 interRel people here, Tim Tow, and Al Marciante.

Oracle was kind enough to pay for copies of Look Smarter Than You Are With Essbase System 9 for every attendee in the Hyperion track here at Kaleidoscope. It's neat to see everyone walking around with a copy of the book with the special "Limited Edition for ODTUG Kaleidoscope" banner on it.