Hyperion Essbase Hybrid Analysis with SQL Server and Integration of Hyperion Essbase with OBIEE

Tejesh Kumar Nageti, Application Developer Employee ID: 1802094, Short Id: tnageti Project: DIAGEO, TCG & CENR, CSC. Hyderabad.

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to demonstrate Hyperion Essbase Hybrid Analysis using SQL Server as a database and then to show how Hyperion Essbase can be integrated in to Oracle OLAP (OBIEE). I took well defined sample of data which resembles the real time scenario and demonstrated step by step process to achieve the stated objective. This paper is organized in to five sections, first being introduction to commonly used terminology in Oracle Essbase, OBIEE and in the second section will concentrate on the installation of all the software that are required to support the Analysis. Third section completely devoted for Hybrid Analysis. Fourth section will cover the Integration of the Oracle Essbase with OBIEE and fifth section dedicated for discussion and conclusion. Terminology Due to diversity in the terminology, when it comes to Essbase, OLAP and Hybrid Analysis, here is the short list of definitions and terminology for this paper Cube: Cube consists of numeric facts called measures which are categorized by dimensions. Multi-dimensionality: Is variation of the relational model that uses multidimensional structures to Organize data and express the relationships between data. Data Warehouse: A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, time variant, non volatile collection of data in support of management's decision making process Outline: Gives information about structural relationships between members in an Essbase database and defines the consolidations and mathematical relationships between items. Dimensions: A dimension identifies a major perspective of a business data set. Hierarchies: Dimensions are usually structured to contain a hierarchy of related members Fact: A fact table holds the metrics for a business data set. Star Schema: A model where Fact table(s) is surrounded by many Dimension tables. Business intelligence (BI): Refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data. OLTP: Online Transaction Processing refers to a class of systems that facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications, typically for data entry and retrieval transaction processing. OLAP: Online Analytical Processing is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries. Essbase: Extended Spread Sheet database EAS: Essbase Admin Services is Essbase Administrative interface. Consists of four major components. The Outline Editor, Load Rule Editor, Calc Script Editor, and the Report Script Editor. Additional menu items allow Server, Application, database, and Security Settings to be changed. EIS: Essbase Integration Services has a graphical interface which acts as bridge between the relational database and Essbase. Drill-Down: refers to the ability to drill down a dimension(s) whether it is an OLAP or Hybrid part of the cube. Drill Through: Report refers to the ability to access additional data (outside of the current defined analysis) for a cell in an OLAP or Hybrid part of the cube. A Drill -Through Report is a predefined report which will filter on the cross-section of cell. OBIEE: Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition ODBC: Open Database Connectivity enable Essbase Integration server to access relational database and Essbase Analytic Services will require an ODBC data source DSN definition. Slice and Dice: Aability to view the data from virtually any perspective. 1) Introduction: I) OLAP and need for OLAP OLAP uses a multidimensional approach to organize and analyze business data. By storing data in highly optimized structures, so that businesses can very quickly explore the data. An effective OLAP solution solves problems for both business users and IT departments. For business users, it enables fast and spontaneous access to centralized data and related calculations for the purposes of analysis and reporting. For IT, an OLAP solution enhances a data warehouse or other relational

database with aggregate data and business calculations. In addition, by enabling business users to do their own analyses and reporting, another notable difference is OLAP's ability to drill-down to the lowest level of granularity with ease. Finally, the ability to calculate large amounts of data on the fly gives users a superior advantage over traditional applications with relational databases when it comes to "what if" and "cause-and-effect" data analysis and reporting. In OLAP data is organized into dimensions, where a dimension reflects how business users typically think of the business. For example, business users may view their data by product, by market, and over time. Each of these is a dimension in an OLAP application. One reason OLAP systems are so fast is that they pre aggregate values that would need to be computed on the fly in a traditional relational database system. II) Types of OLAP: There are mainly three types of OLAPs Multidimensional OLAP: With multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP), the data is stored in a multidimensional data store. Both Essbase and Oracle OLAP use MOLAP technology. Essbase stores data in a multidimensional database. Oracle OLAP cubes are multidimensional objects stored in the Oracle Database. Relational OLAP: Relational OLAP (ROLAP) uses a traditional star/snowflake schema and relational data sources only. With ROLAP, data is neither aggregated nor manipulated. The data is stored in relational tables that can be queried by SQL. Hybrid OLAP: With hybrid OLAP (HOLAP), the data is stored both in an OLAP data store and a relational database. For example, you may have summary-level data stored in the OLAP data store and detailed data stored in the relational database. You could then drill down from the OLAP data store to the detail stored in the relational database. One new extension of HOLAP is called extended OLAP (XOLAP). With XOLAP, you can model metadata such as database outlines and hierarchies in the MOLAP product; however, the data comes from relational sources. Essbase supports XOLAP. III) Hyperion Essbase : The strategy of Essbase centers on custom analytics and BI applications with a focus on EPM. This strategy addresses the what-if, modeling, and future-oriented questions that companies need answered today in order to see into the future. Essbase applications are started and maintained by business analysts and the typical end users are line-of-business users, such as analysts in the finance, marketing, and sales departments, who query and create data with Essbase tools and Oracle Hyperion applications. Essbase is the OLAP server that provides an environment for rapidly developing custom analytic and EPM applications. The data management strategy allows Essbase to easily combine data from a wide variety of data sources. ODBC connectivity to all major RDBMS, plus SAP B/W. Adds a fully-featured OLAP server, separate to the database, as part of the Fusion Middleware family of products. Oracle Essbase is used to power many of the Hyperion performance management applications. Supports MDX and XML/A rather than SQL access IV) Oracle OLAP: A summary management solution for SQL-based business intelligence applications. An alternative to table-based materialized views, offering improved query performance and fast, incremental updates. It has fully-featured multidimensional OLAP server and gives excellent query performance for ad-hoc and unpredictable queries. Enhances the analytic content of business intelligence applications through new calculation capabilities Fast, incremental updates of data sets. Oracle OLAP is available as an option to the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. As an embedded component of the Oracle Database, Oracle OLAP benefits from the scalability, high availability, job scheduling, parallel processing, and security features inherent in the Oracle Database. With Oracle OLAP, all of the data resides in an Oracle database, governed by centralized data security and calculation rules. V) OBIEE: Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition is a comprehensive business intelligence platform that delivers a full range of analytic and reporting capabilities. Designed for scalability,

reliability, and performance, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g delivers contextual, relevant and actionable insight to everyone in an organization, resulting in improved decision-making, better-informed actions, and more efficient business processes. Oracle also provides the industrys only multi-sourced BI applications, as well as market-leading performance management applications that are powered by this BI platform. 2) Installation Overview and configuration We need following components as prerequisites to do Hybrid Analysis and work with OBIEE. Here I am using Hyperion Essbase 9.3.1 and SQL server 2005 express edition(just to serve as a relational database) for our Hybrid analysis. OBIEE 10.1.3.3.1 is used for integrating Hyperion Essbase 9.3.1. Hyperion Essbase 9.3.1 got 4 major components and they should be installed and configured. But for our Analysis it is not mandatory to install and configure first component(i,e Essbase Shared Services) Essbase Shared Services 9.3.1 which provides a central location within the Hyperion EPM suite from which to manage users, user security and to assist with application lifecycle development and task flow management. Essbase Analytics Server 9.3.1 is responsible for all Essbase application components, including database outlines and calculation scripts etc., application control, and multidimensional database information, reside on a server. Essbase Admin Services 9.3.1 which is the administration tool used to manage Essbase databases. Administrators can manage multiple Essbase databases, applications, users, scripts, and other objects across multiples servers from the single user interface. Essbase Integration Services 9.3.1 which is responsible for graphical tool used to enable the creation of an Essbase OLAP analysis model directly from the tables, views, and columns of relational databases. All the above components can be downloaded from edelivery.oracle.com site. We need to install dot net frame work 3.5 as pre request for installing SQL server 2005 and then we will install SQL Server2005. Here we are using SQL server 2005 as a transactional database and repository to store the metadata. We are using OBIEE 10.3.1 which has got the ability to integrate and share the data between Oracle Essbase and Oracle BI. Assuming that all the softwares discussed above are ready in hand, lets start with SQL Server 2005 I) SQL Server 2005: We have to install dot net 3.5(From the bootable XP CD or any other means) before we go ahead with SQL Server2005 installation. Launch the SQLEXPR.exe from the location where it is saved. When prompted for the security credentials select mixed mode authentication and create a user account name with hypuser. Launch the SQLServer2005_SSMSEE.msi executable from the location where it is saved by double clicking the file. Follow the steps by confirming all the options and leave default options where ever possible. II) Hyperion Essbase 9.3.1: We need to install the components of Hyperion Essbase in the following order 1) Essbase Shared Services 9.3.1 2) Essbase Server 9.3.1 3) Essbase Admin Services 9.3.1 4) Essbase Integration Services 9.3.1

We need to check whether the recommended system requirements to install Essbase are met. let's install Essbase. All the steps involved in the installation of Oracle Essbase are pretty straight forward. This component is not mandatory for analysis (as it is user as centralized access control repository for all the Essbase products) but included here for completeness. Most of the steps given below are generic and almost same for the all the components with a minor changes. We will start installing Hyperion Essbase Server 9.3.1 first, going by suggested order. Double-click the setup file for Oracle Essbase The next is the Oracle Essbase welcome screen. Click next. On the next screen, you are asked to select a country. Please select the appropriate country for your application, as this selection sets the country variable in the system. This country variable is used for currency calculations. The next step is the license agreement screen, which we should read very carefully. When you have finished, select I AGREE, then click Next to proceed. In this step, you need to specify the Hyperion home directory which defaults to C:\Hyperion. It is in this folder that all of the required and optional Essbase System 9 common components will be installed. If you choose to select a different path, please do so here. Whenever possible, accept and install in the default recommended paths and directories across all hardware components involved in the system. This will greatly simplify the maintenance and support. Click next. Select the Typical installation for now as you can add other components at anytime in the future. In the next step, we are given options in wizard to update system environment variables with the new Essbase system variables you have chosen in the previous two steps. The new environment variables, PATH and ARBORPATH, will be set in the system and the Essbase server configuration file. By default, the installer wizard is set to update the environment variables. Please leave it as is and click Next. In this step, we are required to select the ESSLANG. The ESSLANG language variable defines the locale of the computer. For example, for US English, it is ENGLISH (LATIN1). This is to ensure proper communication with other applications and is the Unicode setting. When we click next, installation of the Oracle Essbase server will start. When we are done with installation part then we have a option to launch the configuration tool which enables us to register Essbase server to the Shared Services. Click next by selecting configure select box and click Next. This is now the configuration tool wizard. We are again asked to select the language for the wizard. Even though it is part of the Essbase analytics server software, you may want to use a different language. Select English or the system will select English for us. Once again, this will determine what language the installation screens are presented in. Then we are presented with the Essbase System 9 components we installed on our server and their configuration status. Place a check mark next to all of the components that are flagged as pending. We can see that all choices are pending. We will only want to place a check on Essbase Server and Shared Service, Product Options and Register Analytic Services Server as Windows Service at this time. Clicking Next will open screens to you which will walk you through the configuration steps for the components you've selected. This is also where you will enter your initial supervisor account ID and password(admin/password), so make sure you do not forget it. Repeat the above steps with other two components (Essbase Admin Services 9.3.1 and Oracle Integration Services 9.3.1) and configure them.

III) ODBC: Open Database Connectivity provides a standard software interface for accessing relational database. We will create ODBC for connecting to relational database (SQL Server 2005) from the Hyperion Integration Services. Open Control Panel >> Administrative Tools Double click on ODBC >> Add >> Select SQL Server Click Finish then we are presented with new window Create a New Data Source to SQL Server Give a name to ODBC (same is used while connecting to database from Oracle Essbase) and select the server name. In the next step, choose SQL server authentication. Click next. In this step, we have provision to define the default database to connect and we can test the connection by clicking on test and this completes ODBC setup. IV) OBIEE: Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 10.1.3.3.1 We can down load OBIEE 10.1.3.3.1 from Oracle website. We need to install JDK 1.5.0 or higher to install OBIEE on the server. First we have to check whether the hardware requirements are matching or not. There are two top level directory after OBIEE installation OracleBI - aka and ORACLE_BI_HOME. OracleBIData - aka ORACLE_BI_DATA_HOM Start the installation process by clicking on setup.exe and Click Next when information message like OBIEE requires at least 2GB hard disk space and 200 MB temp disc space In this step, we define location of OBIEE top level directory, ORACLE_BI_HOME and ORACLE_BI_DATA_HOME. Click Next. Select all the components that need to be installed with OBIEE Server then specify JDK Location and Administrator account password on this screen. In the next screen you provide windows user detail and option to start BI as windows services and click next accepting everything as default to complete the installation. After starting the service as windows service, try to access via web browser to confirm the successful completion of installation. http://servername:9704/xmlpserver(default login credentials are Administrator Administrator) 3) Hybrid Analysis HOLAP is a combination of ROLAP and MOLAP which are other possible implementations of OLAP. HOLAP allows storing part of the data in a MOLAP store and another part of the data in a ROLAP store, allowing a tradeoff of the advantages of each. The degree of control that the cube designer has over this partitioning varies from product to product. The core of any OLAP system is an OLAP cube. It consists of numeric facts called measures which are categorized by dimensions. The cube metadata is typically created from a star schema or snowflake schema of tables in a relational database. Measures are derived from the records in the fact table and dimensions are derived from the dimension tables. We will be creating Star Schema in the relational database by loading the data from the flat files and creating the relations among them.

Figure 3.1: Hybrid Analysis setup Connectivity to the relational database SQL Server2005 is achieved by ODBC connection created in the installation and configuration section. Figure 3.1 explore different components involved in the Hybrid Analysis process. All the components involved in this process are setup and configured in this paper, more details and explanation are provided in the coming section. Essbase Integration Services product provides the critical link between relational data and Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server. Essbase Integration Services product provides graphical tools to assist us in the following ways: We can create a logical OLAP model from tables, views and columns in your relational database. The OLAP model that you create is a logical schema consisting of a fact table surrounded by related dimension tables. We use the OLAP model to create a metaoutline, an outline template that contains the structure and rules required to generate a Hyperion Essbase outline. We then use the metaoutline to create and populate a Hyperion Essbase multidimensional database. I) Architecture: Essbase Integration Services consists of two major components: Essbase Integration Services Desktop and OLAP Integration Server. The desktop is the graphical interface and the server is what communicates to Essbase Server (i.e. multi-dimensional databases), RDBMS and Essbase Services. Some part of the metadata information is stored in the Hyperion Integration server and remaining part is stored in the relational database.

Figure 3.2: Architecture of Hyperion Integration Server II) Steps in the Hybrid Analysis: To create an Essbase multidimensional database from a relational data source following are the steps in order Step 1. Load sample data into SQLServer2005 Step 2.Creating Metadata Repository Step 3.Build an OLAP model: OLAP model is based on the tables in the relational data source. OLAP Integration Server stores the OLAP model and the information necessary to retrieve the relevant tables in OLAP Metadata Catalog. Step 4.Create a Metaoutline: Metaoutline is created from the OLAP model. OLAP Integration Server stores the metaoutline in OLAP Metadata Catalog. Step 5.Create a application and Database from Oracle Essbase Admin client. This is also have the inbuilt viewer to view data loaded. Step 6.Load members and data into the Hyperion Essbase database. Step 7.Update the Hyperion Essbase database with new members and data. Before we start the Hybrid Analysis, we need to set up Star Schema in the relational Database. As said in the earlier section, I took a sample of data in 5 flat files (Customer, Item, Period, Scenario and Fact data). Now lets start first step in Hybrid Analysis. Step 1. Load sample data into SQLServer2005 We took sample data for our Analysis which is resembles the real time sales scenario. In the sample data we have different measures like Disc%, Labor Units, Malt Unit, O H Rate, Price, Units which are qualified by parameters like Scenario, Item, Period, Customer. We can consider all the measures as fact table candidates and other qualifying parameters as candidates for dimensions. Now we have classified the total data in to fine different flat files: one for Fact data and other four for dimension data.

We have already installed SQL server2005 software and is ready to serve as a relational database. To setup the Star Schema for the Hybrid Analysis we need to load the sample data onto database and create Primary/Foreign Key relations among them to reflect the Star Schema Open SQL Server Management Studio Start>Programs>SQL Server 2005>SQL Sever Management Studio Click "Connect" at the connect to server prompt(Hypuser) On the left-side of the application, in the Object Explorer Pane the default database server will appear. Expand the tree. Expand the Database tree. Right Click on the Database folder and create a database EssbaseDB Right Click on the EssbaseDB and click on Import the data file fact data (Fact table) and select the flat file location from browse options. Repeat the same step for the all other data files(dimensions) like Scenario ,Item, Period and Customer Create a Primary/Foreign key relation between Fact data table and all other dimension tables. Now it represents the Star Schema.

Now we have a relational database Star Schema ready in SQL Server2005. In real time we may also have snow flake Schema and it can also be used for Hybrid Analysis. This snow flake schema is automatically converted and used as Star Schema in the EIS. Step2. Creating Metadata Repository: OLAP Metadata Catalog is Essbase Integration Services metadata repository, which is a set of tables that exists in a relational database that contains OLAP models, metaoutline, and the information necessary to source and build your Essbase Integration Services framework and Essbase environment. We can use SQL Server2005 database as metadata repository. Oracle Essbase stores some part of the metadata in the Oracle Essbase Integration server itself and other part in the Metadata repository. Before we start create a metadata repository we should make sure that relational database and Integration Service are up and running. Relational database are installed as window services, so check whether the SQL Server and other supporting components are up and running or not. We can start the Integration service by running Programs->Hyperion->Integration Service-> Integration server. When we open Integration service console for the first time it will provide a option to create metadata repository. We will connect to relational database using the ODBC connection created in the installation and configuration section. Supply the login credentials created for the SQL Server Database. This Metadata OLAP catalog contains different kinds of tables to hold all the information related to the OLAP Models, Mata Outlines, relational tables and relations among these three components.

Figure 3.3: OLAP Metadata Catalog setup When we click on the create button shown in the Figure 3.3 will create metadata Repository. Step 3.Build an OLAP model Essbase Integration Services approach to building an Essbase OLAP Analytic Framework is based on a logical star design. OLAP models are based on the idea that values in a relational database can be categorized as either facts or dimensions. Facts are the numeric, variable values in the database, such as sales figures and numbers of units sold. Associated with facts are related data values that provide additional information, such as store locations and product IDs of units sold. An OLAP model contains a fact table, one or more dimension tables and one or more dimension branches. An OLAP model should contain TIME and ACCOUNT dimensions. Essbase Integration Services OLAP Models and Metaoutline Essbase Integration Services create an OLAP model that is a logical model with join and hierarchy information defined. The OLAP model is a logical representation of the data values that you select from view layer in the relational database and that you want to report in Hyperion Essbase. In the Step2. we have already created Metaoutline Repository. Connect to Metaoutline repository from the Oracle Integration Service console. Provide login credentials for Integration server. In the next step well be asked supply credentials for Oracle Admin Service but it is optional. Click on the connect. Below snap shot will gives clear information about the process and are self explanatory, so very little explanation provided about the screen shots.

Figure 3.4: Essbase Integration Server login Then well be shown with below screen where we select OLAP model.

Figure 3.5: Integration Services startup wizard

When we click on the OLAP Model and then click on the Open button shown in the above screenshot, we are prompted to authenticate to connect relational database.

Figure 3.6: Relational Data source login credentials Then we are presented with OLAP Model create window where in the top pane we are presented with Intelligent help menu bar and in the lift pane we are shown with relational data sources available.

Figure 3.7: Essbase Integration OLAP editor Window

Figure 3.8: Schema hierarchies available in the data source If we expand the relational data source, it will display all the tables present in the database.We can create the OLAP Model in two ways. First and easiest way is via Intelligent Help provided in the Hyperion Integration Service. Second one being selecting the fact and dimension tables in the left pane and dragging them to the OLAP editor on the right hand side (this will gives the flexibility to choose the dimensions manually and create relations among the facts & dimension if needed).

Figure 3.9: Essbase Integration Services Intelligent Help

Lets go by first method now (Intelligent Help Tool bar) . When we click on create a fact table icon on the help bar it will display a link to detect possible candidates for the fact data, then we can select the desired tables as fact table. While doing this uncheck the buttons like create account and time dimensions which we will create in the next step.

Figure 3.10: Auto detect dimension wizard from the intelligent help Click on the create dimensions from the help bar, all the possible candidates for the dimension (based on Primary Key/Foreign Key relations). Choose the desired dimensions as shown in the figure 3.10. Now add the dimension tables from the left pane to the dimension model on the right hand side. If we want to do the same step manually, chose the fact table from the left pane and drag it to OLAP model editor. Once we place the fact table we are prompted whether we want create Account and Time dimensions? Account and Time dimension can be manually created at later stage for the sake of ease so for time being leave it(Click No on the prompt). Select all the dimension tables from the left pane and drag them on to OLAP editor. If all the Primary/Foreign key relations are properly set then by default it will show all the links between fact and dimension tables. If we want add some new relations then we can do this by right clicking on the fact table, selecting the properties then chose relations tab. Now the Star Schema model in the relation database is converted in to the dimension model as shown below. Here we have one fact table followed by four dimension tables.

Figure 3.11: Basic Star Schema Model in OLAP Model editor Now right click on the Period dimension and set the TIME dimension property. Hence the period dimension acts like a Time dimension in the dimensional modeling.

Figure 3.12: Setting up TIME dimension Properties

From the Edit Manu click on the create account dimension. Account dimension contains all the columns present in the fact table (in the dimensional Model) and contains all the measure values.

Figure 3.13: Adding ACCOUNT dimension to dimension Modeling

Figure 3.14: Final Dimensional Model in OLAP editor This completed the Dimension Modeling Final Dimensional Model in OLAP editor shown in Figure 3.14.Here we can specify whether we want to go by default hierarchies (consolidations) or we need

alternative rollups for our dimension. To achieve this right click on any dimension and select the properties and then select the Hierarchies. Here we can define the default/alternative hierarchies.

Figure 3.15: Changing dimension Properties Just double click on any dimension members to add them to the hierarchies. Click Ok when we finish with Hierarchies.

Figure 3.16: Adding hierarchies in the dimensions

Dimension columns to be used as an attribute dimension must be identified. Right-click the table name in the model and choose Properties. Select the column and click Attribute. Figure 3.17 will depict the relations between facts and dimension. As explained earlier, we can even add, delete any joins in the dimension modeling.

Figure 3.17: Fact-Dimension relation properties This competes the OLAP model. In real time scenario, number of facts tables and dimension tables may increase but the procedure/steps explained holds good. Step 4.Create a Metaoutline: Use an OLAP model created in the step 3 to create one or more Metaoutline. A Metaoutline contains the basic structure required to build a Hyperion Essbase outline and to load data into Hyperion Essbase. We can use one OLAP model as the basis for another OLAP model. You save the original OLAP model under a different name and edit it as needed to meet reporting requirements. We can create any number of OLAP models for use in building Metaoutline. Each Metaoutline, however, is based on one specific OLAP model. Connect using Integration service console window, this time click on Metaoutline option to create a Metaoutline as show in Figure 3.18.

Figure 3.18: OLAP Metaoutline Model wizard Then select the OLAP model on which this Metaoutline should be build upon (Select the Model that is created in the step3).

Figure 3.19: Selecting OLAP Model for Metaoutline

Figure 3.20: OLAP Metaoutline editor Now create hierarchies in each dimension which we are expecting in the outline (This we have already done in the step3 , so just select the hierarchies and drag them to Metaoutline editor.) When we open the OLAP Metaoutline model, console screen looks like Figure 3.21.

Figure 3.21: Exploring the dimension Hierarchies

Now drag and drop the dimension and account dimension from left pane to the Mata outline editor. Here we are including all those columns in the tables which we would like to see in the outline. We ignore the Primary Key and Foreign key columns in the Figure 3.21. Here we should have dimension as mandatory and adding all the members under the dimension are optional. Following figure shows the + sign next to each member (which is default) is consolidation operator. Here we can change this to any other valid arithmetic operator. We can also define alias/member properties like dense, Sparse, Dynamic calc, to pass calc, label only etc. We can also specify any member formulas in association with any member can be specified here. This completes creation of the Metaoutline model. Now final model looks like in Figure 3.22.

Figure 3.22: Final OLAP Metaoutline Model Here we can create Metaoutline filters to support multiple cubes from same Metaoutline by changing the filters. This reduces the rework to be done to create similar Essbase cubes with small changes. Stpe 5. Create application and Database from Oracle Essbase Admin client. We should make sure that Hyperion Essbase server and Hyperion Admin Servers are up and running. Hyperion Essbase server need password during the startup process. Open Essbase Admin client and connect to Essbase admin server. Connect EAS and add Essbase server to the Essbase servers node. EAS can be connected to more than one Essbase servers. Right click on the Essbase server hierarchies and click on Add server. When it is prompted for the login (in Figure 3.23) credentials, provide username and password supplied during the installation process.

Figure 3.23: Essbase Administration Service logins Create application and database (EISAPP/EISDB) to hold the data that will be loaded from the EIS. Create a database by using Block storage option. After creating the database successfully we are displayed with succeeded message at the bottom.

Figure 3.24: EAS message window (shown in the bottom)

While creating the database, select Normal option as a database type. Here checking or un checking the Allow duplicate member names option is optional and is based on our project requirement.

Figure 3.25: Creating the Database in Essbase Administrator tool Step 6.Load members and data into the database. Click on the tools, we have different options like member load, Data load, Data load and member load etc., Select Member load for time being. Before we load the member in to EAS we need to make sure that Essbase Server is up and running and then select the application and database to be used for the data load (If we are already not connected to the Essbase server the we are prompted with the login screen as shown in Figure 3.26). We have Shared Services connection option In the login screen. Shared service acts as a central password management system. Once we configure all the Hyperion tools to Shared service then we will be able to do all the password management activities from here.

Figure 3.26: Essbase Server logins along with Essbase Integration server login credentials This login screen includes credentials for both Essbase Integration Server and Essbase Server. We have already supplied credentials to Integration server so that part is disabled here.

Figure 3.27: Selecting Application and Database for the data loading

Once we connect to any Essbase server, all the applications and databases in that server are displayed in the drop down box. Select EssApp/Essdb for member/data loading.

Figure 3.28: Essbase Application and Database member load While loading the member through the Essbase Admin tool using rule file, we got option to impose filters on combination of some members. Same can be achieved here by defining the filters to reject or accept any particular member combinations and select that from the member load Filter drop box. Same is the case with Data load filters. Here we have some other check boxes on left side of the window like Delete all members first- Which will delete the members before it starts loading the new members Modify Essbase Users- This will deal with the users who already have access to the cube which we are going to load. Incremental update- This will not delete the data rather update the data that is already existed. Delete and restore the database- Deletes the data and set the database ready for member load Replaces Zeros with #Missing- If any Zeros exists in the relational database are replaced by #Missing.

Figure 3.29: loading the data into the Essbase cube We can also schedule the member/data load for the later time. When we click on finish, it will start the member load process.

Figure 3.30: Statistics while loading the members If we take a look at the load type in the Figure 3.30, it is displayed as Member Load. If everything go smooth then we will be displayed with successful completion message. Here message in the pop up TEJA:EISAPP:EISDB gives some information about the server name followed by application name and then database name to which the members are currently loaded.

Go to Essbase admin tool and check whether the members in the outline loaded properly or not.

Figure 3.31: Outline members from Essbase Admin tool When we add the Essbase server and then expand the node to find EISAPP application. All the dimensions and member are loaded as expected. Now lets move on to data load step. Data load window also looks like similar to dimension load screen but we are given some more options like selecting Calc script, Data load filter, Using alternate Fact table etc.,

Figure 3.32: Essbase Application and Database load Window

One important thing that should be taken care while loading the data is that we should check the Default radio button in the Calc scripts sections in Figure 3.33, otherwise data will not be populated and default calculations will not be done.

Figure 3.33: Essbase Data load statistics If we take a look at the load type, this time it is show as Data load & Calculation. Once the data successfully loaded on to database, we can verify the accuracy of the data from Excel Addin as well as Essbase Admin Tool

Figure 3.34: Preview Essbase cube data option in Essbase Administrative Tool

In the Essbase Admin Tool data preview editor have a tool bar which gives option like Zoom in, Zoom Out, Keep only, Member selection, update etc (similar to Excel Add in).,

Figure 3.35: Essbase cube data in Essbase Administrative Tool

Figure 3.36: Essbase cube data in Excel Addin

Most important feature of Excel Add in is we can update the vales and send them back to Database. This way user got liberty to change the data values provided they have right permissions. If we compare all the above values with flat file data we have loaded, they are exactly matching. To compare specific record in the fact data flat file, we will drill down to details level in the cube by appropriately selecting the dimension members. In the Hybrid Analysis process, we have directly build the Essbase cube from the relation database. Now lets see some tips for Automation and performance tuning of Hybrid Analysis. III) Automation: We can automate the process of data loading using Maxel scripting Commands. Hyperion Essbase Integration Services has a scripting language for automation. Use a text editor to create a CBS script which runs from a batch file. LOGIN ServerName SET SOURCE "DSN=DSNNAME;UID=xx;PWD=zz; SETTARGET "DSN= DSNNAME;UID=xx;PWD=zz;" SETCATALOG "DSN= DSNNAME;UID=xx;PWD=zz;" LOADMEMBER "OTL=OTLNAME;APP=APPNAME;DBN=DBNAME;FLT_ID_MEMBER=Value; OTL_CLEAR=Y;" LOADDATA "OTL=DSNNAME; APP=APPNAME;DBN=DBNAME;FLT_ID_DATA=Value; REPLACE_ZEROS=Y;CALC_SCRIPT=CALCALL;" EXIT This Script runs from the batch file e.g cd D:\EIS Load Files\SLBSOlapIcmd -f"SLBSGA refresh.cbs" In real time we will call this .bat batch job from any automation system or any time dependent schedulers so that Cubes build will not impose any constraint on usage of relational database (We can build the cubes over night or any agreed time between the User and Business) IV) Hybrid Analysis Tuning The following parameters are important in regard to Hybrid Analysis, and are set in the ESSBASE.CFG file located in the Essbase/bin directory: HAENABLE: Set to TRUE (i.e. HAENABLE TRUE) to enable Hybrid queries to retrieve relational members and data. This is the most important setting, since it enables or disables Hybrid Analysis on the Essbase OLAP Server. HAMEMORYCACHESIZE: Size the amount of memory for member caching. This reduces the amount of member lookup SQL, while data lookup still takes the same duration. HAMAXNUMCONNECTION: Determine the number of maximum connections per Essbase OLAP multidimensional database. HAMAXSQLQUERY: Set the maximum numbers of SQL queries. HAMAXQUERYROWS: Set the maximum number of rows returned from your SQL query. HAMAXQUERYTIME: Set the maximum query time before terminated. HARETRIEVENUMROW: Determine the number of rows, resulting from an SQL query, to process at one time. These parameters will not be effective until we have restarted the Essbase OLAP Server. For these and additional parameter settings information see Essbase Analytic Services System Administrators Guide Whether you start Essbase Integration Services from a command prompt (i.e. olapisvr) or from a Windows Desktop Start menu, here are a few settings to optimize. The following parameters can be set in the EIS.CFG file located in the EssIntegration\bin directory.

-N To specify the number of threads Integration Server uses when sending data to Analytic Services during a data load, type N number_of_threads when you start Integration Server. The default setting is 1 thread. The -N switch may be used concurrently with the -C switch. The number of threads allocated to the Integration Server data load optimization process is controlled by the -N switch. For example, to set the number of threads to 3, type olapisvr -N3 In the eis.cfg file, this parameter is specified in the format: [N]=3 -V Disables the validation and speeds up the saving process of model and metaoutline [V] = 0 These parameters will not be effective until you have restarted the Essbase Integration Services. For these and additional parameter settings information see Essbase XTD Integration Services System Administrators Guide section Integration Server Startup Switches. V) Advantages:

Designed to work in a mixed-vendor environment and gives high performance access tooperational relational data Hybrid Analysis for Hyperion Essbase enables relational storage of business data while preserving the powerful calculation capabilities of Hyperion Essbase. Seamlessly navigate across multi-dimensional and relational data, while maintaining the OLAP-style navigation, point-of-view and calculation logic. Essbase Integration Services is a suite of graphical tools and scalable data integration services that will dramatically reduce the time and expense required to create, deploy, and manage tailored applications. Analytic Integration Services provides a vital link between tailored-made applications built on the Hyperion BI Platform and detailed data stored in relational databases.

A centralized OLAP Metadata repository simplifies tailored application administration,promotes reusability of dimensions, calculations, and business rules and facilitates delivery of business-focused applications driving insight across the enterprise. Use Analytic Integration Services with Hyperion Essbase to achieve rapid development and deployment of performance management applications that support a wide range of business needs. Built on a flexible, multi-tier architecture, Analytic Integration Services easily scales to accommodate changing requirements.

By using Hybrid Analysis, Integration with our relational data allows for the creation of largecomplex database to help to analyze our Business Information as well as dramatically reduces the cycle times. It provides environment for rapid development of tailored business performance management solutions and it enables to connect to different types of relational databases which are present on the different flat forms(UNIX, Windows, etc.,)

On demand drill-through to relational detail. Query detail stored in relational sourceswithout SQL programming. Driven by a centralized metadata catalog, drill-through automatically generates optimized SQL to select the required information. There is no maintenance required.

Performance, scalability and reliability at a low cost of ownership. The Metaoutline createdin EIS can be reused for building any other cube by doing some changes in it.

4) Integration of Oracle Essbase 9.3.1 with OBIEE Many organizations today use a excess of different Business Intelligence (BI) tools and applications to collect information from a variety of sources, analyze it, and share it with users. However, many of these tools are (i) Designed for professional analysts and not business users (ii) Complex to use and have several functional limitations (iii) Poorly integrated making it complex to share analyses across different tools; (iv) have scalability and manageability limitations that make them expensive to maintain as the amount of data, the number of data sources, the number of active users, and the complexity of the analysis being performed grows. The BI environment today is fragmented. As a result it is difficult to get a unified view of the entire enterprise. There are discrepancies in the reports/insight derived from the fragmented systems as every system has its own way of interpreting the data in these disparate systems. So now the trend has started integrating the different BI tools form same/different vendor. BI needs to evolve such that it is no longer about reporting results but about driving business processes. Now OBIEE 10.1.3.3.1 enable us to user Hyperion Essbase cube as a data source for OBIEE. We also have some added advantage of integrating these BI tools and that will be elaborated a bit in the coming sections. I) OBIEE Introduction: OBIEE is designed to meet this evolving business need. It is a comprehensive suite of Business Intelligence tools and infrastructure designed to bring greater business visibility and insight to the broadest audiences of users, allowing any user in an organization to have Web-based self-service access to up-to-the moment, relevant, and actionable intelligence. OBIEE comprises powerful BI server technology and BI presentation tools and supplements them with specialty BI reporting tools secured in the Hyperion acquisition. Together, these technologies offer significant business intelligence functionality to enable the insight driven enterprise. II) Components: Oracle BI Server - a highly scalable, highly efficient query and analysis server that integrates data via sophisticated query federation capabilities from multiple relational, unstructured, OLAP, and pre-packaged application sources, whether Oracle or non-Oracle. Oracle BI Answers - provides end users with broad ad-hoc query and analysis capabilities. It is a pure Web-based environment that is designed for users who want to create new analyses from scratch or modify and change existing analyses that appear on a dashboard page. Users interact with a logical view of the information which is completely hidden from data structure complexity and can easily create charts, pivot tables, reports, gauges, and dashboards, all of which are interactive and drillable and can be saved, shared, modified, formatted, or embedded in the users personalized Dashboard or Enterprise Portal. Oracle BI Answers is the solution for ad-hoc query and analysis, and for creating the reports that will be used on Dashboards. Users learn how to use Oracle BI Answers quickly. They work entirely within understandable models of information completely expressed in business terminology. As the user selects business terms or columns, Oracle BI Answers builds a query. This query is referred to as "logical SQL", since it expresses the logical content of the request. This logical query will be sent to the Oracle BI Server, which will interpret the logical query and create subsequent physical queries to the underlying data sources where the data is stored. Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard - makes it easy for business users to access their Business Intelligence information. Business users build Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards without any involvement from an IT specialist and no programming. They create dashboard pages and select and organize content using a web based dashboard editor. Oracle BI Interactive Dashboard runs within a pure Web architecture and provides users with a rich, interactive experience by providing

information that is filtered and personalized to a users identity or role. This makes information intuitive and easy to understand and helps guide users in their decision making. Much of the content on the Dashboards is created from within Oracle BI Answers. Users work with live reports, prompts, charts, tables, pivot tables, graphics, and tickers. They have the ability to quickly and easily navigate to the information they need; drill in place for further analysis; modify calculations; and interact with results. Users have the ability to quickly and easily aggregate structured data from relational databases; legacy data from mainframe and other systems; as well as unstructured content from a wide variety of sources, including the Internet, shared file servers, and document repositories. Oracle BI Briefing Books - reports that capture a series of snapshots of an Oracle BI Dashboard or report allowing the information to be viewed offline presentation style. Oracle BI Publisher - a highly scalable reporting engine capable of generating reports from multiple data sources in multiple formats via multiple delivery channels. Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics - a packaged solution to offer Answers and Dashboards to mobile professionals on computers disconnected from the network. Oracle BI Office Plug-In - automatically synchronizes information from Answers to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Oracle BI Delivers - an alerting engine to capture and distribute notifications via multiple channels in response to predefined business events to speed decision making. III) Steps in Integrating Essbase with OBIEE10.1.3.3.1: We use the Oracle BI Administration Tool (Administration Tool) to build, manage, and maintain repositories. The Administration Tool is a Windows application that displays the Oracle BI Repository (BI Repository) into three separate panes called layers. These three layers are named Physical, Business Model and Mapping, and Presentation. A repository stores the business intelligence metadata that is rendered inside the Answers and Interactive Dashboards clients, as well as other clients. Specifically, the Physical layer contains information about the physical data sources to which BI Server submits queries. The most common way to populate the Physical layer is by importing metadata from databases and other data sources. The ability to use multidimensional data sources allows the BI Server to connect to sources such as Essbase and Oracle OLAP to extract data. When you import metadata, many of the properties of the data sources are configured automatically based on the information gathered during the import process. These physical objects are displayed in a tree structure. Oracle BI Admin tool three layers are shown in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1: Oracle BI Administration Tool (Physical, Logical and Presentation Layer) Ill go thorough the steps for OBIEE connectivity and show how easy it is to bring an Hyperion Essbase 9.3.1 cube into the Oracle BI Server metadata layer, and report against it using Oracle Answers and Oracle Dashboard. Steps to achieve the are as follows Step 1: Setup XMLA interface Step 2: Make changes to registry to enable the Interconnectivity of the BI tools in evaluation edition of OBIEE. Step 3: Importing Essbase cube in to physical layer (Model) of Oracle BI Admin tool Step 4: Creating the Logical model for the Physical model created in Step 3. Step 5: Create a presentation Model from the logical model created in Step4. As discussed earlier, the version of Oracle BI Enterprise Edition Ill be using is 10.1.3.3.1, whilst the version of Essbase is 9.3.1. Step 1: The Provider Services tool that comes with Essbase is used to provide the interface, with Oracle BI Server talking to Essbase through its XMLA interface. Oracle BI Server already interfaces with Microsoft Analysis Services 2000 and 2005 through their XMLA interfaces, together with SAP BW, so this is a fairly well established technique thats been supported in Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition. Moreover, bringing a cube like this into the metadata layer is very straightforward, with the BI Administrator tool converting the multi-dimensional dimensions, hierarchies and measures into logical tables, logical columns and dimensions for us automatically. Step 2: Here Im using evaluation edition of OBIEE, so we need to make changes to Registry to pretend as full edition. so theres no support through the regular channels this will come with the full, 10.1.3.3.2 release. To enable Essbase connectivity, you will need to be comfortable with editing the registry on your Microsoft Windows PC (take a backup of the registry first). Using the Windows registry editor (regedit.exe), make the following changes: Locate the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Oracle Corporation\Oracle BI\Oracle BI Administration Tool\Hidden Features Create a DWORD Value named Essbase and set its Data value to 1 In this initial release, whilst Essbase can place measures into a hierarchy, so that sales, for example, can be broken down into the individual component measures that make it up, Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition will display all the measures in the hierarchy as a flattened list. Now start up Oracle BI Administrator and connect to your repository Step 3: Import the Essbase cube in to Oracle BI Admin Tool by using the File menu, select Import > From XMLA, like this

Figure 4.2: Importing XMLA data Now, enter the connection details for Essbase Provider Services for your Essbase cube. The normal port number for Provider Services is 13080 with the URL generally being in the format http://:13080/aps/XMLA.

Figure 4.3: Login Credentials for Essbase Server Once you enter the URL details, press the Update buttons for Oracle BI Server to auto-complete the Data Source field. Then, type in the username and password for your Essbase server and press OK in Figure 4.3 to make the connection. You will now be presented with a list of Essbase databases (cubes) that you can import as shown in Figure 4.4. Select any cube present in the hierarchy, press Import, and then let Oracle BI Administration read in the cube details.

Figure 4.4: Selecting Essbase cube for importing into Oracle BI Administration Tool If we take a look at the imported cube then we will be able to see all the dimension and member details are show along with any other Essbase imported cubes. Notice how the icons for dimensions, cubes and hierarchies are different than for physical relational tables and columns. Best thing about Oracle BI Administrator is that it handles multi-dimensional data sources as first-class, native objects and automatically understands the dimensional structure of the cube. Step 4: To create the logical model of this cube, which unlike the physical model will be expressed as logical tables and columns, this can be done by dragging the physical cube across to the logical layer and Oracle BI Administrator will automatically convert the metadata.

Figure 4.5 Imported Essbase cube in the Logical layer of Oracle BI Administration Tool

Oracle BI Administrator has automatically converted the measures in the cube into a fact table, and the dimensions into dimension tables. The relationship between the dimensions and cube have been converted into joins, whilst the hierarchies have been converted into dimensions. If we have any attribute dimension in our Essbase cube then we may need to make changes in the logical model. Step 5: To create the presentation model, drag the Logical model created in the step 4 into the Presentation Layer. Make sure to remove these from the Presentation Model so that users will not query them by mistake. Finally the Essbase cube looks just like any other relational star schema in presentation Layer, however when it is queried Oracle BI Server will issue MDX queries against a multi-dimensional data source, rather than an SQL query against a relational star schema.

Figure 4.6: Imported Essbase cube in the presentation layer of Oracle BI Administration Tool Now, after I save the changes to my repository, I can go over to Oracle BI Answers and put together a request against this new subject area. Oracle BI Server and Oracle BI Presentation Server makes the Essbase data look just like relational data and I can build requests up using my Essbase data just like any other data source.

Figure 4.7: Oracle BI Answers Tool The most noticeable difference though, is the speed of response. Because we have presummarized all of the data in my Essbase cube, views are returned lightening-fast as the Oracle BI Server does not need to aggregate any measures at request run time. This completes the process of bringing the Essbase cube in to OBIEE. 5) Conclusion: Hybrid Analysis provides a way to transfer quickly the relevant data from our relational database to an Essbase multidimensional database. Hybrid Analysis environment is set up by installing Hyperion Essbase and OBIEE components and Configuring them to set up Hybrid Analysis platform. Hyperion Essbase Hybrid Analysis is performed using SQL Server as backend and various options available in Hyperion Essbase Integration service are explored during Process. Some techniques for the performance tuning of Hybrid Analysis are explained along with Automation process. Need for the Integration of different BI tools increases to move the data among different BI tools seamlessly, I have shown step by step process to show how Essbase cube can be imported into OBIEE using XMLA interface and hence Essbase cube can be source for OBIEE.

References: [1] Oracle Essbase & Oracle OLAP: The Guide to Oracle's Multidimensional Solution by Michael Schrader et al. [2] http://www.installationwiki.org/Installing_Oracle_Essbase [3] http://www.packtpub.com/article/introduction-online-analytical-processing-oracle-essbase [4] http://www.rittmanmead.com [5] Httpe://www.artofbi.com [6] http://onlineappsdba.com/ [7] http://www.intellient.co.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=1155 [8] Oracle Essbase 9 Implementation Guide by Sarma Anantapantula and Joseph Sydney Gomez [9] Look Smarter than you are with Essbase System 9 by Edward Roske and Tracy McMullen [10] www.google.com [11] www.wikipedia.com