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Copyright
©Copyright 2009, BI Consulting Group, LLC. All rights reserved. No part
of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording
or otherwise, without written permission from the authors.
BICG training materials are intended for the use of students who have
paid for and have attended BICG training. Please contact BICG for
information on receiving additional training materials:
http://www.bicguniversity.com
© 2009 BICG University1.2
Course WelcomeCourse Welcome
BI Consulting Group’s comprehensive
training program reflects the best practices
developed after more than 200
implementations of Oracle BI Enterprise Edition
(formerly Siebel Analytics). Our curriculum is
designed to not only provide a functional
understanding of the variety of Oracle BI and
data warehousing tools, it also provides a
wealth of advice, tips, and tricks designed to
fully take advantage of all aspects of OBIEE
before, during and after a project.
Welcome to BI Consulting Group’s “Introduction to Oracle Essbase” class!
© 2009 BICG University
before, during and after a project.
Our classes operate in an “immersion” environment, designed to allow the
student to become fully engaged in all aspects of the class curriculum
through a series of real world exercises. Unlike other training
organizations that use trainers who have never actually implemented the
software or built a data warehouse, BI Consulting Group taps into our
wealth of experienced consultants to act as trainers and mentors. The
best practices, tips and tricks developed by our team will allow you to
push your data warehouse, Oracle BI Enterprise Edition and Oracle
Essbase implementations to the limit.
Mike Jelen
[Vice President of BICG University]
651.403.6524
mike.jelen@biconsultinggroup.com
1.3
The Introduction to Oracle Essbase course is intended to
provide an overview of Oracle Essbase architecture,
functionality and how it is used to solve business
problems.
Topics Covered:
• Business Intelligence Pyramid
• Essbase Concepts
• Data Architecture
• Sample Outlines
• Cube Dimensions
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
© 2009 BICG University1.4
• Cube Dimensions
• BSO (block storage option) and
ASO (aggregate storage option)
• Oracle Essbase and OBIEE
• Oracle Essbase Top 10 List
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Oracle Essbase sits at the center of a business
intelligence pyramid.
Companies are very good at collecting transaction level
data. The challenge is to unlock this transactional data
and turn it into useful information.
Data from on-line transaction systems is loaded into
Oracle Essbase so users can make sense of it for
management reporting and analysis.
© 2009 BICG University
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Oracle Essbase is now a key component of the Oracle
Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition products.
• the industry-leading OLAP (online analytical
processing) server
• rapidly develop custom analytic and enterprise
performance management (EPM) applications
• quickly model complex business scenarios
© 2009 BICG University
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
For years, business managers and financial analysts have
been asking questions and thinking about the budgets, sales
data, and nearly every other piece of business information in
multidimensional terms. They might want to know how a
particular product sells in one market versus another. They
might want to know which customer actually nets them the
most profit. The multidimensional analysis capabilities of
Essbase makes it possible to do this kind of reporting.
Essbase is a multidimensional database application that lets
you continually analyze and compare aspects of your
business. An Essbase database:
© 2009 BICG University
• Works with multidimensional data
• Works with rollup hierarchies within dimensions
• Obtains data from other systems or can calculate new
data using formulas and calc scripts
• Deals with summarized data – not transactions
• Adapts to different reporting and analysis environments
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
With Essbase as your application development environment
you gain the following benefits:
• You can build multiple databases using the same tool
• Individual analytic applications are integrated
• Single environment for development, testing,
deployment, training
© 2009 BICG University
As shown above, Essbase users can “zoom in” and “zoom
out” to analyze data across all the potential combinations of
all available dimensions and attributes.
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Most Essbase users interact with the tool using
Microsoft Excel. This accounts for it’s popularity
among the spreadsheet user community.
© 2009 BICG University
There is an Excel Add-In that sits within the menu bar
which provides the user selection and interactivity.
There is also an SmartView Add-in which provides
more advanced capabilities for Excel to talk with
various Oracle EPM products.
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
The database outline is the key to understanding Essbase.
The outline contains the database organization (structure),
hierarchies, the database members, attributes and other
items (load rules, calc scripts, member formulas), as
shown below.
Dimensions
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Dimensions
Attributes
Attributes function in a similar way to dimensions
and describe characteristics of data (ie size, color)
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Here are another outline example.
Dimension Details
This cube was designed for
global inventory analysis.
© 2009 BICG University
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Here are yet another outline example. This cube was
designed for global sales analysis of a large consumer
products company.
Dimension Details
© 2009 BICG University
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
A typical Essbase production environment consists of
Outline
• Facilitates to organization of data into hierarchies
and dimension
• Easy to visualize
Load rules
• Facilitates loading and maintaining dimension
members
• Organizes data from multiple data sources
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Calculation scripts
• Facilitates top-down calculation capabilities across
dimensions
• Requires little coding
Reporting
• Uses Excel spreadsheet add-in
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Here is an example of how Essbase fits in to a corporate
data architecture.
• Data is typically sourced from a data warehouse but can
also come from Excel spreadsheets (via a “lock and send”
process).
• Data is loaded using load rules and stored in the cube
• Data is retrieved via Excel or report writing software.
© 2009 BICG University
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
There are two types of cubes that can be constructed:
1. Block Storage Option (BSO)
2. Aggregate Storage Option (AS0)
The key difference is that a BSO cube allows users to “lock
and send” data to the cube. This is useful for budgeting
and forecasting applications. Also, BSO cubes have more
functionality with complex calculation scripts. A downside of
BSO cubes is that they usually take longer to calculate than
ASO cubes.
ASO cubes load and aggregate data much faster than BSO
© 2009 BICG University
ASO cubes load and aggregate data much faster than BSO
cubes. They can also contain many more dimensions and
attributes without impacting performance. For this reason,
ASO cubes have grown in popularity among the Essbase
developer community.
A general guideline is that is your cube does not require
“lock and send” capabilities or complex calculations, then
use the ASO version.
In newer versions of Essbase (particularly 11.x), ASO cubes
the differences between ASO and BSO have been
narrowed.
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Oracle Essbase and OBIEE
• Beginning with OBIEE 10.1.3.3.2, Essbase (9.3.1 or
later ) is supported as an Oracle Business
Intelligence (OBI) Server data source.
• Can now expose Essbase data to a broad user
audience via OBIEE Answers, OBIEE Interactive
Dashboards, and OBIEE Delivers.
• Using the OBI Server repository, developers can
build business models that unite Essbase data
© 2009 BICG University
sources with sources supported by OBI Server.
• There is a lot of development going on to enhance
capabilities in future release of OBIEE Answers
(called “OBIEE Answers Plus”)!
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Oracle Business
OBIEE Answers
Oracle Essbase and OBIEE
OBIEE Answers can sit on top of Oracle Essbase to
provide browser based reporting. You can also combine
relational and Essbase multidimensional data in reports.
© 2009 BICG University
Essbase cube (version
9.3.1 or higher)
Oracle Business
Intelligence
Administration Tool
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Oracle Essbase and OBIEE
Essbase cube can be imported
to Physical layer of OBIEE.
Oracle BI “flattens out” the
Essbase multidimensional view
into a relational view (star
schema of dimensions and
facts).
Can recreate a Measures
hierarchy similar to Essbase.
© 2009 BICG University
hierarchy similar to Essbase.
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
OBIEE creates MDX queries against Essbase
Oracle Essbase and OBIEE
OBIEE “talks” to Essbase via MDX queries
• automatic for standard reports
• customize for enhanced reports (use the
“EVALUATE” function to call Essbase functions)
© 2009 BICG University
Essbase returns result set
OBIEE reformats the result set and presents
Thanks to http://oraclebizint.wordpress.com
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Oracle Essbase “Top 10” List
• Use the “Scenarios” dimension to select the type of
data you want (ie Budget, Actual, Forecast).
• Understand the user options. The Options command
enables you to select options for the active sheet and
customize the behavior of the Essbase Spreadsheet
Add-in software.
• Read the fine Essbase user manual. This well-written
pdf file is available with the Essbase client software
and will help a great deal.
© 2009 BICG University
and will help a great deal.
• Automate Essbase. You can write Excel macros that
will automatically perform Essbase actions.
• Join others. Tap into the global Essbase community
at various Oracle Essbase discussion boards and
blogs.
Introduction to Oracle EssbaseIntroduction to Oracle Essbase
Oracle Essbase “Top 10” List (continued)
6. For users, Excel is 90%, Essbase is 10% of usage.
Once you retrieve your data, you can update Excel
with graphs, formulas or reports.
7. Use specific dimensions or attributes if you need to
create a filter and focus on a specific intersection of
data.
8. Use the force, Luke. The Hyperion Essbase
Spreadsheet Add-In provides a convenient toolbar
that displays buttons for accessing most of the
© 2009 BICG University
that displays buttons for accessing most of the
common Essbase commands without having to open
the Essbase drop-down menu.
9. Suppress that data. You can suppress missing and
zero values from displaying in the worksheet.
10.Have fun. Essbase is your personal Rubik's cube of
global information on finance, sales, marketing, etc.