1.
Incredible ODI tips to work
with Hyperion tools that
you ever wanted to know
Ricardo Giampaoli
Rodrigo Radtke

2.
About the Speakers
Giampaoli, Ricardo
• Oracle Ace
• Master in Business
Administration and IT
management
• EPM training instructor
• Essbase/Planning/OBIEE/ODI
Certified Specialist
• Blogger @ devepm.com
Radtke, Rodrigo
• Oracle Ace
• Graduated in Computer
Engineering
• Software Developer Sr. Advisor
at Dell
• ODI, Oracle and Java Certified
• Blogger @ devepm.com

3.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
What we'll learn
• Looping ODI Objects
• Dynamic “OS” commands
• Powerful “Dynamic Variables”
• Substitution Tags and how useful they are
• Dynamic Topology
• “Third Command Tab“ Technic
• ODI custom execution information
• Stop, Start and Restart ODI priority jobs automatically

4.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Looping ODI Objects (Regular Way)
• Too much work to control complex loop order and parameter variables
• More ODI Objects to maintain
• Harder to make it dynamic

5.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Looping ODI Objects (Champion Way)
• Easy to control complex loop order and parameter variables
• Less ODI Objects to maintain
• Easier to make it dynamic
• Be careful about the Log Counter and parallel executions

6.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Looping ODI Objects (Champion Way)
• Command on Source
• Always a Select command
• Command on Target
• DML commands
• Inserts, Update, delete, truncate, create…
• ODI Commands
• odiStartScen, odiFileXxxx, OS Command...
• Programming languages
• Java/groove/jython…

7.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Looping ODI Objects (Champion Way)
• Loop virtually anything
• Can “Generate” dynamic code
• Using ALL_TAB_COLUMNS we can change the code in
the “command on target” dynamically
• Change the columns dynamically
• Change the code in the WHERE/AND statement
• Creating SQL code (regular expression depending on the
amount of columns of the source table/repository)
• Using LISTAGG we can build models dynamically

8.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Dynamic "OS" Commands
• Use the same loop approach to get dynamic information from the
source and apply on the target tab
• Any type of OS command
• Great to automate EPM environments
• Stop, Start and restart services
• Log windows events
• Execute Esscmd and Essmsh commands (needs to configure system variables
in the Agent server to enable the execution of the commands anywhere in
the system)
• Execute EPMAutomate for PBCS

9.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Dynamic "OS" Commands (Essmsh/Esscmd)
• For Essmsh/Esscmd commands we need to use the DOS command
“echo” with the option -i
• “echo” will echo all the command until the | to the next command
• “echo” allow us to connect and then execute a maxl command in Essbase

10.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Dynamic "OS" Commands (Essmsh/Esscmd)
• Command on Source
• None. Set just the connection information to be used in the
target tab
• Command on Target
• Essmsh
• Alter, Create, Display, Drop, Execute, Import, Export, Refresh and
Query
• Esscmd
• Get, Create, Delete, List, Rename, Set, Update, Validate, Reset,
Remove….

11.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Powerful “Global Variables“ (Regular way)
• Parameter table to store parameter
values
• One column is the Session Name to get
the parameter dynamically depending of
the Session being executed
• Three more columns to store the
parameter type, parameter name and
parameter value
• All Scenarios will start with the
SESSION_NM Variable
• This technic allow us to have just one
variable to get different “LOG_PATH” for
different scenarios

12.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Powerful “Global Variables“ (Champion way)
• The only thing that changes is the
select inside the variables:
• We use the previous query as a sub query
to test if the query will return any rows
from the parameter table for that specific
Session Name
• If the results in empty the NVL command
will return “GLOBAL”
• This allow us to create just one Global
parameter for all interfaces
• Also if anything changes,
we just need to insert a
new value for any session name and the
variable will bring that value just for that
scenario

13.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Powerful “Global Variables“ (Champion way)
• Less variables to maintain and easier for deployment
• In most part the value of the variables are the same for all
interfaces
• Servers name, paths, emails, application name…
• We can leverage this technic using ODI Global variables
• No need to create the same variable in all projects
• More flexible
• If a test needs to be performed or something changes the only
thing needed is an insert for that specific scenario
• To rollback we just need to delete the Session specific row

14.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Substitution Tags and how useful they are
• Substitution tags are part of the java substitution API
• The API methods are java methods that return a string value
• 4 type of Substitution Tags
• <%>, <?>, <@> and <$>
• All of them does the same thing but each one has its own parse phase
• <%>: generates the command when it is sent to the agent, but BEFORE it gets to the agent;
• <?>: generates the code in the agent server, BEFORE the command is sent to Operator
and BEFORE ODI variables are substituted
• <$> (available from 11.1.1.6 on): generates the code in the agent server, BEFORE the
command is sent to Operator but AFTER ODI variables are substituted
• <@>: generates the code in the agent server, AFTER the command appears in the Operator
and AFTER ODI variables are substituted

15.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Substitution Tags and how useful they are
• Create an ODI variable and write ‘TEST’ on it
• Execute in Jython technology:
• Raise ‘<%= System.getProperty("os.name") %> -
<%="#ODI_VAR"%>’
• Repeat for each substitution tag
• Agent is Windows server 2008
• Client is Windows server 2003
Subs Tag Code generated Results
<%> raise 'Windows 2003 - #KSCOPE.ODI_VAR' Windows 2003 - TEST
<?> raise 'Windows Server 2008 R2 - #KSCOPE.ODI_VAR' Windows Server 2008 R2 - TEST
<$> raise 'Windows Server 2008 R2 - TEST' Windows Server 2008 R2 - TEST
<@> raise '<@= System.getProperty("os.name") @> - <@="#KSCOPE.ODI_VAR"@>' Windows Server 2008 R2 - TEST

16.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Substitution Tags and how useful they are
• Different parse phases are useful to create dynamic code
• Heavily used in ODI KMs
• We may “loop” tags within tags
• We can have a code in % phase passing information to a ? Phase

17.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Dynamic Topology (Regular Way)
• Featured by multiple contexts
• One Physical for each DB
• One Logic For All Physics
• One Context for each Physical
• Context nightmare
• Tons of context to manage
• If users executes scenarios in
operator, multiple context make it
difficult
• In multiple projects one context
could mean nothing
Amer
Apj
Emea
N DB
Amer
Apj
Emea
N DB
Target DWGlobal
Physical
Context
Logical

18.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Dynamic Topology (Champion Way)
• Featured by dynamic topology
• One Physical for each DB + one
physical with variables (Dynamic)
• One Logical for each Physical
• One Context for all
• Context heaven
• One context to manage
• Easier for users to execute
• One context for all projects
• Works in ODI 11 and ODI 12 with
patch 21156142
Amer Apj Emea N DB
Global DWDynamic
Amer Apj Emea N DB
Dynamic
Physical
Context
Logical

19.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Dynamic Topology (Champion Way)
• Create one variable for each field in the
physical topology
• Data Server:
• User: #ODI_PROJECT.CONN_USER
• Password: #ODI_PROJECT.CONN_PASS
• JDBC URL: #ODI_PROJECT.CONN_URL
• Physical Schema:
• Schema: #ODI_PROJECT.CONN_DATA_USER
• Work Schema: #ODI_PROJECT.CONN_WORK_USER
• Need to inform the
project_code.variable_name

20.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Dynamic Topology (Champion Way)
• Create one procedure
• One step for each database to
get the connection information
• The connection information
will be retrieved from the
“Command on Source” tab
• “Command on Target” to
execute a scenario passing all
connection information needed

21.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
“Third Command Tab“ Technic
• Sometimes we need more than a
command on source and target
• Executions of Maxl in multiple Essbase
applications
• Select on source with application
information (Loop)
• Command on target (to execute what we
want)
• Since we are using the Oracle technology
in the command on source we cannot get
Essbase login information
• For this example we need a “Third
Command Tab”

22.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
“Third Command Tab“ Technic
• Create a new step to get the
connection information
• On the command on source set
the Essbase technology and
schema
• On the command on target
use Java technology
and create 3 java
variables that will hold the
connection information
• Use the Java Variable in the next
Steps

23.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
“Third Command Tab“ Technic
• Loop Maxl/Cmd commands
• Get the return of a SQL into a Java variable to use in other
steps
• This is also useful because the java variable is replaced for his value
in operator
• Anything you want to store and use later within the scenario
execution
• If you want to use inside a children scenario you need to pass it to a
variable inside the scenario

24.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
ODI Custom Execution Information
• ODI repositories contains all kind of
useful information that we can
retrieve at run time
• Execution information, current variable
values, jobs in execution…
• We can retrieve all this information
using the previews technics
• Inside a procedure in the command on
source set the ODI repository connection
• In the command on target create a SQL
and add it to a java code that will
connect in the database to retrieve the
information

25.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
ODI custom execution information
• In another step we just need to
“Raise” the previous variable
• Now you can use anywhere in the
package
• This will show in the operator
the value that all existing
variables until that point has
• Works with all kind of variables:
refresh, set, declare, global,
project only…

26.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Stop, Start and Restart ODI priority jobs
automatically
• There’re some commands that cannot be executed within
ODI tools:
• Restart load plan, Restart session, Stop load plan, Stop session,
Start load plan, Start scen
• But all these commands can be executed outside ODI
using some .bat/.sh files located in the agent server:
• oraclediagentbin (Only exists in the agent)
• The command to ran is:
• stopsession <session_number> “-AGENT_URL=<agent_url>” [“-
STOP_LEVEL=<normal(default)|immediate>”]

27.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Stop, Start and Restart ODI priority jobs
automatically
• If we want to stop all jobs before running a priority
job, we could get all running jobs from ODI
repository and stop them
• To do so we need to get the Agent URL from the
master repository
• Get the job information from the work
repository
• And stop all the sessions

28.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Stop, Start and Restart ODI priority jobs
automatically
• Useful for priority job
• Check if other jobs are running and stop them automatically
• Executing jobs respecting a time window
• We can stop jobs that executes longer than a specific time window
• Depending of the error restart automatically a specific
job

29.
DevEpm.com
@RZGiampaoli
@RodrigoRadtke
@DEVEPM
Ricardo Giampaoli – TeraCorp
Rodrigo Radtke de Souza - Dell
Thank you!