advanced security option (aso) for reporting purposes

The Right Tool For the Job:

ASO for Reporting Purposes

The Brewery, London Tuesday, 15th October 2013

Presentation Agenda

• Introduction to Edgewater Ranzal and your Speakers!

• What’s Great about ASO?

• Design3

• Optimisation

• Tips ‘n’ Tricks

• Q&A

• Assessment forms

• Lunch

Page 3

Introduction to Edgewater Ranzal

16+ Years 700 + clients

1,200 + projects

Focussed

Services

Methodology

People

Customers

Relationships

Our Services Dashboards & Scorecards, Profitability & Cost

Mgmt, Financial Analytics & Reporting,

Operational Analytics, What-if Analysis, Query &

Reporting, Visual Exploration

Planning, Budgeting, Forecasting,

Workforce Planning, Capital Planning,

Project Planning, Campaign Planning,

Strategic Finance

Project/Program Mgmt, EPM Road Maps,

Application Reviews, Business

Requirements, Process Change,

Documentation

Business

Intelligence

Planning

Support

Services

Project

Management

Support Services - Project/Program Mgmt,

EPM Road Maps, Application Reviews,

Business Requirements, Process Change,

Documentation

Our Services

Consolidation

Business

Intelligence

Planning

Infrastructure

Training

Support

Services

Data

Services

Project

Management

Financial performance, Legal,

Segment & Mgmt Reporting, Financial Close

HFM Optimization, Performance Lab

SOX Compliance Support

Data Integration, Financial Data

Management, Data Warehousing, Master Data

Management, ETL Services, Performance

Tuning, Automation

Installation, Upgrades, Migration, System

Monitoring, Backup and Recovery, Disaster

Recovery, Load Testing, Hardware Sizing,

Exalytics Benchmarking

Key Teach Course Delivery: Planning, Essbase,

Financial Reporting, Smart View, HPCM, HFM,

FDM, DRM, OBIEE.

Custom Training Delivery: Process & Reporting

Introductions

Mark Drayton • Certified Hyperion Professional in:

• Hyperion Essbase

• Over 8 years of technical experience in

Planning, Budgeting and Analysis. A

portfolio of client engagements from

different industries

• Financial Services

• Consumer Products

• Professional Services

• Health Industry

Areas of expertise in EPM - Essbase,

Planning, HPCM, Data Integration and multi

product implementations.

Jerome Williams • Certified Hyperion Professional in:

• Hyperion Essbase

• Planning

• Over 7 years of technical experience in

Planning, Budgeting and Analysis. A

portfolio of client engagements from

different industries

• Financial Services

• Insurance

• Local Government

Areas of expertise in EPM – Reporting,

Planning, Essbase and HPCM

6 years of Management Accountant

experience

Page 7

What’s Great about ASO…

• Lev0 Data Only

• Data can be submitted via

Smart View!

• No CSC, but MDX & REP’s

will work

• Materialised views.

• All calculations are made

on the fly.

• 2 Type of Data: Input &

Derived.

The Basics

Page 8

What’s Great about ASO…

• ASO can support many

more dimensions –

limitless!

• And these can support

000’s & 000,000’s of

members.

• Supports many Sparse

dimensions.

The Basics

Volumes

Page 9

What’s Great about ASO…

• Since v7 ASO has seen a

number of significant

improvements

• Key component to HPCM

(Standard)

• Now features as an option

in Hyperion Planning

(v11.1.2.3)

• Source of OBIEE

The Basics

Volumes

Strategic

Page 10

What’s Great about ASO…

• Using Calculation Manager

it is now possible to write

ASO scripts!

• Reusable templates in a

graphical interface

• MDX knowledge not

required

The Basics

Volumes

Strategic Calc

Manager Rules

Page 11

What’s Great about ASO…

• Bring great flexibility to the

application architecture.

• Makes a significant

improvement to the user

experience

The Basics

Volumes

Strategic Calc

Manager Rules

Archi-tecture

Page 12

Design3 - Dimensionality

• Maximise the use of Stored

dimensions

• Consider the use of

Analytic dimensions

• Does your Accounts

dimension need to be

flagged as ”Accounts”?

• Dimensionality

Design3 - Stored Hierarchies

Advantages:

• Only Stored Dimensions can have

Aggregated Views created.

• Aggregated Views are used to

improve query performance (Ad-hoc

/ Report Script)

Considerations:

• Limited member properties

– Limited use of operators (+ ~ ^)

– Limited use of Label Only

• Only allows one member - no

Shared Members

Dimension

Level_1_2

Level_0_3

Level_2_1

Level_1_1

Level_0_1

Level_0_2

Label Only

Label Only

Stored

+

~

Label Only

+

+

+

~

Level_0_4 +

Label Only

Design3 - Dynamic Hierarchies

Advantages:

• Anything goes!

– All operators (~, ^, +, %, - , /, *)

– Shared Members

– Member formulas

Considerations:

• No Aggregated Views!

• Large dimensions will impact

performance

Years

Curr Year

Prev Year

Variance

Dynamic

~

~

+

Variance % ~

[20: [Curr Year]-[Prev Year]]

[20: ([Curr Year]-[Prev Year])/[Prev Year]*100]

Label Only

Design3 - Multiple Hierarchies

You can combine stored and dynamic hierarchies in a single dimension.

Page 16

Design3 – Dimensionality “Classic”

16

Page 17

Design3 – Dimensionality “Analytic”

17

Page 18

Design3 – Dimensionality “Analytic”

18

Time

Analytic

Page 19

Design3 – Dimensionality +1

MDX

Design3 – Dimensionality +2 Design3 – Dimensionality +3 Design3 – Dimensionality +4 Design3 – Dimensionality +5

Page 20

Design3 - Function

• Dimensionality

• Function - How is the application to be used?

• Smart View ad-hoc

• HFR

• OBIEE

• Part of an integrated

solution

HFR

Page 21

Design3 – Data Load

• Dimensionality

• How is the application to be used?

• Data Load

• Frequency

• Size

• Data Relevance

Page 22

Design3 – Data Relevance

Data Set

Years

Scenario 60%

30%

10%

90%

Passive

10%

Active

Logical Physical

Passive

Passive

Active

2013

Page 23

Optimisation

23

3 Areas to consider…

• Data Loading

• Retrieval Performance

• Metadata updates

• User Experience

Page 24

Optimisation - Data Load

24

What’s the user experience during data load:

• No Access!

1st Question to ask:

• Does the data need to be loaded during operational hours?

Solution:

• Yes - Create a “Lights-out” operation

• No – Optimisation and / or Switching (hints ‘n’ tips)

Page 25

Optimisation - Data Load

“Lights-out” Benefits:

• Users get greater application access & less

disruption.

• A proven and repeatable process – less error

prone.

• The admin now has more time to spend on

“value add” activities.

Page 26

Optimisation - Data Load

Pre “Pre” Tasks! • CALC PARALLEL

• DLTHREADSPREPARE

• DLTHREADSWRITE

Pre Data Load Task:

• Use compression dimension members as column headers

• Replace 0 with #Mi

• Sort the rows

Method:

• Keep it simple – No ETL in the load process

• Load to the buffer

• Physical / Logical clears

Page 27

Optimisation - Data Load

Logical Physical

14

20

54

23

-14

-20

-54

-23

0

0

0

0

14

20

54

23

x1 Slice

• Quicker than a physical clear

• But can impact retrieval performance

• Bit slower than logical

• Doesn’t impact retrieval performance

• No merge required

Page 28

Optimisation – Retrieval Performance

• Essbase CFG Setting: PRELOADALIASNAMESPACE

PRELOADMEMBERNAMESPACE

• Materialise view

• Use of Query Tracking

• Cache Settings

• Retrieval Buffer

• Retrieval Sort Buffer

• User understanding (ad hoc)

• Design3! ! !

Page 29

Optimisation – Metadata Uploads

29

• Deleting Members doesn’t Compact the outline, use: Alter database DBS-NAME compact outline;

• Essbase CFG (Data):

DLTHREADSPREPARE [appname [dbname]] n

DLTHREADSWRITE [appname [dbname]] n

CALCPARRALLEL [appname [dbname]] n

OPGCACHESIZE n

Page 30

Tips ‘n’ Tricks

30

1. Create your own MDX – No experience necessary!

2. EPMA

3. ASO Switching

MDX

Page 31

Tips ‘n’ Tricks – Create your own MDX!

31

Step 1 – Update the Essbase.cfg

Step 2 – Restart Essbase

Step 3 – Setup the retrieval

Step 4 – Convert to a Smart Slice

Step 5 – Check the mdxtrace.log

Page 32

Tips ‘n’ Tricks – Create your own MDX!

32

Where & When…

• Automation of Reporting

• Create an accurate MaxL clear region

• Aide to development

• MDX can be executed from Smart View

Development only!

Page 33

Tips ‘n’ Tricks – EPMA

Helios Switching Mechanism

33

• EPMA – doesn’t handle dimensions shared between BSO / ASO

very well.

• Watch out for dimension names –v- dimension aliases

• Can’t have duplicate dimension names in the Shared Library

• There’s 3 levels of validation:

• ADS Import

• Application Validation

• Application Deployment

• Select Top Members / Exclude members

• Try to avoid loading all structures in one ADS file

Page 34

Tips ‘n’ Tricks – ASO Switching

Helios Switching Mechanism

34

Temp Offline

Active

Data Update

Page 35

Q&A

Helios Switching Mechanism

35

Page 36

Helios Switching Mechanism

36

The Right Tool For the Job:

ASO for Reporting Purposes

Please Fill Out Your Evaluations

Mark Drayton

mdrayton@ranzal.com

Page 37

Useful URLs

Helios Switching Mechanism

37

Smart View – OBE http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/smart-view-for-office/tutorials/index.html

About UKOUG

UKOUG exists to serve the Oracle

community in the UK and Ireland. We act

as a focal point for sharing knowledge

about Oracle applications, technologies,

tools and developments and, as an

independent, not for profit membership

organisation, represent the views of

users and partners to Oracle.

© Copyright 2011 UKOUG

Contact

User Group House

591-593 Kingston Road

Wimbledon

London

SW20 8SA

T: +44 (0)20 8545 9670

W: www.ukoug.org

Aggregate Storage Option is not something new in the Hyperion world; nevertheless there is reluctance in using this technology even by experienced Hyperion Professionals. BSO is closer to their comfort zone, months of development go into these types of databases, whereas ASO is left behind, and used only in the latter part of the development, rarely given the required level of attention. ASO is an amazing technology ideal for reporting purposes. Why would we spend months developing a BSO database if no user can actually gain any value from it? What should we do if reports are too slow to run, results are not quick, aggregations take too long, and the Hyperion application simply does not satisfy today’s fast information needs? ASO can solve all that, and it can also support larger amounts of data, a bigger amount of members. Any reporting hierarchy required can potentially be built in this technology, without impacting calculation times, block sizes, retrieval times as it would in a BSO structure. The Ranzal team will present the intricacies of ASO, tips and tricks, best practices and gotcha’s. The audience will learn how to use Essbase to its full potential when building reporting solutions. Participants will be challenged to step out of the BSO box and leverage the full potential of the Oracle Hyperion software. - See more at: http://www.apps13.ukoug.org/default.asp?p=9992&prsid=8237&spkact=edit#sthash.dvcCzFfc.dpuf

July 2011, Marketing Analytics Page 39

• ASO Use Cases (SALT n PEPA)

• Smart Slices and MDXTrace.log

• ASO Parallel load

• Use of Analytic dimensions

• Generic ASO

• Remember: Could NOT How!!!!

July 2011, Marketing Analytics Page 40