Notable Highlights:

• Faster Analytics – Combining Oracle Software with a hardware solution that leverages “in memory”  technology to deliver high performance for analytics is Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine
• Dashboards on top of HFM and FCM – Oracle Financial Management Analytics
• EPM in the Cloud – Oracle On Demand
• Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Planning Suite - A bundle to handle all aspects of Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting, Modeling, Simulation, and Integration

Also, at OpenWorld Oracle announced a new sustainablity management starter kit for Oracle Hyperion Financial Management.  This is GRI-certified application provides customers the ability to get sustainability reporting initiatives off the ground quickly.

Oracle is making a big investment in EPM and is constantly coming out with new solutions to compliment the suite and round out their offerings.  Stay tuned for more updates as we get them.  We will also be providing some Finit insight into some of these items in future blog posts.

The Dirty Youth-Hear their single "Fight" throughout September on my shows

Like what you see and hear here? Check out The Dirty Youth on each of my shows throughout September on Split Infinity Radio

But, yes I have torn myself away from my XBOX for more than five minutes to reveal August’s Song of the Month.

This month we have the UK’s very own Alexa De Strange, a band that are not only unique and tuneful, but also a band that have a great image that makes burlesque not only sexier than sexy, but also gives it a dark twist that creates something worth seeing and hearing by all.

Alexa De Strange, unique and well worth a listen

Musically they’re a lot of things, hard to put a finger on and shoehorn into one specific genre, so judge for yourselves the song and video, Babydoll from Alexa De Strange.

Enjoy!

For more info you can check Alexa De Strange, or to give them their full name Alexa De Strange and the Sisters of Seduction at the Paranoise Records site here or on their Facebook here.

Babydoll will be played on my shows throughout August, and if you do take time to visit, tell them who sent you, I like the attention

In an addition to this Babydoll has stormed the SI Radio Charts, number 1 this week and many daily number 1′s from listener votes. Check this song out on http://www.siradio.fm and bask in it’s awesomeness!

Steve Conley will be interviewed by Dave Smith live on Harborough FM tomorrow along with Kajagoogoo drummer and all round legend, Jez Strode.

The interview will take place at 11.15am GMT so we do hope you can join us for that one and listen to us talk about the new single, ‘Death Defying Headlines’.

To listen, you can visit the HFM website and click ‘Listen Online’:

http://www.harboroughfm.co.uk/index.html

Dave Smith’s page is at:

http://www.harboroughfm.co.uk/UpClose-DaveSmith.htm

Don’t worry if you can’t make it, the feature will be recorded and we’ll stick it up on the site afterwards.

Really looking forward to this one, it’s only a week until the full release now so many thanks to Dave Smith for having us on his show.

SINGLE INFORMATION

You can currently pre-order the single from HMV and 7digital, it’s a mere 79p:

HMV

http://www.hmvdigital.com/artist/kajagoogoo/death-defying-headlines-ep

7digital

http://www.7digital.com/artists/kajagoogoo/death-defying-headlines-ep/

If the dance mix is more your thing (and it is fantastic), you can also download that and they both count towards a chart position:

HMV

http://www.hmvdigital.com/artist/kajagoogoo/death-defying-headlines-the-dance-remixes-ep

7digital

http://www.7digital.com/artists/kajagoogoo/death-defying-headlines-the-dance-remixes-ep/

It’s a really quick and easy process to pre-order the track, 7digital even take PayPal in their payment options!

You can pre-order from iTunes but they only allow this for the full EP.  Therefore if you wish to pre-order either full EP from iTunes, you can do this here:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/preorder/death-defying-headlines-ep/id436784345

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/preorder/death-defying-headlines-the/id436784119

If you are an iTunes user but only wish to purchase the single, please wait until June 12th where it is officially released and you will be able to buy this as one track.

Death Defying Headlines is released on Red Dot Music.

2011 KajaFax

Edgewater Ranzal will be well represented at the conference, with our associates presenting eight presentations covering Planning, DRM, EPMA, HFM, and FDM. The sessions that we will be presenting at Kscope11 are summarized below. Each title links to an abstract for the presentation, providing additional details.

In addition to the presentations above, you can catch up with our experts at our booth in the Vendor Showcase.

We look forward to seeing you in Long Beach. If you haven’t already registered, you can do so here.

Hyperion Financial Management
SQL
Hyperion
Discoverer
Cognos
Informatica

If you are interested in hearing about these opportunities, please contact me at kyleee@slalom.com.

Me hacen mucha gracia los de la revista Emprendedores -por no decir otra cosa-. Su consigna es “Todos podemos ser emprendedores”, hasta ahí bien, pero después la cosa se tuerce con sus continuos ejemplos de tales emprendedores, y declaraciones del tipo “Empezamos con una inversión inicial de 3 millones de €uros, y ahora podemos competir en un segmento junto con las grandes empresas”, “nosotros somos el ejemplo de que se puede empezar de cero”.

 A partir de aquí mejor me callaré.

xpb

In this, the final post in this series, we’ll step through the creation of a ruleset.  Rulesets are equivalent to Business Rule Sequences in Hyperion Business Rules.

We’ll begin by logging on to Hyperion Workspace and navigating to Calc Manager.  Once in Workspace, the navigation path is:  Navigate -> Administer -> Calculation Manager.

Once in Calc Manager, you’ll land on the System View tab, which appears as follows:

Once again, I’ll use my EPMA enabled version of my Planning app based on Sample.Basic.

To create a new ruleset, right click on the “RuleSets” node under your Planning app and select New.  You’ll be prompted to give the ruleset a name.  I’ll name mine Process_Application.  Additionally, you can change the app/database for this ruleset in this dialog box.

After I click OK,  the following screen loads:

You can display the rules available for your rule set by expanding the tree until you see the rules for your database. 

To add rules to the ruleset, simply drag and drop them onto the Ruleset Designer on the right side of the screen.

By default, the rules will run sequentially.  If you wish for rules to execute in parallel, select the RuleSet name within the RuleSet designer.  Check “Enable Parallel Execution” on the Properties tab at the bottom of the screen.

In order to run the script, save, validate, and deploy to your Planning application.

The series of posts that we’ve put together this summer were designed to give a user a basic understanding of how to work with Calculation Manager.  With any new technology, its best to dive in and immerse yourself to speed through the learning curve – Calculation Manager is no different.  Take the opportunity to experiment with the tool.  I feel that you’ll find it easy to learn the basics and before long you’ll be developing your own rules.

If you have any questions about Calc Manager, please leave a comment on any of the posts in this series, or reach out to me via email at jrichardson@ranzal.com.

As with the Rule Designer, which is a great tool to help less experienced developers build rules, templates provide a simple way to develop rules for basic tasks in Planning and Essbase…tasks such as copying, clearing, exporting, allocating, and aggregating data.  In addition, you can design your own templates.

We’ll begin by logging on to Hyperion Workspace and navigating to Calc Manager.  Once in Workspace, the navigation path is:  Navigate -> Administer -> Calculation Manager.

Once in Calc Manager, you’ll land on the System View tab, which appears as follows:

Once again, I’ll use my EPMA enabled version of my Planning app based on Sample.Basic.

To access predefined templates, right click on “Rules”.  Once you give the rule a name, the graphical designer is launched.  In the “Existing Objects” window, you should find a list of the pre-existing templates.  A list of the system templates follows:

CLEAR DATA

In order to use the system template to Clear Data, drag and drop “Clear Data” from the System Templates to the Rule Designer.  This will then invoke a member selection window asking you to specify the data to clear.  Keep in mind that this template generates a calc script utilizing the CLEARBLOCK command as opposed to a CLEARDATA command.

In my sample app, I select “FY11” for the Years dimension and “Final” for the Version dimension.  The dropdown box for “Clearblock Option” can be used to define the blocks to be cleared…”All” is the default.  The code that is generated appears below.

FIX ("FY11","Final")
  CLEARBLOCK ALL;
ENDFIX

COPY DATA

The Copy Data template helps to walk the calc developer through the process of copying data from one slice of the database to another.

In the remainder of the wizard, you select the “Copy From” member and the “Copy To” member.  The calc script generated follows:

FIX (@RELATIVE("Measures" , 0),@RELATIVE("Periods" ,0),@RELATIVE("Product" , 0),@RELATIVE("Market" , 0),@RELATIVE("Years" , 0),"Budget")
DATACOPY "Working" TO "Final";
ENDFIX

AMOUNT-UNIT-RATE

The Amount-Unit-Rate template allows the developer to build a calc script to solve for either an amount, unit, or rate, basically whichever is missing.  I’ve added a couple of measures to my application to facilitate the demo.  Using the member selection wizard, I’ve selected “Sales” as my amount, “Cases” as my unit, and “Revenue per Case”  as my rate.  The script generated by the template follows:

"Sales"(
  IF ("Sales" == #missing and "Cases" != #missing and "Revenue per Case" != #missing)
    "Sales" = "Cases" * "Revenue per Case";
  ELSEIF ("Sales" != #missing and "Cases" == #missing and "Revenue per Case" != #missing)
    "Cases" = "Sales" / "Revenue per Case";
  ELSEIF ("Sales" != #missing and "Cases" != #missing and "Revenue per Case" == #missing)
    "Revenue per Case" = "Sales" / "Cases";
  ELSE
    "Sales" = "Cases" * "Revenue per Case";
  ENDIF
)

ALLOCATIONS

Two types of allocation templates are provided within Calc Manager.  The first template, Allocate Level to Level,  allows you to allocate from one level to another.   In my example with my Planning app, you would use this template to allocate marketing expenses  from product family to product using a driver like revenue.  This approach utilizes @ANCESTVAL to build the script.

The second template, Allocate Simple, allocates values based on a predefined relationship, such as Marketing->Market * Cases/Cases->Market.

Both templates walk the developer through the setup of the allocations, selecting members that are fixed throughout the process, offset members (if any), etc.

AGGREGATION

The aggregation template aids the developer to create a script to aggregate the application.  The first screen of the wizard, pictured below, allows you to select members for the FIX statement in the aggregation – here you would limit the calc to a particular version, scenario, or your non aggregating sparse dimension members.

The next screen prompts for dense dimensions to aggregate.  However, if dynamic calcs are properly utilized, this should not be necessary.

The third screen asks for sparse dimensions for the aggregation.  You should exclude any non aggregating sparse dimensions from this selection.

Next, you’re prompted for partial aggregations of dense dimensions.  Again – if dynamic calcs are used properly, this should not be an issue.

In the final screen of the wizard, the developer selects settings for the script…

The code generated by Calc Manager follows:

SET AGGMISSG ON;
SET FRMLBOTTOMUP ON;
SET CACHE HIGH;
FIX (@RELATIVE("Years" , 0),"Working","Budget")
CALC DIM ("Product");
CALC DIM ("Market");
ENDFIX

Please note that this code is not optimized.  In this example, I would use the following:

AGG (“Product”,”Market”);

The code as generated by Calc Manager will result in an extra pass through the database – the calc can be accomplished with a single pass.  Additionally, AGG can be used in place of CALC DIM if there are no formulas on the dimensions being calculated.  Generally speaking, stored formulas on sparse dimensions should be avoided due to performance issues.

SET Commands

The next template walks the user through setting various SET commands for the calc.  This is a fairly straightforward exercise.

EXPORT DATA

This is another straightforward template that helps create a data export calc script.  You need to define the fixed members for the export,  delimiter, #MISSING value, export type (flat file, relational), etc.

In the final part of this series, due for posting on August 13, we’ll walk through the creation of a ruleset.  If you have any questions before the next post, please leave a comment!

Again, in order to access Calc Manager, log on to Hyperion Workspace.  Once in Workspace, the navigation path is:

Navigate->Administer->Calculation Manager.

Once in Calc Manager, you’ll land on the System View tab, which appears as follows:

For purposes of this demonstration, I have created an EPMA enabled Planning application from the Sample.Basic application that we all know and love.  When the Planning node is expanded, this is what I see:

First, to help illustrate functionality available in Calc Manager, I’m going to create a script component that contains my standard SET commands for the rule.  In order to create the script component, right click on “Scripts” and click on “New”.  Give your script a name and click on “OK”.  This will launch the Component Designer.

From here, you have two options.  If you know what your SET commands need to be, you’re free to type them in directly.  If you wish to be prompted through the process, click on the  button at the top left corner of the Component Designer window.  This will launch a window with all of the calc functions and SET commands.  The following shot displays the function selection interface for SET commands.

For my purposes, I’m going to directly type my SET commands into the Component Designer.  Once complete, save and validate.

Think of script components as an easy way to reuse code…SET commands, standard cube aggregations and the like. 

Once we have saved the script component with our SET commands, it’s time to develop our rule.  To begin, right click on “Rules” under the database node and select “New”.    Give your rule a name and click on “OK”.  This will launch you into the Rule Designer window.

In this example, I’ll create a rule that aggregates the cube, using a run time prompt for the Version dimension.

We can now begin to develop our rule.  First, we’ll select the script component for our SET commands that we developed earlier.  Simply drag this into the rule designer to the right of “Start”.  The Rule Designer window now looks like this:

Let’s take this opportunity to create our variable for the Version dimension run time prompt.  Go to the “Tools” menu and select “Variables”.  Once the Variable Navigator launches, expand the Planning, application, and database nodes.  I’m going to create a run time prompt variable for the Version dimension.  Right click on your rule name and select “New”.  Once I populate the fields on the “Replacement” tab, my screen looks like this:

When complete, save the variable.  Now, back to our rule…

We’re going to specify members for our “Fix” statement.  To do this, select “Member Range” in the New Objects portion of the Rule Palette.  

To add to the rule, drag and drop to the right of the SET command script.  My screen looks like this:

Next, we’ll populate the members for our Fix statement.  I’ll start with Measures.  For my rule, I want to select all of the level 0 measures.  Once I click on the Value field for the Measures dimension, an Actions box appears. 

I want to select a Function.  This invokes the function selection window that we observed earlier.  I want to select @LEVMBRS from the list, which will then prompt for the dimension and level number.

I select Measures from the drop down box and enter “0” for the level name.  I’m going to repeat this process for all of my dense and non aggregating sparse dimensions, with the exception of the Version dimension.  This will be handled via the run time prompt.  For the Version dimension, select “Variable” in the Actions box.  Change the Category selection to “Rule” and this is what we see.

Highlight the variable and click OK.  My member range box looks like this:

Now, we’ll develop the script component to aggregate the Product and Market dimensions.  I’m going to drag a script from the “New Objects” portion of the Rule Palette into my member range.  The graphical display looks like:

Again, I’m going to select a function (AGG in this case).  I then select Products and Market from the dimension selector. 

Now, save and validate.  To deploy the rule to Planning, select Quick Deploy:

Once deployed, the rule can be run from Planning.

In this post, we’ve provided a walk through on developing a new rule using the graphical designer.  More experienced developers can directly code the calc in script mode.  To convert to script mode, select “Edit” and “Script” from the menu. 

In the next post, due by July 31, we’ll explore templates and ruleset creation.  In the meantime, please leave a comment if you have any questions!