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?

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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?

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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

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An easy peasy no big deasy update of the OneStream license key

It’s expired, and not your parking meter

There I was, dreaming about this and that when I decided to go into Good Old OneStream to take a looky-loo at AVBS on my laptop install and I WAS SURPRISED BY THE FOOM!

Actually, nothing so dramatic. It was more like this:

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What, you mean these things expire? Yes, Cameron, yes, they do. Bummer.

No matter, as I am a consultant at a OneStream partner, all I need do is ask for a valid key and update away. Putting aside the fact that I’ve done this in the past and also putting aside the fact that I’ve completely forgotten how to perform said license key update, it was easy to do. On the chance that you share the same colossal memory/aversion to work/are generally as clueless as Yr. Obt. Svt. (surely not), I present to you the handful of steps required to do this.

NB – I am doing this on my consultant laptop. No (sane) OneStream customer would use something like this. Maybe, and I do mean maybe, this might be something for an on-premises customer; if you’ve a OneStream Azure hosted customer, OneStream Support will handle it all. I

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A Free Form Planning aka Essbase SaaS Journey — part 3, Think Small

Think Small

When I were a lad, VW Bugs (or Beetles – take your pick) were thick on the ground. My parents’ friends had them; my father drove one of these bad Squareback boys, picked up direct from the VW factory at Wolfsburg and a fine car till it caught on fire. Twice. In fact my grandmother drove a 1969 one in her favorite color – red. In the 1960s, small was beautiful. It still can be.

Small is definitely not one of these:

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It’s rather more like this:

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That’s history. What do I drive? I walk the automotive walk. Hmm, that’ s a bad analogy because the point of having a car is that one doesn’t have to walk but no matter. Here’s my lead sled:

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Yup, there it is in all its glory, parked right next to my favorite trailhead. I like to think that I’ve driven off road more than 98% of SUVs even if it’s just grass. I’m quite the reverse snob.

My so-called friends have deemed this really quite cheap, gets great mileage, and irredeemably geeky hatchback as: The Mustard Cruiser, The Short Bus, and most cruelly, The Dorkmobile. All true,

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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

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

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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.

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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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OneStream Security Remover or how I learnt to love MarketPlace

Will no one rid me of this turbulent security?

No Archbishop of Canterbury will be put to sword in this blog post but what will be expunged is security that no one wants (heh, sort of like the TSA).

I recently imported an application into my local copy of OneStream and…

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What went FOOM!?

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And in a little more detail:

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Bugger, there’s a security group named “S_ACT_READ” assigned to a member on a dimension as a read data group and I don’t have said group on my install of OneStream. I could add it as a security group but that would almost certainly be repeated many times as the import process hit the rows in the dimension import file that have security – not my idea of fun or I imagine anyone else. I could also go into the dimension XML and find it, figure out the open and close of the XML node, and then delete the security assignment it but I’d have to do that across all dimensions, Cube Views, etc. that have any kind of security – also not my idea of fun. Bummer.

Marketplace

Or, I could remember that OneStream has a nifty utility that

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How hard could this possibly be or upgrading to 5.2

How hard could this possibly be?

Those who know me – a vanishingly small group, becoming smaller day by day – know that I can barely spell “infrastructure”. It simply isn’t my métier and because of that, I dread any shape, manner, or form of installation. Also, I suck at it.

But, needs must when the Devil drives and as noted by Yr. Obt. Svt., OneStream 5.2 is upon us. As I have 5.1 (installed, yes, but with my Younger Taller and OMG Smarter And Subjectively (eh, quite likely) Better Looking Brother From Completely Different Parents as guide), it is time to grasp the nettle and upgrade my instance all by my lonesome.

Join me, won’t you?

NB – This is not any kind of install a customer should do. Ever. And you could really just read the docs (how on earth do you think I’m doing this?) but if an infrastructure incompetent can do it, surely you can too so enjoy the madness.

It’s just one page, so really how could this possibly be hard?

Yep, just the one page in the install doc:

  1. Install Application Servers
  2. Install Web Servers
  3. Create Database Schemas and Connection Strings
  4. Configure
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OneStream 5.2’s big tenth

Yr. Obt. Svt.’s Take

OneStream XF 5.2 (henceforth plain old 5.2) is both awesome and odd.

Let’s get the odd out of the way as it’s just my opinion: this should have been version 6.0, not 5.2; there’s an awful lot of stuff here, much of it a huge extension of the product. Why something with roughly five new and frankly huge features isn’t worthy of a more exciting description than a dot release is beyond this geek’s ken and is a mystery best answered by inscrutable marketers and product managers.

Whatever the reason – possibly because it’s the product of Midwestern modesty – what 5.2 brings to the table is just enormous. Here are the highlights:

  • BI Blend
  • BI Viewer and Dashboards
  • Pivot Grid (Standard and Large)
  • Table Views
  • REST API

We’re talking new UI components (big ones including a new dashboarding feature), new engines (Merciful Creator, again, how can this be a dot release?), new connections, a new API, and a bunch of other features. This is a big, big, big release. This blog post can only cover the highlights – subsequent posts will try to review each feature in turn.

With that, let’s begin looking at these

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