The Uncharted Territory Ready to be Discovered: Hybrid Essbase presented by Edgewater Ranzal at Hyperion UKOUG, June 2015

1. The Uncharted Territory Ready to Be Discovered:
Hybrid Essbase
EDGEWATER RANZAL
Hyperion UKOUG
June 18th, 2015
Andra Iankovszky
Ruxandra Cotumbeanu

2. 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

3. 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
– LogisticsTransportation
– Financial Services Industry
– Investment Industry
– Manufacturing

4. 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

5. What is Hybrid ???
• Hybrid Power
• Hybrid Computer
• Hybrid Bicycle
• Hybrid Train
• Hybrid Organization
• Hybrid Analysis
…Hybrid Essbase
We
hybrid…

6. 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

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

8. How do we use Essbase today?
Reporting
Application
Planning
Application
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

9. How do we use Essbase today?
Planning/Reporting
Application
BSO
Hybrid
…how much time does the usual process need for
update, maintenance and data transfer?
…what about using the new Hybrid Essbase option?

10. Why do we call it Hybrid Essbase?
• BSO applications functionalities with fast ASO
aggregations
BSO ASOHybrid Essbase

11. 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
Hybrid
BSO ASO
Input of data at all levels Data input only on bottom levels
Complex 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 aggregations
More disk space required Lower disk space required
Slower backup and restore time Quickly backup and restore
Ideal for financial applications Ideal for sparse data

12. 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.

13. 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

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. Best practices
• What type of Hybrid Essbase to use?
None
Partial
Full
• Calc scripts should reference stored sparse
members

21. 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!

22. BSO vs Hybrid – which is faster?
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Retrieval
Calc script
Data aggregation
Dense restructure
BSO Hybrid

23. 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!

24. Q&A
Thank you!