The Uncharted Territory Ready to Be Discovered:

Hybrid Essbase

EDGEWATER RANZAL

Hyperion UKOUGJune 18th, 2015

Andra Iankovszky Ruxandra Cotumbeanu

Edgewater Ranzal is a full-service Oracle Platinum Consulting Partner delivering premier services in the UK and North America

We deliver Business Analytics solutions that include Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Business Intelligence (BI)

Our multiproduct focus offers domain expertise and technical leadership using the Oracle Hyperion Product Suite

We have industry expertise and specializations to help us deliver end-to-end solutions for each client’s business needs

Andra Iankovszky• Functional Skill Areas

– Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)– Activity Based Costing and Regulatory

Costing– Business Intelligence– Enterprise Planning and Budgeting– Consolidation

• Technical Skill Areas– Oracle (Hyperion)– Essbase (BSO / ASO)– HPCM (Hyperion Profitability and Cost

Management)– Calculation Manager– Shared Services / EPMA – SmartView – FDMEE, ODI– HFM

• Industry Exposure– Utilities– Telecommunications– Logistics\

Transportation– Financial Services

Industry– Investment Industry– Manufacturing

Ruxandra Cotumbeanu

• Functional Skill Areas– Enterprise Performance

Management (EPM)– Activity Based Costing and

Regulatory Costing– Business Intelligence– Enterprise Planning and Budgeting

• Technical Skill Areas– Oracle (Hyperion)– Essbase (BSO / ASO)– Calculation Manager– Shared Services / EPMA – SmartView– OBIEE– Financial Reporting

• Industry Exposure– Public Sector– Government– Financial Services

Industry– Investment Industry– Manufacturing– Hospitality– Automotive

What is Hybrid ???

• Hybrid Power• Hybrid Computer• Hybrid Bicycle• Hybrid Train• Hybrid Organization• Hybrid Analysis

…Hybrid Essbase

We hybrid…

A bit of Essbase history! Did you know that…• EssBase stands for: Extended Spread Sheet database

• Essbase has been used worldwide in the last 17 years

• Essbase has been named in August 2005, by Information Age magazine: “One of the 10 most influential technology innovations of the previous 10 years,[4] along with Netscape, the BlackBerry, Google, virtualization, Voice Over IP (VOIP), Linux, XML, the Pentium processor and ADSL.”

Source : Wikipedia, https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Essbase

A bit of Essbase history! Did you know that…

Since version 7, Essbase has supported two "storage options" : • BSO(Block storage (Essbase Analytics))

‐Complex calculations and data allocations.

‐Dense/Sparse dimensions

‐Essbase specific language for calc script and outline member formula

‐Write back at upper levels

• ASO(Aggregate storage (Enterprise Analytics))‐Fast data aggregations

‐Stored, dynamic and multiple hierarchies

‐MXD language for outline member formulas

‐Write back only at bottom levelSource : Wikipedia, https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Essbase

How do we use Essbase today?

Reporting Application

PlanningApplication

BSO ASO

• BSO application for single period/year• BSO application for data input and procedural calculations• ASO for aggregation and reporting• Partitioning or data export between BSO and ASO

How do we use Essbase today?

Planning/ReportingApplication

BSOHybrid

…how much time does the usual process need for update, maintenance and data transfer?

…what about using the new Hybrid Essbase option?

Why do we call it Hybrid Essbase?

• BSO applications functionalities with fast ASO aggregations

BSO ASOHybrid Essbase

More about Hybrid Essbase

• First introduced in 11.1.2.3.500 with limited functionalities, now at 11.1.2.4

• Comes as a setting/option on top of BSO applications

HybridBSO ASOInput of data at all levels Data input only on bottom levelsComplex procedural calculation accepted Limited procedural calculations

Does not support very large cubes and dimensions

Best solution for large cubes with many dimensions

Slow aggregations Fast aggregationsMore disk space required Lower disk space requiredSlower backup and restore time Quickly backup and restoreIdeal for financial applications Ideal for sparse data

How to transform a BSO in Hybrid?

1. Simply add the ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO into Essbase.cfg file

ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO [app [db]] NONE | PARTIAL | FULL

2. Change upper levels of sparse dimensions to Dynamic calc

!!! Update the solve order and dimensions order if needed.

!!! The Hybrid aggregation can be activated for single application or single database within an application.

How to transform a BSO in Hybrid?

ASODYNAMICAGGINBSO [app [db]] NONE | PARTIAL | FULL

There are tree options that can be chosen:‐ FULL—ASO aggregation used for both aggregations and formula calculations (limited options)

‐ PARTIAL — a mix between the ASO type aggregation(only outline aggregations based on the operators +, -, ~) and BSO formula mode

‐ NONE — default option - no hybrid aggregation for BSO

How to transform a BSO in Hybrid?

ASODYNAMICAGGINBSOFOLDERPATH• New folders are created in $ARBORPATH/hybrid/AppName:

‐default‐log‐metadata‐Temp

• When the application stops, the directories are removed, and when the application restarts, they are replaced.

What is new in 11.1.2.4 for Hybrid aggregations?

With the new release the list of available functions for hybrid has increased to 127 from only 17 in the previous release.

Some new functions added:

The following have been added:• Time-balance tagged members • Dynamic Time Series members

@ANCESTORS@ATTRIBUTE@CALCMODE@CONCATENATE@DESCENDANTS

@ISIPARENT@ISLEV@ISMBRUDA@ISMBRWITHATTR@MAX

@ICHILDREN@IDESCENDANTS@ISIBLINGS@ISICHILD@ISIDESC

@NEXT@RELATIVE@RETURN@UDA@SUM

What functionalities are not supported in hybrid?

• Attribute calculations• Cross-dimensional operators in formulas• Dynamic Calc members with formulas that

are target of transparent partitions• Queries with two-pass and one-pass dynamic

calc members from the same dimension• XOLAP• Text measures and text lists

What if functions are not supported in Hybrid?• The BSO mode is automatically enabled• You can always check in the application log which of the

2 aggregation options is used.

Hybrid Aggregation Mode enabled or Hybrid Aggregation Mode disabled

!!! If functions are not used in the appropriate mode the Hybrid solution might become slower than expected

Functions not available for hybrid member formula

@ACCUM@ALLOCATE@ANCEST@ANCESTVAL@AVGRANGE@COMPOUND@COMPOUNDGROWTH@CORRELATION@CREATEBLOCK@CURRMBR@CURRMBRRANGE@DECLINE@DISCOUNT@GROWTH@INTEREST

@IRR@IRREX@MDALLOCATE@MDANCESTVAL@MDPARENTVAL@MDSHIFT@MEMBER@MOVAVG@MOVMAX@MOVMED@MOVMIN@MOVSUM@MOVSUMX@NPV@PARENT@PARENTVAL

@PTD@SANCESTVAL@SHIFT@SLN@SPLINE@STDEV@STDEVP@STDEVRANGE@SYD@TREND@XRANGE@XREF@XWRITE

Accepted member references in formula

• Sparse member can reference a Sparse member• Dense member can reference a Dense member• Sparse member can reference a Dense(stored member)

and Sparse member

Best practices• What type of Hybrid Essbase to use?

NonePartialFull

• Calc scripts should reference stored sparse members

Best practices

• Limit the number of blocks retrieved by a query

QRYGOVEXECBLK [appname [dbname]] n

• Limit the time allowed for retrieval

QRYGOVEXECTIME [appname [dbname]] n

Test, test...and again: TEST!

BSO vs Hybrid – which is faster?

Retrieval

Calc script

Data aggregation

Dense restructure

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

BSO Hybrid

Final thoughts

Use Hybrid Essbase on applications:• that need quick aggregations• on which you need many dimensions• with many sparse dimensions and a very high number of

members• where the BSO procedural calculations is required • where the data needs to be recalculated often

It works on Hyperion Planning as well!

Q&AThank you!