HFM 11.1.2.4 and Copy App Utility - NOT!

I've been working with HFM 11.1.2.4 for over a month now and have been impressed with the improvements in the product. BUT, there is one "improvement" that is not an improvement but a step or five backwards. I'm not saying to not implement 11.1.2.4 - it's a good thing, but this one change isn't a good thing.

For years we've used the HFM Copy Application utility to copy an application from one environment to another. It opens connections to each of the databases and copies the records table by table. Worked great.

With 11.1.2.4, the main focus was to remove the dependencies on Microsoft Windows. That means the Windows utilities went away, including Copy App. What it was replaced with (and that part is good as there were other utilities not replaced, at least not yet) is a new feature in Lifecycle Management that copies an application. It does make sense, as LCM's purpose is to migrate artifacts (things like rules, forms, etc.) from one environment to another. But in practice, it's a step back. LCM writes out to a zipped file on the server that then must be copied over to the other environment and then imported in. This introduces disk I/O three times to the process, compared to zero with the open databases and copy tables/records approach. If an app is really large, you could be waiting and waiting for the huge output file to move around.

Hopefully with time there will be an improvement here later on.

Oracle Visual Analyzer and Other New Stuff

Taking a break on working through EPM 11.1.2.4 and rewriting my 123OLAP manuals. Hope to have the revised HFM Admin class ready in a few weeks or so and a couple new classes right after that.

Anyway, the other day I was at an Oracle event in Charlotte NC and got a look at an upcoming product, called Oracle Visual Analyzer. No date was given for the release but it sounded like 2015 - we'll see. OBI as a whole isn't my area of expertise, but this looked really good and I hope it can be used with EPM eventually. Here are the notes I got from it - note that I may have heard something wrong, got told something wrong, can't read my notes correctly, etc.

• Uses just a browser, whether computer or mobile. No addin needed as it's HTML5
• Connect to a data source, drag and drop the fields that you want to analyze, and the screen starts showing graphics
• The style of graphics can be changed and go way beyond bar and pie charts
• If a part of the graph has data that doesn't mean anything, you can highlight it and do a remove only and zoom in on the data that means something
• Can upload a spreadsheet, do some field mapping, and integrate the data with another data source - thought I heard this will expand to allow merging/mashing multiple online data sources together
• Can also switch to a data view, but the power here is in the visualizations
• Not meant for production reports like Publisher but more ad hoc analysis
• On premise version will be 12c based not 11g based

You get the idea that this is Smart View ad hoc analysis, except through a web page and graphically instead of numerically. Quite cool. Apparently it isn't all that new, though, as here's a YouTube video on it from Sep 14: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJKCL4efTQI.

The other thing they talked about was a new product, just released, called Oracle Big Data Discovery, a visual interface for a Hadoop cluster. Check it out at https://cloud.oracle.com/bigdatadiscovery. Something else mentioned that was in development was a voice interface for mobile, currently called BI Ask. Think Siri for Oracle - hmm, maybe call it Larry?


Back to EPM 11.1.2.4....

HFM 11.1.2.4 - Consolidation Administration First Look

Getting my first look at HFM 11.1.2.4 today. Working through building an application and seeing what's new and different there, but in the meantime thought I'd post a teaser.

In Consolidation Administration there are a couple of new items (well, they may have snuck into a 11.1.2.3.whatever release and I may have missed them). First in the System area there is a section called Settings that shows the entries that we typically tweak for performance optimization. With this, it looks like we'll no longer need to go into the registry to make these changes.

Seecond, there is a Profile Editor that allows building the PER file for creating a new classic application. Now there's no need to have the Windows client to do this, but the Windows client is available for 11.1.2.4 for creating the profile and managing metadata (Classic apps). Not seeing a web metadata manager yet so maybe there's no need for the Windows client if you're sticking with a Classic app.

The third thing I see that I think is new - again, I may have missed it - is the Configure DSN option. With this you can set up links for database connections for the export of HFM data to the database/table instead of going to a flat file. This used to be done in the software configurator.

Just a teaser for now. Looking forward to new discoveries on this new version.

11.1.2.4 now available - sort of

The long awaited release of 11.1.2.4 is now available, but only from OTN, not edelivery. The links can be found here.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/epm/downloads/index.html?ssSourceSiteId=ocomen

The edelivery release should be coming soon along with documentation. Right now there is no documentation, but there are apparent changes about certain platforms being dropped (Windows XP, Vista, Windows 2003 Server, IE7, IE8, etc.). Once I get an environment going I'll be looking at specific changes to HFM and associated modules.

HFM Security and the [Default] Security Class

The other day there was a post on the Oracle HFM forum where someone had two screenshots of from security and asking about the difference in them. One screenshot had the [Default] class set to ALL and the other screenshot had the [Default] class set to NONE. What's the difference and why is this important? For those who have not taken the 123OLAP HFM Administrator Bootcamp training class with my manual (see Chapter 6 - Shared Services), here are the details.

In HFM security classes are used to link metadata elements and various artifacts (data grids, data forms, journals, etc.) to users and/or groups with some level of access (NONE, READ, ALL, etc.). When a class isn't assigned to something, then the built-in [Default] class is used by the software. From a design standpoint, there are two primary ways of working with this behavior.

1) Give users ALL access to [Default]. If something isn't specifically secured then it's open for the users to modify, assuming everything else allows that.

2) Give users NONE access to [Default]. If something isn't specifically secured with access granted then it is not available to the users.

3) You could do something weird like give users one of the other levels of access to [Default] (Metadata, Read, or Promote) but really they're just variations on (2).

By far, number (1) is the preferred security design. The administrator secures what should be secured and everything else is left open. This design reduces the work in the initial setup and in ongoing maintenance. Also, and this is big, end users don't have to worry about security. If they create a HFM journal, ideally they assign a security class to it that relates to the entity being adjusted (ie, show the Canada journal to only the Canadians and not everyone else). BUT, if they don't assign a class, then with (1) they can still see the journal, edit it, etc. Under (2), if they don't assign a class to the journal then when they save the journal will appear to disappear: it's been correctly saved, but security is not letting them see it.

For some new administrators this can be a tough concept. If you're setting up security on a network firewall, you close all the network ports and open only those that are needed, right? But for HFM, it works best (and its widely done this way) to leave everything open and secure only the necessary metadata/artifacts.

EPM 11.1.2.4 - still waiting

The big wait going on right now, other than waiting for KScope and Collaborate, is for release 11.1.2.4. This huge release was first scheduled by the end of 2014, but apparently there's more work to be done. With HFM, there are major changes, like the use of Linux instead of Microsoft Windows for the application server, so I'd rather have a delay now versus delays when trying to use the software and it doesn't work.

In the meantime, take a look at the two conferences mentioned above. They both have worthwhile content and are great for catching up with news and techniques for the Oracle EPM suite.

Collaborate - collaborate15.com - April - Las Vegas, NV

KScope - kscope15.com - June - Hollywood, FL

Who are you going to call?

When I work with clients new to HFM one of the many questions they ask is "where do I go for help when I need something?" Fortunately, there's a long list of available resources and here's what I tell them.

• Online help does a good job (usually but there are exceptions) of explaining the use of features.
• The original consulting firm(s), as they have the best external knowledge of how the software was configured to meet the requirements. But follow the people and not necessarily the firm.
• Oracle technical support, as they are the go-to contact to deal with product issues.
• Oracle online forum, found at https://community.oracle.com/community/business_intelligence/performance_management_applications/financial_consolidation - ask questions and get answers from others.
• HFM group on Yahoo!. The nice thing about this group is that there is history going back to the early days of HFM. Some things, like data form scripts, haven't changed much if at all. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/OracleHyperionFinancialManagement/info
• Online searches, looking for blog posts, presentations, etc.
• User group conferences, mainly KScope and Collaborate and OpenWorld.