Rittman Mead Blog - Technical Insights

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A collection of 878 posts

Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4.1 & Essbase Connectivity – Repository Design – Enabling drills on Evaluate Columns – Part 1

One of the common questions that generally come up in the BI EE and Essbase integration is, how do we enable drills on Evaluate based columns. I have covered in detail here [http://oraclebizint.wordpress.com/workshop-series/] with regard to the usage of Evaluate based MDX functions. As of the

Drilling Down in the Oracle Next-Generation Reference DW Architecture

If you've read this blog over the past year or heard me present at conferences on Oracle data warehouse architecture, you'll probably have seen this architecture diagram used at some point, put together by Doug Cackett, Simon Griffiths, Kevin Lancaster, Andrew Bond and Keith Laker from

An Update on Rittman Mead

Things have been pretty busy for us at Rittman Mead over the last six months, and so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to bring everyone up to speed as to where we are. Rittman Mead now has two offices, one in the UK run by Jon

Hyperion Planning 11.1.1.2 – New Smart view OracleSV protocol – Integration into smart view and other desktop applications – Part 1

In the last few blog entries, i have been covering some of the new features of the EPM 11 release. Continuing on the same line, lets look at another new feature that was introduced for integrating smart view with Hyperion Planning. The most common way of integrating multiple web based

Hyperion Essbase 11.1.1.2 – XOLAP – MDX to SQL Conversion – Part 1

One of the interesting aspects of XOLAP is the fact that it exposes Essbase as a dynamic relational aggregation engine. XOLAP to an extent is pretty good in determining what kind of sql should be pushed back to the relational sources and what requires custom in-memory calculations. For example, lets

Hybrid SCDs using OWB and OBIEE

If you attended my ODTUG Kaleidoscope presentation on Oracle Warehouse Builder (feel free to view the presentation [http://www.rittmanmead.com/files/odtug_owb_considerations.pdf]), then you know that certain aspects of the product leave me scratching my head, especially as a follower of the dimensional modeling approach popularized

Hyperion Essbase 11.1.1.2 – XOLAP – Reporting on Relational and Essbase sources together – Transparent Partitions

In the last 2 blog entries, i had covered 2 new features of EPM 11 Essbase. They were Format Strings [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2009/06/26/hyperion-essbase-11112-altering-measure-formats-format-strings-and-text-measures/] and Varying Attributes [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2009/06/29/hyperion-essbase-11112-varying-attributes/]. In today’s blog entry we shall see another

Hyperion Essbase 11.1.1.2 – Varying Attributes

Another excellent feature that was introduced as part of the EPM 11 release was the support for varying attributes. Varying attributes help in providing different perspectives of multiple attributes of a dimension over time. One can visualize this as SCD 2 in a relational world. For example, lets take the

Hyperion Essbase 11.1.1.2 – Altering Measure Formats – Format Strings and Text Measures

If you had read my blog entry here [http://oraclebizint.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/hyperion-essbase-1111-handling-textual-facts-text-list-manager-and-text-measures/] , i would have shown how to go about creating textual measures in Essbase. Though that was a new feature introduced as part of the EPM 11 release, one related feature that i did not

Visualizing relational data as Essbase/OLAP cubes – Partition Outer Joins and MODEL Clauses – Part 3

In a prior blog entry here [http://oraclebizint.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/oracle-bi-ee-10-1-3-4-1-%e2%80%93-report-sum-and-pivot-calculations-%e2%80%93-an-alternative-sql-on-oracle-10g-and-above-%e2%80%93-equivalence-to-mdx-%e2%80%93-model-clause-%e2%80%93-part-2/] , i had shown the advantages of using the MODEL clause. I also showed how the MODEL clause can be used to

Oracle BI EE – Bulk Write backs to Essbase – Using JAPI, Global Temporary Tables and UTL_HTTP – Part 2

I had covered an approach here [http://oraclebizint.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/oracle-bi-ee-10-1-3-4-1-writebacks-to-essbase-using-japi-and-custom-html-part-1/] to do write backs into Essbase from BI EE. In some cases that approach would be sufficient. But in most of the cases, end users would want the capability to do a bulk write back similar

Cardinality of Rowsources

One of the things I sometimes come across when looking at legacy ETL code for data loading is the misuse of query hints to "improve" data load performance. Sometimes DBAs or developers do not remember that "tuning the select" may not be the same thing as

Materialized View and Partitioning "Gotchas", Part II

If you follow the blog, then you know that Mark recently posted about materialized views for aggregation, located here. [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2009/04/18/materialized-view-and-partitioning-gotchas/] One of the issues he encountered was how to refresh materialized views based on tables loaded with partition exchanges... a common approach

OBI-ForumLive, and Gerard Braat on the BI Server and BI Apps

I'm currently waiting in the departures lounge at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, coming back from Utrecht after speaking at OBI-ForumLive [http://www.obi-forumlive.nl/], an OBIEE experts event organized by Ciber and Scamander in the Netherlands. Thanks to Rene and John from Ciber for inviting me over, and this

Fun and Games with OBIEE Connection Pools and Essbase Logins

When you bring in an Essbase database into the Oracle BI EE 10.1.3.4 and higher semantic model, you typically import it using the "admin" Essbase user ID. This is a standard account that comes with the default installation of Essbase and provides full access to

Dynamic SQL

One of my pet hates is the inappropriate use of dynamic SQL within ETL processes, for example building a command as VARCHAR2 string then using it in an "execute immediate" statement. Putting commands into strings whether hard-coded ones within the package or procedure, retrieved from some 'code&

Simple Steps to Sustainable ETL

Recently Stewart posted his first blog post here [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2009/04/22/using-a-partition-by-join-to-fill-in-the-gaps/] on the Rittman Mead Blog, it drew quite a bit of comment about using external techniques to the ETL to provide mechanisms to do things more efficiently or to do things that could

Using a PARTITION BY JOIN to Fill In The Gaps

As a quick introduction, I'm Stewart Bryson, Technical Director for North America. It seems strange to be posting an entry on this blog after so many years of reading it, and learning from it. The momentum it has in the community is something I do not take lightly,

What Skills Does an Oracle BI Developer Need in 2009?

One of the publications that I write for is the ODTUG Technical Journal, where I contribute a regular "business intelligence" column. ODTUG is aimed at technical developers and consultants, and so I was having a think about how the product skills required by such people have changed over

Using Essbase as an Aggregation Layer for Federated OBIEE Models

Now that the 11.1 release of Essbase is out [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/07/15/oracle-epm-aka-hyperion-system-95-now-available-for-download/] , together with Essbase Studio, an option that's now open to us is to use Essbase as an aggregation layer for OBIEE. You can build a single logical dimensional model

Analytic Views as OWB Data Source

Readers of my old blog - much now ported here to the Rittman Mead blog may remember my fondness for things SQL (rather than PL/SQL) and analytic functions in particular. It is not that I can't "do" PL/SQL it is more that I think

BI Management Pack Article now on OTN

My article on the BI Management Pack for Oracle Enterprise Manager and OBIEE [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/rittman-oem-bipack-087508.html] is now up on OTN. If you read my earlier blog posts on this product (here [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2008/11/18/investigating-the-oracle-bi-management-pack-for-obiee-and-dac/] , here [https://www.rittmanmead.

Rittman Mead and Kimball University Event

[http://www.rittmanmead.com/data-warehouse-lifecycle-in-depth/] The data warehouse continues to be one of the most organizationally complex and technically interesting projects in Information Technology. Rittman Mead are proud to announce this unique data warehousing training opportunity, in collaboration with Kimball University and Quest For Knowledge.Learn from Margy Ross and

Comparing ODI and OWB's Data Profiling and Quality Options

Now that Oracle Data Integrator [http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oracle-data-integrator/index.html] and Oracle Warehouse Builder are starting to converge [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2009/02/03/oracle-data-integrator-enterprise-edition/], I thought it worth taking a closer look at what's new with the 10.1.3.4

Breaking Silence

It is February and I have just realised that I have not added anything to the Rittman Mead Blog this year. Like all of my colleagues, I have been busy working with clients - so far this year I have worked on projects on OBIEE reporting over Oracle e Business