A Free Form Planing aka Essbase SaaS Journey — part 5, POV You’re Clear Out of Smart View

POV, you’re clear out of Smart View, When I am not looking at you

I analyze out of this world, The data that no mortal ever knew

Essbase SaaS otherwise known as Free Form Planning has largely, although not completely (I don’t actually know what the gap is – ask Oracle but I do know it’s getting smaller), come to Smart View parity with native Essbase connections. There is one glaring exception – that damnable, horrific, hard to use, and I-just-hate-it floating POV, viz.

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Evil. Hateful. Accursed. Also, I don’t like it. It has been part of the Planning data connection seemingly forever and I’ve disliked it just as long. In the on-premises world it’s easy to get round by using the Essbase data connection in Smart View but that isn’t an option in Planning Cloud.

But what if there was a fix to this and it’s OMG-easy? Actually, the OMG part consists of me not knowing it and Planning’s Product Manager maintaining his patience when he told me it’s been there for almost a year. He is a better man than I.

You’re right out of my Excel book, The financial plan I read last night at five

No

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?

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

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?

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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

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

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

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