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

OpenWorld 2019, live blog, part the zeroeth and first

Zero? One?

Every good(ish) geek knows the difference between zero and one based numbering systems. Said geek also knows that Powers That Be flip between them, seemingly arbitrarily. When I want to fool mathheads/real programmers, I use a zero-based convention. When I interact with normies, I use one.

Said geek also knows that different conversations and contexts seem to drive usage in a seemingly arbitrary way. I flip between the two contextually:  when I want to fool mathheads/real programmers into thinking I have a brain, I use a zero-based convention. When I interact with normies, I use one as my starting point.

In this case, I’m using both. Unpossible! In fact all of this falderal means is that I’m combining yesterday’s pretty-much-arrive-in-San-Francisco-at-OpenWorld and EPM partner meeting with an ongoing live stream today and, with luck, every day.

I can’t tell you much (actually, nothing) about yesterday’s partner meeting, but I can share with you this list of sessions Oracle recommended to us. Also, as a bonus you get the top of someone’s head. Lucky whoever that may be.

Many of these sessions are already full, but if not and you’re at OOW, check them out.

I’ve got to go

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

A n00b’s OneStream Journey No. 3 — OneStream XF Relational Blending 101, part 1

Introduction

This post is proof that my quite meager salesmanship skills are sometimes successful in convincing others to do my work. This time round, that means that my colleague Mike Gialanella agreed to write a guest post on XF’s relational blending. Thanks, Mike, for giving me the week off. And oh yeah, Gentle Reader, you too should thank Mike for writing about a really exciting and unique tool bit of functionality.

And with that, heeeeeerrrreeee’s Mike.

XF Relational Blending 101

When Cameron Lackpour asks you to write a guest blog post, the answer is yes. It is one of those things that you just can’t say no to. If Santa Claus asked you to deliver Christmas presents to kids-in-need, you would need an incredibly good reason to decline such a request.

XF networking event Nov 2017. Me on the right, Santa on the left.

So, for all you technical and finance experts that are attracted to Cameron’s wit and wisdom this blog, here’s my best-most-humble effort to deliver, by request of the man Cameron himself…. here you go:

OneStream XF is a unified SmartCPMTM platform solution, it is not a siloed set of solutions that are fused together.