Oracle OpenWorld - My Tentative Hyperion Schedule

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I would be blogging throughout each day of Oracle OpenWorld 2008 (OOW, to her 40,000+ friends).  I've been looking at my schedule and it's, to put it mildly, ugly.  While there are those who knock OOW for being too much marketing with too little information, no one can ever say it's not busy.  For quick reference, here's the Oracle PDF mentioning all the EPM sessions and events they're aware of at OOW:

http://www.oracle.com/openworld/2008/focuson/enterprise-perfomance-managment-bi.pdf

For the most part, I can share my schedule with all of you.  There are a couple of private meetings (hey, what's a conference in San Francisco without a few private meetings?) but here's the bulk of my schedule (all times Pacific).  Yes, I know some of these events overlap, so I'll be darting back and forth in a few cases:

Sunday

• 10AM-4PM, Oracle ACE Director Product Briefing (Hilton Union Square, room 23/24).  This is where they share with all the Oracle ACE Directors the plans Oracle has for the upcoming year.  While I will blog what this event is like, I sadly can't comment on a lot of the actual information they'll be conveying here due to non-disclosure agreements.  I'll relay as much as I can without getting sued.  I have to leave the briefing early a little before 1PM to go to...
• 1-4:30PM, ODTUG Hyperion Symposium (Moscone West, room 3016).  There are actually 3 presentations on Hyperion during this period.  I'm delivering the first one from 1-2PM, "How Essbase Thinks."  It's going to be different than my usual "How Essbase Thinks" presentation because I'm going to do a lot of talking about the underpinnings of ASO (Aggregate Storage) in addition to the more traditional BSO (Block Storage).  Sean Bernhoit is giving a presentation from 2-3PM on how to pick which Hyperion reporting tool to use and then Mark Rittman is talking from 3:30-4:30PM about integrating OBIEE and Essbase.
• 2-4:15PM, OAUG Hyperion SIG (Moscone West, room 3022).  From 2-3:30PM, they're mostly going to be talking about the progress of integrating the regional HUG (Hyperion User Groups) into OAUG Hyperion SIG.  Since I'm the Essbase co-domain lead for their group, I'm feeling obligated to attend for at least part of the time.  I'm hoping that they're going to hold elections for board positions on the Hyperion SIG, but I'm not holding my breath.  At 3:30PM, Sean Bernhoit will be giving a presentation on best practices in EPM, and then the OAUG folks are coming down the hall to hang out with the ODTUG folks at...
• 4:30-5:30PM, John Kopcke on Oracle's EPM Vision (Moscone West, room 3016).  Kopcke, SVP of EPM for Oracle, will be talking on "Extending Operational Excellence to Management Excellence: Oracle’s Vision for EPM."  This presentation is being joint sponsored by ODTUG and OAUG which makes for a nice opportunity to get the two largest Hyperion user group communities together.  I'll probably say a few words first and then let Ed Delise (president of the OAUG Hyperion SIG) actually be the one to introduce Kopcke.
• 7:00-8:30PM, Oracle Titan Awards (Hilton Union Square, Grand Ballroom B).  Oracle will be giving away awards for "Partner of the Year" in 17 different categories.  We're nominated in a few of the categories (like Industry Solution and EPM Solution), but we have a snowball's chance in hell of winning.  These awards normally go to huge, multi-national conglomerates like Deloitte, IBM, and PWC with marketing departments larger than our entire company.  We'll show up on the off chance that Hell is having a really cold day, and as they say at the Oscars right after losing, "it's an honor just to be nominated."  Besides, there's free food and an open bar.
• 8:30-9:30PM, Welcome Reception (Howard Street Tent and Yerba Buena Gardens).  This actually starts a while earlier, but we'll be at the Titan Awards enjoying the previously mentioned free food and open bar until 8:30.  As soon as we can, however, we'll move over to the welcome reception for a totally different open bar and free food.

Monday

• 8:30-11AM, Charles Phillips Opening Keynote (Moscone North, Hall D).  According to the description, we'll be hearing about the following: "The power of Oracle's complete, open, and integrated product portfolio is bringing more value to enterprises than ever before. Oracle executives Charles Phillips and Chuck Rozwat provide fresh insight into Oracle's strategy and highlight the latest innovations in Oracle products in Monday's Oracle OpenWorld keynote."  I will use this time to catch up on my blogging from Sunday.
  
• 11:30AM-12:45PM, General Session: Applications (Moscone North, Hall D).  This is a chance to hear Ed Abbo talk about the future of Oracle applications.  I'm sitting through this one on the off-chance that they say something, anything, about the Hyperion applications.  I will most likely use this time for testing out the new Google Chrome browser.
• 1-2PM, Kopcke Presents Oracle's EPM System (Moscone West, room 2011).  John Kopcke will be giving an overview of Oracle EPM.  It's probably the same stuff I've seen hundreds of times before, but you never know.
• 2:30-3:45PM, General Session: Middleware (Moscone North, Hall D).  Thomas Kurian, Oracle's SVP of Fusion Middleware, will be giving an overview of the middleware product strategy.  Since technically, this is where Hyperion fits (Essbase, in particular), I'm hoping for some late-breaking Hyperion news.
• 5:30-8:30PM, Client Appreciation Party (Annabelle's @ 34 4th Str).  We're hosting a joint cocktail party with Star Analytics and Applied OLAP.  They're two partners of interRel and all three of us are hosting a joint reception for our current (and prospective clients).  If you're an interRel client (or you'd like to be!), send an e-mail to info(at)interrel.com and we'll send you an invitation to the party.  It'll be the most fun you've ever had and remained conscious (quote from the movie, Popeye, in case you're curious).  

Tuesday

• 11:30AM-12:30PM, BI Roadmap and Strategy (Moscone West, room 2022).  I'm hoping for the strategic direction on several of the OBIEE+ products.
• 12:30-1PM, Book Signing of "Look Smarter Than You Are with Essbase" (Moscone West, 2nd Floor Bookstore).  The kind people running the Oracle bookstore at OOW have decided to take pity on this poor, starving author by hosting a book signing for my two System 9 books.  Hopefully, there will be some people who want me to deface their brand-new copies of my books with my chicken-scratch scrawl I call a signature.  If not, I can surf the web on my new iPhone 3G while pretending I'm checking my calendar for the rest of the day.
• 1-2PM, What's New in Scorecard (Moscone West, room 3020).  Right now, Oracle makes 3 or 4 different scorecarding products.  I'm curious which one will be the strategic direction for Oracle going forward.
• 2-4:30PM, Thomas Kurian Keynote (Moscone North, Hall D).  This is the second major session in Hall D presented by Thomas Kurian.  Maybe this one will give us late breaking Fusion news if the one on Monday doesn't.  Maybe pigs will sprout wings and fly around Moscone North, Hall D.  You just never know.
• 5-6PM, Kopcke on Oracle OLAP vs. Essbase (Marriott, Salon 9).  Kopcke is going to tell all the people present when to use Oracle OLAP and when to use Essbase.  This should be fun.
• 6-8PM, OAUG Hyperion SIG Cocktail Reception (Grand Hyatt, Bay View Room).  This is a joint reception put on by OAUG Hyperion SIG, Oracle, and 8 Hyperion partners where there's sure to be free food and an open bar.  While it sounds like it might be interesting since it's the only official "Hyperion reception" at OOW, I will only be there for a few minutes, because I have to skedaddle over to...
• 6:30-8PM, Oracle Excellence Awards (Westin St. Francis, Oak Room).  While the Oracle Titan Awards are for partners, the Oracle Excellence Awards are for customers.  One of our biggest clients in the Northeastern United States is nominated, so we're showing up to cheer for them if they win.  If they don't, there's still free food and open bar (like every good event at OOW).

Wednesday

• 9-10AM, What's New in OBIEE Answers (Marriott, Golden Gate A2).  Answers looks like it might be the long-term replacement for Hyperion Web Analysis, so it's a good idea to find out the Answers roadmap.
• 1-2PM, Roske on Essbase Tuning: Optimizing Outlines (Moscone West, room 3024).  This is my presentation on how to optimize Essbase outlines.  Considering this is a fairly technical presentation and most of the OOW crowd is not that into technical presentations, I suspect that there will be plenty of available seating at this session.
• 2-4:30PM, Ellison Keynote (Moscone North, Hall D).  This is generally one of the more interesting sessions of the conference.  Larry's quite fun to listen to and he usually brings a few guests with him to keep things entertaining.
• 8PM-Midnight, Final Night Party (Treasure Island).  Supposedly, they're going to be recreating a world's fair on Treasure Island out in the middle of the bay.  There should be plenty of singing (UB40!), and - say it with me - free food and open bar.  I will have to get to bed early, though, because I have two presentations on Thursday.  Who schedules presentations on Thursday?  Masochists.

Thursday

• 11:30AM-12:30PM, What's New in Essbase (Marriott, Salon 12/13).  Al Marciante's heading up this one.  I expect that most of the information will have already been covered (and blogged here) during Kaleidoscope 2008, but you never know.
• 12-1PM, Roske and XTO on Smart View (Moscone West, room 3022).  I'm doing this presentation with XTO Energy and it should be much more suited to the OOW crowd than my last one.  It's about better ways to use Smart View and it includes some significant coverage of the new Smart View 11x features (of which there are many).
• 1:30-2:30PM, Roske on Tips & Tricks for Hyperion Planning (Moscone West, room 3024).  In this one, I'll be giving tips on better ways to use Hyperion Planning.  According to the schedule there are only 3 or 4 presentations on Hyperion at this time.  Why then are 2 of them about Hyperion Planning?  Bad planning, I say.
• 3-4PM, What's New in Web Analysis and Financial Reporting (Marriott, Salon 12/13).  This one should be interesting if for no other reason than because there are rumors floating around about the potential demise of Web Analysis and/or Financial Reporting.  Will they be telling us that's "What's New" is that XYZ product is about to leave this mortal coil?
• 4-whenever, Catch Up (hotel room).  I don't fly out until Friday morning, so if I fall behind during the week (which should only happen when my laptop battery dies or my brain battery runs low), this is my chance to catch up on my blogging and e-mail.  If I'm all caught up, I might get a couple of minutes of SanFran sight seeing in.  There's some big golden bridge around here somewhere, I'm sure.

If you're going to OOW and you're feeling really lazy, I guess you could join me at all the events above.  This saves you the trouble of having to come up with any original agenda of your own.  That said, there are probably lots of more interesting things than those above.  If you know of any, please feel free to comment on this post with your suggestions.  My schedule is at your command.

Live Blogging Oracle OpenWorld from a Hyperion Standpoint

I've gotten several e-mails in the last few days about Oracle OpenWorld.  They tend to go like this:

Hey, Edward!  It's been too long.  You haven't posted anything since Hyperion 11x came out.  Been too busy trying to workaround all the bugs in the new version?  ROTFLOL.

In all seriousness, I was writing to ask if you're going to OpenWorld?  I'm not.  If you're going, can you do me a favor and write about every single interesting thing you come across while you're there?  That way, I can learn through you and save my money for [Kaleidoscope or Collaborate].

I really appreciate all that you do, and if you're too busy to post every day of OpenWorld, I understand, but I will no longer respect you.

Your friend,
[Someone I've never heard of]

Now it's important to me to be respected by those I don't know since people who've met me have 0% chance of respecting me.  So let me say that yes, I will be going to Oracle OpenWorld 2008, and yes, I will be live blogging throughout the conference.  This means that I will not only be posting every single day, I will be submitting posts through the wonders of AT&T 3G from my laptop several times each day too.  While this is not terribly unique since there are at least 100 other people blogging OOW, it's worth pointing out that I'm one of fewer than three people that I know that plans on doing so solely from the perspective of Hyperion (or Essbase or EPM Fusion Edition or whatever cute name we're supposed to be calling the former Hyperion Solutions today).

To help you follow the daily tribulations of OOW, bookmark this link which will take you right to my OpenWorld postings throughout the conference (this way, you skip my many postings about what my cat caught last night out behind the woodshed and then dragged into my kitchen to show me):

http://looksmarter.blogspot.com/search/label/OpenWorld

In the next couple of days, I'll be posting the events that I plan to attend at OOW (including a presentation or two that I'll be delivering).  If you want to offer suggestions for things for me to go to on your behalf (so you won't have to), feel free to comment on this post.  I'm totally open for new ideas (saving me from having to come up with any of my own).

If you are actually attending OOW, there is a nice PDF that Oracle's put together that describes all the EPM-related content.  They did miss a couple of key events - like the ODTUG Hyperion Symposium on Sunday from 1-4:30 and Kopcke's Keynote from 4:30-5:30 - but it's definitely a great start:

http://www.oracle.com/openworld/2008/focuson/enterprise-perfomance-managment-bi.pdf

Speaking of the ODTUG Hyperion Symposium on Sunday, both that and the Kopcke keynote "Extending Operational Excellence to Management Excellence: Oracle’s Vision for EPM" are in Moscone West room 3016.  I'll be chairing the symposium, so if you want to come by and say hello (or more likely, throw things at me like, say, $100 bills), stop by room 3016 a little before 1PM on Sunday.

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.