A Free Form Planning aka Essbase SaaS Journey — part 4, Gonna Build An Outline

Gonna build an outline, from a little file

I’ve shown how easy it is to build an Essbase SaaS database from an existing outline .otl file. Read about my glorious experiences doing just that (and using LCM as well) here.

That’s all well and good but what if I want to do something other than migrating an outline? I thought at first that I’d have to create the smallest Essbase outline in the world ever and then import that, adding dimensions as required. Ugh. Regardless of the ugh, the ick, and the yuck, I wrote about just that approach.

I should have been more patient, because now Essbase SaaS (Have you noted that I call this product what it is – Essbase as a Service? You should.) can load from dimension files. Patience is a virtue but he who hesitates (or wants to write about something most ricky tick) is lost. I suppose that means that I am without virtue because I don’t hesitate to act before knowledge mysteriously comes my way. It was ever thus with Yr. Obt. Svt. But no matter, onwards.

Gonna build an outline, at least I hope I will

I have a

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Stupid Programming Tricks No. 31 — Have you ever created a Unicode Planning application?

Don’t. Don’t do it.

Or at least don’t if you work in a Latin character country like the Good Ol’ U-S-of-A. And it ain’t Unicode, not really, but instead it’s UTF-8. Yr. Obt. Svt. is not going to try to even attempt to explain what UTF-8 is and instead suggests that you enjoy Joel On Software’s explanation. I encourage you to Read The Whole Thing.™ as any blog post that goes into high- and low-endian byte orders has to be good. At least I think so but perhaps I need to get a life. Don’t be intimidated (or bored beyond description) – he really did write an excellent article and I think I almost understand it. Almost.

A note: Planning cloud applications are all Unicode but this is an on-premises tale, even in 2020.

Safely ensconced in the on-premises world (which isn’t going away any time soon I might note), why shouldn’t you create a (not-really) Unicode application? Because this when one tries to import Essbase data (this is on-premises) from a not-really Unicode application to a plain old “normal” one. Bugger. But why?

Test was created in Unicode, Development and Production were not. Of course. So when it

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Kscope20 presentations come in threes

Good things come in threes?

Just what are the brilliant creations of Hergé doing in an EPM/CPM blog about ODTUG’s Kscope20?

While you are all, I trust, ardent fans of Captain Haddock, Tintin, and Snowy just as I am, I am not suggesting that Kscope20 has become a place to meet, discuss, and learn all about what are surely the greatest fictional Belgians outside of Hercule Poirot. Wait. That would actually be awesome. Beyond awesome. But alas, no. Tintinology is not within the scope of what is after all surely The Greatest of All Oracle Conferences. Perhaps it should be in future? But I digress.

Why the triumvirate? Does putting this sketch in his blog mean that Yr. Obt. & Hmbl. Svt. finally has a chance to get that Masters in literary criticism he really ought to get via Hergé’s oeuvre? No. Thankfully. Probably. Most especially for me. Instead, the above reflects friendship. Tintin and his chums travel the world, getting into one scrape after another, fighting evil, righting wrongs, and generally doing Great Things including fighting Bolshevism, breaking international opium rings, restoring rightful governments in the face of fascist usurpers (this one is my favorite, probably

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A Free Form Planning aka Essbase SaaS Journey — part 2, loading from LCM

Whoopsie

In my last exciting post, I stated:

Whoopsie, that’s not right. Bugger. Why? ‘Cos my Younger Taller Smarter and Definitely Better Looking Brother From Totally Different Parents noted:

Whoopsie. That’s usage of that word three times (so far). Surely some kind of record in a technical blog?

It’s up to you decide which is the bigger whoopsie: me getting it wrong or Celvin reading LinkedIn on vacation. Celvin, buddy, if you’re commenting on my many technical (and otherwise, frankly) mistakes, errors, and own goals, surely that can wait for your return to the grindstone?

My mea culpas aside, let’s see what happens when I load Sample.Basic from an LCM file. I’m not going to do this step by step as you’ve already hopefully read that bit.

Let’s look at that LCM file again

Data

A screenshot of a computer

Description automatically generated

Ooooh, in addition the outline file, there’s something called Data. Let’s open that up:

A screenshot of a cell phone

Description automatically generated

Oooh, again. That’s all of the data. See the fourth row from the bottom and the “100”? That’s a product total. LCM doesn’t export the PAG/IND files (apparently at one time it did per Celvin and I sort of remember that) but instead text, I believe because it can be

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A Free Form Planning aka Essbase SaaS — part 1, creating an app

Essbase as διαχείριση επιδόσεων των επιχειρήσεων or Essbase as τη βάση δεδομένων?

Free Form Planning as a product name? Really? Yeah. No. Free Form Planning is really Essbase SaaS. I don’t think Oracle’s EPM product management team cast themselves as Greeks seeking to enter the city state of Troy through subterfuge, but make no mistake: Free Form Planning is Essbase, it is Software as a Service, and it is an application option within the Enterprise EPM product sku that you really, really, really ought to look at.

Most definitely not the Oracle EPM product management and development teams. Maybe.

Don’t believe me? This post is but the first of a multipart series on Free Form Planning as I make my case for FFP (I am so over writing the full name, cf. my well-known laziness and also remember this is really Essbase).

Before I document this first pass at creating an Essbase SaaS aka FFP application, I should note that the below is not the only way to create an application and it has twists and turns. As noted, this will be a series of posts on how this works.

With that, let’s create the app.

You’ve Got Possibilities

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My take on OGB Appreciation Day: An Essbase Hacker’s POV

“Smart boy, doesn’t follow instructions, must try harder”

Pretty much every teacher I ~~tortured with my intransigence and folly~~ gladly received tutelage from as a wee lad noted that while I had a certain level of base intelligence, (note that I didn’t use words like, “overmuch”, “gratifyingly high”, or even just, “barely adequate for the purpose at hand”) I really, really, really wasn’t terribly good at following instructions. It’s a skill that alas seems to be forever beyond my reach. And still is, as you’ll soon see.

Tim Hall, aka OracleBase, (Oracle-Base? Dunno.) organizes OGB (Oracle Groundbreakers) Appreciation Day as a way to thank all of the people in the Oracle community that have helped others. In my (OMG, surely it isn’t possible if you follow the corporate ownership path of Essbase) 25 years in the Oracle space I have: helped some, been helped by many, and confounded and confused just about everyone I’ve crossed paths with.

Tim has suggested the following potential topics:

My favourite feature of {the Oracle-related tech you work on}.
What is the next thing on your list to learn.
Horror stories. My biggest screw up, and how I fixed it.
How the

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OpenWorld 2019, day 4, but in fact not even then

Why do I even bother?

At the beginning of conferences I am filled with fresh will and enthusiasm, sure that this time I really and truly will keep you, Gentle Reader, as informed as informed can be when it comes to this conference; any conference really. And I don’t. Ah, a man’s reach must exceed his grasp else what’s a heaven for?

Having firmly established the fact that I am either a fool (almost certainly), unreliable (the evidence speaks for itself), or simply unduly optimistic in my estimation of how hard I’m really going to try to do this (this is what I choose to believe although I think there’s something about the road to Hell and pavement in the form of good intentions), and before I get to the main plate of delicious geeky information, allow me to give you some impressions of what OpenWorld was like this year. And oh yeah, day four of the conference finds me on an aeroplane on the way back to the Right Coast, so all of the cool EPM stuff that Oracle cruelly scheduled for Thursday – missed the whole thing. Argh. Disirregardless of my poor timing (next year I’ll stay through

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Kscope19 live blog, so many days after the conference it can’t really be called live

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: late

I plead a vacation, freedom from technology, and a healthy-ish communion with dirt, or in other words: tent camping. It was great, thanks for asking. And oh yeah, I’m on doxycycline, thank you .

And with that mea culpa, let’s jump right into Kscope19 and its import

I’ve been out of the Oracle world for the last two years to it’s all been a bit overwhelming as I try to catch up with lo the many new announcements. To wit, Oracle really seem to have their act together for the first time in quite a while.

By that I mean that there’s been a concerted effort to take the multiple SaaS products that make up the Oracle EPM product suite and combine them into a single offering. I am by no means an expert in product pricing (There are those, perhaps quite rightly, who believe that I am by no means an expert in anything – who can argue with such logic given abundant supporting evidence?) but it seems to me that a move away from EPM a la carte pricing on a product by product basis to a broader enterprise license is

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