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Introduction ..............................................................................................................................................................3 SharePoint Central Admin Setup ..............................................................................................................................4 Install MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP ..................................................................................................................7 Setting Up the Shared Services Provider ..................................................................................................................8

Edit Excel Services Settings ...............................................................................................................................10 Trusted File Locations ........................................................................................................................................13 Trusted Data Connection Libraries ....................................................................................................................18 Trusted Data Providers .......................................................................................................................................20

Publishing a Spreadsheet to Excel Services ...........................................................................................................22 Uploading an Office Data Connection (.odc) File .............................................................................................22 Publishing the Spreadsheet ................................................................................................................................26

Using Excel Services Thin Web Client ..................................................................................................................28 References ..............................................................................................................................................................33

Microsoft Excel 2007 is the key final application for enterprise and departmental analysis and

reporting. When connected to an OLAP cube, it‟s capable of excellent ad hoc BI queries using cross-

tab PivotTables. It can also create excellent graphical dashboards with advanced features, such as

PivotCharts for insightful performance monitoring and analysis of your enterprise.

Microsoft Excel works with Simba Technologies‟ revolutionary MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP

product to enable live updates against the multi-dimensional cubes of an Oracle OLAP Option

Database.

The final cornerstone of this group of technologies is distribution of reports and dashboards to a

disperse group of users. Equally important is allowing other users to do further multi-dimensional

analysis and refresh, rather than referring to spreadsheets emailed within a company that have

indefinite age and origin (sometimes called „spreadmarts‟). Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Edition‟s

„Excel Services‟ feature is a great, “one version of the truth” centralizing solution to this distribution,

refresh and ad hoc query challenge. SharePoint‟s Excel Services also provide security and scaling.

Similarly, via an intelligent zero-footprint web client, it allows users to drill down, filter, sort and

refresh live from an Oracle OLAP cube.

This whitepaper describes how to publish Excel 2007 spreadsheets containing connections to external

data on Oracle OLAP to SharePoint‟s Excel Services (note that Excel 2003 cannot be used in Excel

Services). In particular, it covers some of the nuances of setting up trusted connections to Oracle

OLAP, setting up Simba‟s MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP as a trusted data source, and setting up

trusted locations to store these spreadsheets. We show how each of the technologies work together to

provide timely and insightful business intelligence for your enterprise.

This whitepaper concentrates on getting a simple Oracle-cube-based spreadsheet published to Excel

Services for the first time. The reader can later investigate on their own the advanced features like

Microsoft “Single Sign On” (SSO) and Kerberos authentication. References will be given for further

reading.

This whitepaper contains the following sections:

SharePoint Central Admin > Operations setup.

Installing MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP on your SharePoint server.

SharePoint Shared Services Provider setup of various needed Excel Services‟ trusted locations.

Saving an Excel spreadsheet with an OLAP connection to SharePoint‟s Excel Services.

Opening an Excel spreadsheet containing reference to external Oracle OLAP data, using the

Excel Services thin web client, and performing light ad hoc queries on it.

References

The “Excel Services” feature of Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) is only available in the

Enterprise version of that product. To check whether this is enabled, as an administrator, navigate to

the Central Administration web page of your SharePoint site and sign in. Navigate to the Central

Admin > Operations web page as shown below. At the very bottom of the screenshot below, you‟ll

find the Enable Enterprise Features link.

Also, in order to use Excel Services, you must start it as one of the services run by the master

SharePoint system. Second from the top in the screen shot above, in black underlined font, is the

Services on server link. Click that link. You can then start Excel Services, or make sure it is running,

as shown below.

For this simple test setup, you can see that we have chosen to run all the services on this one server. If

you are running a server farm, you will have to investigate some of the other radio button settings in the

middle of the above screenshot, including choosing which servers in the farm you want to be tasked

with Excel calculations.

This whitepaper continues with information on how to manage security on your SharePoint server.

You may want users to only be able to refresh and drill/sort/filter your PivotTable data from external

sources that are „trusted‟. In fact:

You‟ll likely want users to only be able to access data through trusted Office Data Connection

files (.odc) files. These are trusted because they are in a Trusted Connection Library (list)

maintained by an administrator. They can‟t be easily re-directed because of the security applied

by the administrator. It also centrally locates the connection information so, in the event of a

server name/location change, all users can be administratively re-directed to the new location.

The connections must specify a trusted data provider (a database driver or OLAP provider).

You must register the underlying name of your MDX Provider, which prevents intruders

replacing a driver or provider.

You‟ll likely want the actual Excel files that specify the PivotTable and .odc connection file to

be in a trusted location. SharePoint allows you to specify trusted file locations and manage

access rights to each file.

A misconfiguration at any step can prevent data drill/refresh. The purpose of this whitepaper is to ease

your first configuration of these settings.

Note that there are also a number of Microsoft references on this subject, but a good place to start is

“Plan Excel Services Security” at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263086.aspx. We also

include a list of references at the end of this whitepaper.

In order for spreadsheets stored on SharePoint‟s Excel Services to access Oracle OLAP Option data

cubes, you must install Simba‟s “MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP” product on your SharePoint

Enterprise Edition server(s).

As mentioned above, you can run the Excel Calculation Service on a subset of your SharePoint server

farm. You‟ll need to install Simba‟s MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP on at least one server before

proceeding with the configuration below for that server. Follow the directions in the MDX Provider

for Oracle OLAP “User and Administrator Guide”.

In order to set up some aspects of Excel Services, you will need to configure the SharePoint “Shared

Services Provider” (SSP) that hosts Excel Services. Usually there is only one running SSP called

“SharedServices1”.

To access the SSP settings, click on the “SharedServices1” link in the top right area of the Central

Administration screen shown above. You may be required to enter your username and password again.

The results will be:

Notice the five links in the Excel Services Settings section. This whitepaper will describe the first four

of these that configure:

General Excel Services settings.

File locations that Excel Services will trust to load spreadsheets from.

Libraries of Office Data Connection (.odc) files that can be used to specify the location of

external data for Excel.

Names of drivers/providers (mentioned in .odc files) that Excel Services will be trusted to

fetch/process external data during OLAP drilldown and refresh.

Let‟s look at each of these one at a time.

When you click on the Edit Excel Services Settings link in the screenshot above, you will be taken to

the following long web page (captured in the next three screenshots):

For the simple case of using Oracle usernames and passwords, the Security > File Access Method

doesn‟t directly seem to matter. However, Simba has found that changing this setting can cause

problems if you don‟t subsequently re-start SharePoint.

Note that if you move on to using Single Sign On or Kerberos, some of these settings, as well as others

below, may be important.

Note that if you want to hold open a connection for longer than 30 minutes, the Connection Lifetime

setting may be of interest (later in this whitepaper you‟ll also see the Session Trusted File Location >

Session Management > Session Timeout and the Session Trusted File Location > External Data >

External Data Cache Lifetime settings).

The Unattended Service Account settings are not needed when using a simple Oracle username and

password in the connection string.

Click OK to save your settings. NOTE: As mentioned earlier, since this page sets up all of Excel

Services, changing some items on this page will cause access problems for refresh and drill access from

the thin web client if you don‟t restart SharePoint.

From the SharedServices1 screen, click the Trusted file locations link. You will get the following

web page.

Notice the blue Add Trusted File Location bar/button in the middle of the screenshot. Also as shown

above, notice that if you hover gently over the right side of an entry in the address column, you get the

option to Edit or Delete an existing trusted file location.

Click the long blue Add Trusted File Location button to get the following long web page, which is

discussed over several subsequent screen shots.

Your SharePoint administrator can help you decide the Location > Address on SharePoint to put your

Excel files so that they can be centrally served, managed and protected. Fill in the address of this

location on your SharePoint server. It could even be a SharePoint user‟s „shared files‟ location.

For Location Type, choose Windows SharePoint Services since you want SharePoint to hold,

manage and make accessible your Excel spreadsheet.

For Trusted Children, you may to check this box so you can construct a hierarchy of Excel files,

perhaps one directory for each department in your enterprise.

The above web page continues with a number of settings for timeouts shown below.

Simba has found that several of these timeouts are worth increasing to prevent the minor annoyance of

having to refresh and re-drill.

Increase the Session Timeout so that you can ignore the spreadsheet for more than five minutes

(300 seconds) before resuming ad hoc query drilling, etc.

Increase the Short Session Timeout so you can ignore the spreadsheet for more than 75

seconds on initial opening, before starting a first ad hoc query.

The Maximum Query Duration should likely stay at five minutes (300 seconds), unless you

suspect there will be very long queries.

You will find these settings further down on this web page.

You definitely want to Allow External Data. You must decide whether you want to only allow web

client users of spreadsheets in this trusted data location to access spreadsheets that refer to external data

only via trusted data connection libraries, or also through connection strings embedded in the uploaded

Excel Spreadsheet.

You may want to uncheck the Warn on Refresh checkbox, to avoid warning dialogs whenever a thin

web client user does something to the spreadsheet that requires retrieving external data it is based on.

Note that there are some more refresh settings that you may want to investigate (along with some in the

Excel 2007 spreadsheet itself) that might be useful for self-refreshing workbooks.

At the bottom of the above screenshot, you can enable user defined functions. Not all Excel features

are available from Excel Services, especially via the thin web client. Furthermore, some user defined

functions pose a minor security risk, so require enabling. You can enable this on a trusted location by

trusted location basis.

Make sure you click the OK button at either the top or bottom of the web page in order to save your

settings.

In order to prevent Excel Services located spreadsheets from using connection information not under

SharePoint‟s control, the ShareServices1 web page previously seen provides a link named Trusted

data connection libraries. If you click this link, you get the following web page.

You can hover over the right end of the address column for an existing data connection library to edit

or delete a data connection library.

Alternatively, click the large blue Add Trusted Data Connection Library button in the middle of the

screenshot above. This will result in a simple dialog page allowing you to specify where on the

SharePoint server you want to centrally locate your trusted Office Data Connection (.odc) files.

As shown above, you enter a URL for the location on the server, as well as a brief description. Then

click OK.

In order to guarantee that users cannot be presented with data that has been corrupted by a rogue

database driver or OLAP data provider, you should add Simba‟s MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP data

provider in the following manner.

In the SharedServices1 main web page previously seen, navigate into Trusted data providers. You

will get a list of trusted providers, which by hovering you can select to edit or delete. Similar to earlier

web operations, you will also see a large blue Add Trusted Data Provider button. Click that button to

get a web page similar to the one immediately below.

Set the Provider Type to OLE DB and enter a meaningful description.

For Simba‟s MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP, enter the provider ID that is used in your Excel

connection. You can see this provider name in an Excel PivotTable‟s connection string, visible below

from Excel‟s Data > Connections > Properties (see “Provider=OracleMdxProvider” below).

Note that the above trusted provider can be used by dozens of trusted connections specified by Excel

files located in dozens of trusted file locations.

Before publishing a spreadsheet containing a connection to an Oracle OLAP Option data source, you

should first upload the Office Data Connection (.odc) file to the Trusted Data Connection Library.

Then, you will publish the spreadsheet itself (that uses that data connection) to the trusted file location.

Currently, a requirement is that the Oracle username and password for the correct cube be included in

the .odc or .xlsx file. The Excel Services thin web client does not provide for the user to enter the

password at session initiation.

Publishing an Excel spreadsheet to Excel Services does not get the .odc connection file uploaded.

Since we want the .odc file to be on the server for central management and security, we need to obtain

one that works and upload it.

This work should be done by someone who has upload permissions to the Trusted Data Connection

Library on SharePoint.

First, create a connection and PivotTable to an Oracle OLAP Option cube using the techniques outlined

in the MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP “User and Administrator Guide”. Along the way, give the

connection .odc file a very distinctive file name and a very distinctive „friendly name‟. Test the

spreadsheet through the connection.

The process of creating a connection will have stored a .odc file in your My Documents\My Data

Sources directory (unless you forced it elsewhere).

Using the URL that you used to create a trusted data connection library (e.g. http://deshare2007/DCL),

you should see something like the following.

To the right of the Upload button, click the downward facing black triangle. The resulting pop-up

menu (shown above) will allow you to choose Upload Document. Select the location of your .odc file

and upload it. Be sure when working on multiple machines that you are accessing the correct My Data

Sources directory. The distinctive name you used on the previous page of this whitepaper should help.

After the upload, you should see the following.

The first yellow warning implies the document has been uploaded: but, according to the second yellow

warning, it is not yet public. This gives an administrator a chance to test the .odc file in its new

location.

Add a more detailed description and click OK.

Find the newly uploaded .odc file. Notice on the far right that it is in the Pending state.

If you hover over the right hand end of the Name column of your uploaded .odc file, you get a pop-up

menu as shown above. You may want to withhold approving it until you, as the administrator, can test

it with Excel (as described below). But, don‟t forget to come back and Approve/reject the file so other

less privileged users can use spreadsheets that use that central .odc file.

Rather than publishing the previously created spreadsheet that used a local .odc file, we advise that you

create a new spreadsheet that uses the newly located and approved data connection. This also tests that

other users can now use your uploaded .odc file.

When you are creating a new spreadsheet, from the ribbon, you can choose Data > Get External Data >

Existing Connections. Depending on what machine you are on and your permissions, you should be

able to see the following.

If you want to use a .odc connection file that has already been published to SharePoint, it should appear

in the “Data Connection Library on the Connection” section. If you don‟t see it, please see the section

entitled “Exposing the data connection library in the Office client” here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262899.aspx#subsection9.

Choose the connection that you just uploaded from the data connection library and then build your

spreadsheet.

Save your spreadsheet locally.

Now we‟re going to „publish‟ to SharePoint‟s Excel Services. Click the Office Button in the top left

corner of your Excel window, then select Publish > Excel Services.

Navigate to the appropriate trusted file location that you set earlier (for example: My SharePoint > My

Site > Shared Documents) and give the file an appropriate public name.

Also check the Open in Excel Services checkbox to enable users to view this through the thin

web client (rather than just downloading the spreadsheet).

Optionally, click the Excel Services Options button and indicate if you want to publish only

some of the worksheets to Excel Services.

One of the great facets of Excel Services is to offer PivotTables and PivotChart dashboards to users

who perhaps don‟t have the latest version of Excel. Similarly, Excel Services precludes users from

changing a centrally located spreadsheet and emailing it to others, which would thus create

spreadmarts.

Excel Services therefore offers an Excel PivotTable and PivotChart web interface. This is not a passive

web page, but allows active user drill down into an OLAP dimension, filtering on members of an

OLAP dimension, sorting and refresh from the OLAP data source.

If you navigate using Internet Explorer to the trusted data file location on SharePoint, you might see

something like the following.

Notice that our sample olaptrain spreadsheet is listed near the bottom. The screenshot shows what

happens when we hover over the spreadsheet name and right-click the small triangle at the right end of

the name. This brings up the pop-up menu captured on the previous screenshot.

If you are not an administrator or owner of this published spreadsheet, you will only see the pop-up

choices shown above. You will not see the full and proper Edit in Microsoft Office Excel. Even if

you choose Snapshot in Excel, you won‟t be able to drill or refresh the resulting spreadsheet that you

get in the full, thick Excel client. Likewise, you can‟t save it, or email it to someone else, which is a

good thing. It prevents something we talked about earlier in this whitepaper: „spreadmarts‟, the

distribution of data of unknown source and age via spreadsheets. It forces everyone to go to the “one

version of the truth” up-to-date source on Excel Services.

However, from Excel Services web view, you do get some ad hoc query ability if you View in Web

Browser. You‟ll get a very realistic and interactive thin client version of the spreadsheet. Here is a

simple example.

Notice that the „+‟ icons for drilling down into a dimension hierarchy are active. The screenshot above

shows the CY2006 year has been expanded.

By clicking on the downward triangle to the right of the Row Labels column header, you get the

following.

In this example, it gives you the ability to sort first or most recent year first, and it provides similar

capability at different levels in the hierarchy.

Using the Value Filters option in the above screenshot, you gain this kind of filtering:

Alternately, the Filter… option brings up the following dialog box. This allows you to selectively

check which branches (at any level) or leaves of a hierarchy you want to show.

The thin web client allows you to do most powerful ad hoc queries needed, using a familiar interface.

You can also do this with cross-tabulation-formatted PivotTables that have additional dimensions on

columns – perhaps even several nested dimensions on the column axis. In addition, note that

PivotCharts from the original spreadsheet show in the thin client and update automatically when you

drill and filter.

While the thin web client does not have the entire set of Excel OLAP features, it has the most essential

subset.

Plan External Data Connections for Excel Services

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262899.aspx

Plan Excel Services Security (very good)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263086.aspx

Chapter Overview: Configure Excel Services

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263517.aspx

Excel Calculation Services: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263457.aspx

Excel Services Resource Center:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb203828.aspx

White Paper – Excel Services Step-By-Step Guides

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263430.aspx