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).

OpenWorld - Thursday, Sep. 25

3:59PM - What's New in OBIEE+

It was my understanding that this presentation would mention some of what's changing in Web Analysis, Financial Reporting, and the other parts of the "plus" part of OBIEE+.  Instead, I just sat through an hour-long sales pitch of "Oracle BI Standard Edition One" which is all about Oracle BI Publisher, Interactive Dashboards, and Answers.  They didn't talk about the former Hyperion products at all.  There was a point where I began wondering if they switched rooms and maybe my topic was being held elsewhere.  I honestly went out on the web to see if they had many any schedule changes.

No, I was in the right room just receiving the wrong content.  The room holds about 100, so I wonder if others were as confused as I am.  Several people walked out.

I'm leaving now to go meet someone in the Marriott lobby.  No, this isn't my last OpenWorld blog entry, so tune in later.

2:45PM - Roske on Hyperion Planning Optimization

That presentation was a lot less full.  It was right next door at Moscone West 3024.  it held 200 or so but was only about 1/4 full.  I guess people are headed to the airport (and there was also a competing Planning tips presentation at the same time).  Everyone seemed interested in the content which is good, because I wasn't at my funniest.

I started off by telling everyone that the #1 way to speed up Planning is to speed up Essbase.  I also told them not to optimize Essbase under Planning the same way one optimizes stand-alone Essbase cubes.  Why?  Because normal Essbase optimization focuses on optimizing data loads and big, batch calcs.  Planning optimizations focus on user experience: speeding up form retrievals, form submissions, and running small/targeted calcs.

Once I went through the Essbase tips that one should consider when optimizing Hyperion Planning, I covered how to optimize Planning web forms themselves.  I covered optimized calculations briefly and also gave some infrastructure tips.  There was just too much content for 1 hour, because there are so many different tips/tricks for Hyperion Planning.  I only got to spend about 15 minutes on tips for improving user experience (basically, user interface tips) and that topic alone needs an hour to do it justice.

A few people stirred when I told them NOT to use Planning's built-in currency capabilities but rather to create a Planning app as non-multi-currency and then add the capability manually.  The reasons for this are both performance based and for usability.  I would have presumed by now that no one was using the Planning multi-currency, but several people seemed shocked when I said that, so apparently, they been getting bad consulting advice (or worse: they got design advice from their Planning Bootcamp instructor).

If you want a copy of the slides for this presentation (assuming you're not a competitor :), send an e-mail to info(at)interrel.com.  For that matter, if you want a copy of any of the ones I've delivered at this year's OpenWorld, send an e-mail specifying which of the 4 presentations you actually want and Danielle will be happy to send you a copy:

• How Essbase Thinks (both BSO and ASO)
• Essbase Outline Tuning and Optimization
• Smart View Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices
• Hyperion Planning Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

While I love public speaking (something's wrong in my brain, I know), I'm glad my presentation work here at OpenWorld is over, because I still worry about my presentations until I've delivered them.  My voice hurts and while I have a few more things to attend to, I don't have to stress about any more presenting.

I have to race now all the way back to the Marriott (this conference is too big) to attend a presentation on what's new in the old Hyperion BI+ tools.  Glad I brought my running shoes...

1:14PM - Roske and XTO on Smart View Tips

The Smart View Tips and Tricks presentation took place in 3022 in Moscone West.  It started at noon, and I got there from the Marriott with only about 10 minutes to spare.  The room held 300 and was more than 80% full.

Bob from XTO Energy started off the presentation by talking about his experiences using Hyperion at XTO.  He told the audience about how he started with a different consulting company than interRel that did a horrible job (thankfully, he didn't mention the name), threw them out, tried to do it themselves, and eventually called interRel for help.  He did mention that we were able to reduce his calculation time from 8-12 hours down to under 20 minutes, so that was a unexpected plug for our Hyperion tuning practice.

He then talked some about their experiences with Smart View specifically.  He gave an interesting tip that you don't tend to hear in most Smart View tricks presentations: consider using the HSGetValue() function (with anchored cell references so you can formula fill it after you've added it once).  Most people say not to use it for speed reasons, but Bob rightly pointed out that it does give you a ton of flexibility in reporting that you don't get when using the simple grid approach.

After about 10 minutes, he turned it over to me.  I talked for about 50 minutes on ways to better your usage of Smart View with Essbase, Planning, Financial Reporting, and Web Analysis.  For a lot of my tips, I had to say, "here's the really complicated way of doing it under System 9, but under 11x, there's this really cool way to do it."  I will be so happy when 11x is stable, so I can recommend that our clients upgrade to it.

About 100 people came up afterwards to give me their business cards and ask questions.  One lady actually came up and asked if interRel could please come out to her company and rescue her Planning implementation that [a consulting firm based out of the East Coast of the USA] screwed up.  It's always good when people realize that you don't actually just talk about Hyperion but you actually implement it as well.

I now have a huge walk to my next presentation which is all the way over at Moscone West, room 3024.  I think that's to the west of where I am now in Moscone West, room 3022.

11:25AM - What's New in Oracle BI Applications

This room at the Marriott is huge.  According to the scanner lady at the door, the room holds almost 1,100 people.  That said, the room is a ghost town.  There are only about 75 people here.  It's as empty as a Texas Rangers day game in August.  Jake Krakauer, Senior Director of BI Apps for Oracle, was the opening speaker.  Why am I here?  To hear about future integration between the BI Apps and the former Hyperion products.  I'm not sure there is any, but I hope to find out.

Jake started off by talking about how BI Apps are part of the EPM System at Oracle. Jake talked briefly about the importance of BI Apps to "achieving management excellence."  Now I know what "Management Excellence" is because I've heard Kopcke speak and been reading the EPM literature for the last few months.  The majority of the room has no idea what Jake meant, though, when he said 'Management Excellence."  A bit of terminology definition would have been nice.

There are around 35 pre-built BI apps like sales pipeline analysis, market basket analysis, and procurement analysis.  Jake's talking about how most of their effort on developing BI Apps goes into the behind scenes things like ETL, security, warehouse design, and under the covers modeling rather than on the front-end.  While that's greatly inspiring, isn't the primary forwarding facing view of the BI Apps the user interface?  Would I still drive a BMW 650 if it looked on the outside like a Ford Pinto?  If I'm going to be paying a ton of money for something, I want it to look nice when I have to look at it.

Jake's been talking about the new Oracle BI Apps 11g that's coming (eventually).  Their goal is to link BI Apps into Fusion Middleware and OBIEE Answers+.

New content in the BI Apps 11g will include:

• US Federal Financial Analytics.  This is a special version of Financial Analytics for federal agencies.
• ODI Integration.  Phase 1 of the BI Apps and ODI integration will have Oracle eBS 11.5.10as the only supported source and Oracle database as the only target. That seems limiting.  They'll be expanding more in the future, apparently.
• Fixed Assets Analytics
• Project Analytics
• HR Functional area
• Data Lineage Console

While those items are pretty definite (because they're already under development), here is what may be released in a beyond 12 month timeframe:

• Procurement & Spend Analytics
• Marketing Loyalty Analytics
• PeopleSoft adapters for P&Spend Analytics and Projects Analytics
• JDEdwards adapters for financials, order management, and P&Spend
• Communications/procewsses focused analytics (industry)
• EBS Manufacturing - OPM and Discrete enhancements
• EBS GRI Sustainability dashboard
• CxO Dashboard/Scorecard
• ODI Phase 2.  Additional Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft, JDE sources.  Additional targets to include DB2, MS SQL Server, and Teradata.

Jake just started talking about "integrating the Hyperion applications with the BI Applications so data can be used both ways."  Basically, they're working on sharing data between Hyperion apps (like Planning and HFM) and the BI Apps.

On integrating the BI Apps and Essbase, he said that they're focusing on integrating OBIEE and Essbase.  "Today, Essbase can be a source for the Business Analytics Warehouse for use by dashboards.  Essbase can also be a target so if you're doing analysis in your function, you can spin off an Essbase cube and do some deeper analysis."  That all seems really vague.  As of this moment, no one has announced BI Apps sitting directly on Essbase.

On integrating HFM and the BI App for Financial Analysis, Jake basically said that they're complimentary applications.  He then showed a PowerPoint slide that could double as an eye chart.  "HFM is for inter-period reporting, but FInancial Analytics is for intra-period reporting."  Um, okay.

Several people have been walking out, so the room's down to less than 50 people.

They want to integrate Hyperion Planning and HR Analytics so Workforce Planning can feed and pull from HR Analytics.  I don't think from what he's said that it's there yet.

Michael Siebert, the guy from from Ingersoll Rand, came out at about 11AM.  He offered some insight on what Ingersoll Rand has been doing with the BI Apps and what they will be doing.  Mike's basically giving a customer success story which isn't amazingly relevant to most of the audience.  Other people are leaving.

I have a presentation at 12PM in Moscone West on Smart View Tips and Tricks.  I expect the room will be mostly empty, because:

1. Most of our clients are in Hyperion customer advisory boards.
   
2. A number of people have already left for the airport.
3. It's being held during lunch.  Nice timing, Oracle.

9:00AM - Meeting with the Press

I'm about to meet with a reportor from an industry trade magazine.  Apparently, they're really impressed with all the press interRel (my company) has received this week.  While I do the interview, I'll ask Eduardo to post a quick separate entry listing all the press releases with our name in them this week so it doesn't clutter up my live blogging.  It's been a very good week to be interRel (though my feet are killing me).

OpenWorld - Tuesday, Sep. 23

11:00PM - Evening Wrap Up

After the Excellence awards, I went back to the Oracle Hyperion reception that was joint hosted with the OAUG Hyperion SIG.  When I got there, the room was packed so tightly no one could breathe.  Remember how I said that the room held 300 people?  They apparently let in four hundred and fifty.

I had a nice talk with Rich Clayton towards the end of the night.  He congratulated us on the EPM Solution of the Year award win.  He expressed to me his appreciation of how of the smaller partners deliver high quality solutions that are quite often better than the huge multi-national conglomerate consulting firms.  Rich is a great guy, and I was sincerely grateful for his words of encouragement.  I complimented on his ability to move the mouse during the "demo" at Kurian's keynote using only the power of his mind. Although the reception was supposed to end at 8PM, I didn't get out of there until 9:30.

After the reception, I stopped at a Thai restauraent with a friend of mine from the Oracle community.  It was probably the best food I've had since arriving in San Francisco.  I ate a huge bowl of Tom Kha (vegetarian) and took some Green Curry (with tofu) back to the hotel.

I've got a meeting at 7:45AM, so now it's off to sleep.  And by sleep, I mean watch on iTunes the season premiere of Heroes...

7:30PM - Oracle Excellence Awards

The Oracle Excellence Awards were held in the Oak Room of the Westin St. Francis.  It was a much smaller venue than the Titan Awards from Saturday.  Whereas the Titan Awards were in a grand ballroom with thousands of people, these awards are held in a smallish room holding fewer than 200 people.  Hey, it's only the second year of these awards, and they'll be getting bigger each year, I'm sure.

Pearson Education, one of interRel's best clients and the largest textbook manufacturer in the world, won an Oracle Excellence Award for the implementation we did with them of Hyperion.  Pearson asked me to come up and be in the picture which was very nice.  They also showed the interRel logo on the screen at the front of the room as a "Supporting System Integrator" which I didn't expect at all.

We ate some free appetizers (actually, I didn't because they were all beast-based) and after a Coke, I'm heading back to the Hyperion reception at the Hyatt.

6:25PM - Oracle Hyperion Reception

I just left a reception for Hyperion customers and partners at the Grand Hyatt Union Square.  It was packed.  Kristin Newman from Linium (and a really good friend of mine) arranged the logistics for the event, and she did a great job.  The room the event was held in was the Bay View Room on the 36th floor of the Hyatt.  It had a panoramic view of the bay to the West and the city to the South.  It was gorgeous.  The room holds about 300 (it's half the top story of the Hyatt)  and right now, it's about 1/3 full.

Kristin arranged for a 3 feet tall cake.  It has multple levels and around the edges of the cake are edible scale models of Oracle HQ, Oracle's sailing yacht, and the Oracle racing plane.  It's one of the most impressive custom cakes I've ever seen.  Kopcke and Gersten are showing up later to cut the cake and it almost seems like a travesty.  Kristin also arranged for lots of free food and several open bars, just so we know we're at Oracle OpenWorld (home of free food and open bar).

I'm running out now to go to the Oracle Excellence Awards at the Westin St. Francis.  Luckily, it's about a block from here.

5:46PM - Oracle OLAP and Essbase

I got to the presentation late.  Luckily, there was plenty of seating.  The room probably held ~500 and was maybe 1/4 full.  Ray Roccaforte was delivering the presentation.  He started off by saying that both Oracle OLAP and Essbase are Oracle's strategic directions for OLAP.  "But wait!," you scream in confusion. "How will I know which one to use?"  Well, here was Ray's exact quote as best as I could capture it:

The difference is in the target audience....If you're consolidating data, the OLAP option is probably your best bet.  If you're more interested in being more software compliant and merging with different systems, Essbase is your best bet.

Ray elaborated on Oracle OLAP by saying that it's more of an IT product than a business product and is designed for people who are more "rationally focused."  Interesting move referring to business users as not rational.  He added that "our target audience with Oracle OLAP is SQL application developers.  It's all about improving BI applications in the Oracle database."  He concluded his portion by saying that Oracle OLAP is best on an Oracle data warehouse.  By "best," I think he means that you should only use Oracle OLAP on a Oracle data warehouse.

John Kopcke came out next to talk about when to use Essbase.  He started by saying that the target audience of Essbase is end users and primary sponsors of Essbase implementations are lines of business (not IT).  Kopcke continued with the theme of "Oracle OLAP is for IT and Essbase is for business."  He had a cute quote:

The Essbase users are the business users, the ones with the ties on. If you're in a shirt with the top button open, you're probably more interested in Oracle OLAP.

I get a kick out John's presentations, as you can tell.  He also said that Essbase should definitely be used when data is coming from multiple sources.

So what did we learn?  If you have an Oracle data warehouse and want to rack and stack you some data warehouse, use Oracle OLAP.  In all other cases, use Essbase.  I can actually see situations where we would want to use both together.  For instance, take your Oracle data warehouse, roll it up with Oracle OLAP, and create an Essbase 11 xOLAP cube (basically, a virtual cube that sits on top of a relational product) to make it easy for your users who like an Essbase like engine.  The data would then sit in Oracle OLAP while users accessed a transparent Essbase cube.

I know have to race to the Hyperion reception at the Grand Hyatt.  My feet are killing me.  Santa, please give me a Segway for Christmas.  I've been a good (enough) boy.

4:50PM - Thomas Kurian Keynote (now with more Kurian)

When Intel finished at 3:28, one third of the room left.  They were here just for the commercial?  That strikes me as very weird.  Maybe they thought it was all over?  Ah, many of them are now coming back.  Silly people.

Thomas Kurian, SVP of Oracle Fusion Middleware, came out at 3:30 on the dot.  The man is prompt, I'll give him that.  He's talking about Oracle Data Integrator (and other data translation products) at the moment, but there's nothing earth shattering being said.

Hey, he just said "Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Manager" (formerly known as Hyperion MDM)!  He's just showing how it's part of the Oracle Data Integration Suite.  Rich Clayton (a former Hyperion guy and now a director in the Oracle EPM Product Marketing group) was just brought out on stage to demo aspects of the Oracle Data Integration Suite.  Wait, Thomas Kurian said demo, but it's really a recording of a demo done at some point in the past.  Basically, we're listening to Rich Clayton narrate a video.  I guess that means that we won't be treated to any sudden software crashes during the "demo."  Note to Rich: it's not as obvious that it's recorded if you leave a hand near the computer when the mouse is moving.  Rich, a friend of mine, did get a nice round of applause as he left the stage just now.

Thomas is now talking about all the new Essbase 11x features.  He just misstated that "Essbase can now stay up and running while users are submitting data through Planning."  Um, it always did that.  I think he meant that Essbase 11x ASO cubes can stay up during retrieves and submits even submissions from users.  He also said that "Essbase now can combine multiple cubes into one on the fly."  Again, it has done that for years.  I think he meant that Essbase ASO cubes can now be targets of transparent partitions and he was trying to explain that to non-Essbase users.  He did mention that Essbase 11x has new time intelligence and allows text in an Essbase cube.  I would have led with "Essbase can now handle text in the cube" but that's just me.  He did talk briefly about the existence of the new Essbase Studio, but didn't explain why it kicks EIS ass.

He's now talking about Smart View (now called Oracle Smart View for Office) and Oracle Smart Space. He's on a Hyperion roll, but there's no new information beyond standard marketing.  It's just nice to see Oracle talking about the former Hyperion products during a keynote.

Rich Clayton just came back out to do some more video narration.  He's starting off with a dashboard in Oracle EPM Workspace (formerly Hyperion Workspace).  Rich is talking about how cool page dropdowns are when they are linked to the entire dashboard.  Yes, dropdown page filters are handy, but not exactly cutting edge.  The recorded demo from Rich is a bit too "look at how we're doing things like conditional formatting or multiple sources on a grid" for me.  I tend to shy away from a feature-centric demo and go more for of the "and how does this help me?" demo.  Considering most of the people in the audience are IT (whereas I'm a finance guy at heart), a technology demo may very well be appropriate.  People around me seem to be interested.

I do like how Rich Clayton and Thomas Kurian keep saying "Essbase" over and over.  It's music to my ears.  Rich just showed OBIEE Publisher sitting on top of Essbase.  I didn't realize that the new version of Publisher could do that.  Maybe I should spend next week learning all the new OBIEE 10.1.3.4 features?  Rich just left to another round of applause (his third, I believe) while Thomas gave some statistics about how fast Essbase is.

Thomas is now talking about Oracle EPM Architect (note that there's no "Hyperion" anywhere in the name), Oracle Hyperion Planning, Oracle Hyperion Profitabiltiy and Cost Management, Oracle Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting, 

He just said that one of the new features of Hyperion Planning are the Workforce planning and CapEx Planning modules.  No, these have been around since System 9.3 (and earlier, in the case of Workforce).  I wonder who vetted this speech?  Weird.

Rich Clayton came out again.  This time he's talking about integrating Oracle eBusiness Suite and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management.  He started off in Hyperion Financial Reporting and talked about the new annotations available in Financial Reporting 11x.  He then jumped over to HFM, right-clicked on a number, and jumped out to Hyperion FDQM.  He then clicked on a transaction in FDQM and jumped out to Oracle eBusiness Suite.  That's remarkably powerful integration.  I'd like to see this same capability for other GLs (notably, SAP).

Rich is now demonstrating PowerPoint.  No, not PowerPoint slides; he's showing how to access Hyperion Planning data from inside PowerPoint (via Smart View).  He just jumped from PowerPoint over to Excel to show Smart View in Excel.  He's now showing a brief demo of Hyperion Profitability.

Did I mention I'm impressed that all of Kurian's demos so far have been about Hyperion products (and in some cases, how they integrate with OBIEE)?  It gives me a warm feeling inside.  Rich just left to a third round of applause.

I would like to advise the Oracle keynote speakers (all the speakers, actually) to add some humor to their presentations.  Don't be so dry: people are more receptive to information when they're having fun, smiling, and not falling asleep.  I haven't the audience laugh in at least an hour, and that's not good.  By the end of the keynote, half the room had left.  Not a good sign, so make it more interesting, for your sake and ours.  Maybe all of the top people from Oracle could get together and write a wacky musical about the software industry?

While we're being critical of speakers, may I also advise that the keynote speakers not read everything off teleprompters?  First of all, it's weird to see all of the keynoters looking down at their feet (where the teleprompter screens are) half the time.  Second of all, if you're reading, you're not being spontaneous.  You can't react to your audience.  If your audience is bored with what you're saying, you can't try a different approach, because you're a slave to the prompting gods.  If you're worried about forgetting where you are, may I suggest you have the teleprompter just show you the bullets you want to be covering?  Or you could memorize your talking points, perhaps.  I'm just saying.

In case you're wondering why I've stopped blogging about what's actually going on in the room around me, it's because Thomas Kurian has switched from BI/EPM to the other fusion technologies.  While those are probably great fun at parties (and they have great personalities), I'm not terribly concerned with those other products.

There's a demo going on right now of Oracle Beehive (catchy, eh?) which Oracle describes thus: "Oracle Beehive provides a centralized, secure and auditable collaboration platform that helps organizations reduce the cost and complexity of regulatory compliance and legal discovery."  If you have any idea what means, please feel free to send an e-mail to wtf@oracle.com.  It seems to be about increasing collaboration (via e-mail, IM, wikis, portals, mobile phones, or whatever) across a company.  Think "Web 2.0 but focused within a company."  Now why couldn't the Oracle marketing department just say that?

Speaking of marketing, Oracle just issued a press release about customers who have "selected or evaluated" Hyperion 11x.  They actually included a quote from me (or someone making up a quote and attributing it to me) on the release.  Here's the quote.  Note that it sounds nothing like me:

“The latest release of Oracle’s EPM System includes hundreds of feature enhancements that will help improve user experience and simplify application administration for our customers,” said Edward Roske, CEO of interRel Consulting. “The new Hyperion Calculation Manager redefines enterprise integration and user accessibility while the enhancements to Oracle Essbase solidifies its position as the world’s leading OLAP server."

The room is now 90% empty.  I guess that's because it's now 4:45.  I wonder why it's running so much over?  I could walk out to go to Kopcke's presentation on "Oracle's Strategic OLAP Technologies - Essbase and Oracle OLAP Option" but it doesn't seem right to walk out on a keynote.

Thomas Kurian just called an abrupt end to the meeting.  I'm going to run to Kopcke's presentation at the Marriott and see if I can still get in.  Here I go running...

3:15PM - Thomas Kurian Keynote (brought to you by Intel)

I got to the Thomas Kurian Keynote a little after 2.  I stopped off to get one of Oracle's vegetarian boxed lunches.  While the food at OOW is nothing to blog home about, they are vegetarian friendly... if you can find where they hide the vegetarian food.  The main lunch places only have meat-based food, because they put all the "special meals" in one specific lunch spot: the Sinking Ship pavilion in the Yerba Buena Gardens (in what Oracle calls the "Green Marketplace").  When I finally found it, I was extremely impressed at the variety of special meals: vegan, lacto-vegetarian (I never see that), kosher, halla, Indian, gluten-free, lactose intolerant, and more.  Now that said, my lacto-vegetarian meal was basically tofu on salad in a boxed lunch and definitely not filling.

While people were getting seated, I was treated to a cello quartet by a nice young lady.  Yes, it was a single person.  She played along in front of the room and recorded it.  She would then play it back with a foot pedal and play along live with the recording all the while recording this.  She'd then play this recording back and play along with (and so ad infinitum).

This keynote is much better attended than the other things I've been to in this hall so far.  The room seems to be mostly full.  (I'm speculating that they're not holding any competing events right now.)

Safra Catz from Oracle just came out to introduce Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel (not to be confused with interRel).  Paul is going to be talking about "how Intel is driving the pace of Moore's Law to deliver innovative solutions that will enable enterprises to use time to their advantage."  He has a nice blue background and he came out after an interesting video homage to the concept of time.  It showed how clocks have evolved over the last thousands of years and included various slow-mo and fast-mo images with quotes about time from famous thinkers flashing across the screen.

He just mentioned that Intel is working on the flux capacitator from Back to the Future (though he added that they haven't perfected it yet).  We're going to presume he was joking (but if not, it's very cool that Intel is going to be the market edge leader in time machines).  He's been talking about linear and exponential improvements in the speed of business.  There hasn't been any EPM content, but there have been a lot of pretty pictures flowing across the screen.

A woman from a medical imaging firm just came out and showed us 3-D images of blood flow in brains.  I don't know what it has to do with Oracle, but brains are cool.

I think Thomas Kurian will be coming on at about 3:30.  Until then, I think I'll be taking a power nap.

1:22PM - Hyperion Performance Scorecard

I sat in the Scorecard session for about 20 minutes.  Unlike the "BI Roadmap" presentation (that was standing room only), there were only 65 people in this room.  I was hoping to hear about the future of Performance Scorecard.  Unfortunately, this presentation was more of an introduction to the topic.  This is, admittedly, exactly what the abstract said it was going to be, so my hopes were minimal.

I just left the Scorecard session and now I'm off to find something to eat.

1:02PM - Book Signing

I just spent 30 minutes at the Oracle bookstore in Moscone West signing copies of "Look Smarter Than You Are with Essbase."  A lot of people came up, glanced through the book, asked "are you the author?", and when I said yes, they asked, "so what is this Essbase thing Oracle bought anyway?"  I enjoyed talking with everyone (I love to educate people on Essbase, Hyperion, and now Oracle EPM) but it did teach me something.  A lot of the Oracle user community has heard about Essbase, but hardly anyone understands what it does.  BI and EPM are not cool well defined concepts like GL, ERP, CRM, and the like.  Calling Essbase an "OLAP tool" way oversimplifies what it can do.  Oracle needs to define where Essbase fits in the enterprise, because right now there's confusion and no one wants to see Essbase pigeonholed into the Finance group again.

12:23PM - Business Intelligence Roadmap and Strategy

I was 5 minutes late getting into the room, because the place is packed.  The line to check in to the room was over 150 feet long.  It literally went down the hall and around the corner.  Paul Rodwick from Oracle is talking about the current and future world of BI/EPM at Oracle.  Please remember that all this information is speculative, so Oracle is likely to change their minds at the drop of a hat.  For the moment, though, this is their plan.

Paul has been offering up some great insight to Oracle's strategic direction for various Hyperion and OBIEE products.  For instance, Paul just said that "Hyperion Workspace has been adopted as the primary interface to Business Intelligence information at Oracle.  [Hyperion Workspace] has been renamed the Oracle EPM Workspace."

The three major components of Oracle's BI Foundation are Essbase, BI Server, and Predictive Analytics (Oracle Real-Time Decisions).  I'm glad to see Essbase in there as a key component of Oracle's BI strategy.

He said that HFM is Oracle's go-forward product for global consolidations like Planning is for budgeting.  I heard this from Kopcke on Sunday, but it's good to hear it reiterated.  He also said that Oracle's strategic direction for dashboards is not Interactive Reporting but rather OBIEE Dashboards.  He also said their strategic direction for ad-hoc querying is OBIEE (Answers, I'm presuming, but he didn't specify).  This is, I think, the last nail in the coffin of Web Analysis.  I'd heard this before, but never in an official setting.  Paul had a slide that showed Oracle's direction for canned reports is OBIEE (presumably Publisher) and not Hyperion (SQR Production Reporting).

He reiterated that the installation of System 9 took up to 270 screens of installation prompts whereas 11.1 takes only 8 screens to install everything.  While 11.1 is easier than System 9 to install, there are still some tricks to it, so don't think it's a walk in the park.  Maybe it's more like a walk through Central Park at 3AM.

OBIEE 10.1.3.4 came out in August and adds a great deal of integration with Hyperion.  One of the neat features of OBIEE 10.1.3.4 is a sample "Best Practices" application which shows some of the best practices for KPIs, dashboards, detailed reports, trending, and the like.  If you don't know where to start with your EPM application, check this out on OTN or edelivery.oracle.com.  OBIEE 11g should be out within the next 12 months and it should add a lot of expansion to the existing OBIEE products to make them work better with multi-dimensional data (like Essbase).  There are more than 140 major projects as part of OBIEE 11g: so many that I can't reasonably cover them all.

One of the really neat things about OBIEE 11g is the enhancement of Answers+ to give it more of an "OLAP experience" that doesn't "flatten all the hierarchies."  They're also enhancing and optimizing the capabilities of Answers+ against Essbase.  Yes, it looks like Web Analysis really is dead.

He reiterated Kopcke's statement that Hyperion Smart View is Oracle's go forward product for Business Intelligence inside the Microsoft Office products.  He also stated that Hyperion Financial Reporting is Oracle's strategic direction for creating reports of an accounting nature.

Paul is saying so much interesting information that I'm having a hard time keeping up (and I type at 80-100 words per minute).  This is definitely the most helpful session so far.  I'm definitely not bored.  While a lot of this presentation is talking about what's currently released in Hyperion 11.1 and OBIEE 10.1.3.4, there is really good "our strategic direction for XYZ product is" information to be had.

Sadly, I have to duck out of the room now (it's about 12:20) to make it to my book signing at 12:30.  Thankfully, the bookstore is only about 100 yards from the room I'm in on the same floor.

11:03AM - EPM Management Excellence Think Tank

I just finished helping facilitate one of the two subgroups for the EPM think tank at the Westin St. Francis.  The attendance was outstanding.  There were 50+ companies there.  There were about 4 partners from the OAUG Hyperion SIG in attendance to help coordinate things.  There were also far more Oracle employees than I expected, but they were hosting the event, so I guess I'm not totally shocked.

Breakfast was put out for the attendees and it had an international flair to it.  Some of the stranger items included pickled eggplant and pickled eggs.  Some of the other things I couldn't even identify, but the people who got there earlier enough for the world-spanning buffet seemed to enjoy it.

The meeting kicked off with a brief introduction from Stephan Scholl who is over Oracle consulting for North America.  He then handed it of Gauthier Vasseur to lay the ground rules for the event.  He did a neat little magic trick with a bit of rope that turned hard when "everyone started collaborating."

They split everyone into two groups.  My group was in the "Study" room at the St. Francis Suite.  We had 30+ people in our room and I shared the facilitation with Oracle consulting honchos John Van Puffelen and Naren Truelove.

I can't go into the details of what we discussed, but I will say that our group was very forward looking.  We spent our time trying to stop looking backwards and imagine what the EPM world will look like going forward.  Almost everyone in the room participated and for the most part, we stuck to the mission (high-level creative thought) and stayed out of product details and gripes.

After the breakout sessions, everyone regrouped in the main room where John Kopcke was waiting to thank everyone for coming.  A professional photographer then came in to take a professional picture of all the attendees together in front of one of the many marble fireplaces.

I have to run now to Moscone North 2022 for a BI roadmap session.

6:03AM - My hotel room

I had to get up at 6AM so I can help setup the think tank.  Considering the time I got to bed, I'm not very happy about getting up this early.  I apologize in advance if my blog today is a bit grouchy.

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.

Kaleidoscope - June 21-25, 2009

For those of you who like to plan well in advance, ODTUG's Kaleidoscope conference will be held June 21-25, 2009 in Monterey, California at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Resort and Spa. The Hyperion track next year will be several times larger than this year (while doing their best to maintain the same level of quality as this year) so my advice is to make your hotel reservations now.

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.

Essbase 11 - Preview PDF

Thanks to the wonders of the Google gods, Sebastien Roux found a link (which he posted on Network54) to a 66-page preview of Essbase 11.1.1.0.0 (which I think cubegeek then downloaded and put on his site). The preview is in PDF format, and though slightly dated (for instance, it still mentions "Shelley" which was pulled as a code name from the next release), it's remarkably thorough.

It has a ton of screen prints (all of which cutely refer to "Hyperion 9.5"). It goes into enough detail to cover things like new environment variables and there are multiple slides on the new calc script functions which shows just how detailed it is. I particularly liked the slides with shots of the new Smart View Report Designer. There are slides on the new installer and life cycle management tools too.

Go here for the direct link to the PDF:
http://www.dwway.com/bbs/attachment.php?attachmentid=622

Based on some of the more technical content in the PDF, if I had to guess, I'd say this is probably a presentation from someone in the beta program and not one of the Hyperion 11 marketing PDFs floating around. The author (per properties in the file) is "yaoma" which means exactly nothing to me although I choose to believe that Yaoma is a rogue, hyper-intelligent Oracle spy with the looks of Keira Knightley and the attire of Trinity in the first Matrix movie. I also choose to believe that I look good in interRel polo shirts and khaki shorts, so it's possible my judgment is suspect.

I also heard that the newest pushed back release date (subject to change at a moment's whim compliments of Oracle) is July 10. I doubt there will even be a press release when it's made generally available, so make sure you check edelivery.oracle.com or just set up an RSS feed to this blog for further news.

[Update on July 3, 2008: Gary Crisci e-mailed me to say he's pretty sure that this PDF is from the "Hyperion Essbase - What's New, What's Coming" presentation that Aneel Shenker from Oracle delivered at Collaborate in April. I've met Aneel and while he's a nice guy, he's not exactly Keira Knightley.]

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.