1. #Kscope Why Can’t I Look at an Essbase Cube? Angela Wilcox BI Architect MedAssets

2. #Kscope Developing Essbase Applications ● Like the best, most advanced Essbase conference there ever could be ● Advanced content ● Good practices ● Written by some of the most well known Essbase developers ● Source code at www.developingessbasebook.com ● You should buy it

3. #Kscope What Does a Cube Look Like? Has anyone seen an Essbase cube? What does it look like?

4. #Kscope Is It All A Black Box? Comparison to other db platforms “More of an art…” How can I develop blind? Correlate to the familiar Comfortable when new

5. #Kscope Tell Me About You What is your background? ●Relational Database Developer/Architect ● Oracle ● SQL Server ● DB2 ● Other ●Financial Analyst/Other ●Business Analysts/Other ●Some IT Role How much have you worked with Essbase? ●None ●Built 1 Cube (in process) ●Built >1 Cube

6. #Kscope A Sad (or Happy) Truth Analyst/Business PersonRelational Developer

7. #Kscope A Brief History of Essbase 1992 – First Release Shipped by Arbor Software 1998 – Hyperion Merges With Arbor 1998 – IBM ships as DB2OLAP (until 2005) 2005 – ASO Introduced with Version 7 (late) 2007 – Oracle Acquires Hyperion ESSBASE – First 20 Years 199220122002

8. #Kscope You Cannot Look Inside Unlike relational database systems, you cannot look inside of an Essbase Cube Applies to both types of cubes in Essbase ●BSO (Block Storage Option) ● Proprietary Matrix ● Proprietary Calculation Language ● Proprietary Administration Language ●ASO (Aggregate Storage Option) ● Proprietary Storage/Algorithm ● Customized Calculation Language (MAXL) ● Proprietary Administration Language

9. #Kscope The Structure of a Cube Where to start? ●Admin Guide is now thousands of pages ●Online help guide can take days to review (if you were able to just read it straight through) ●A dozen + books on the market now In this brief time – Focus 4 D’s + ASO ●Design ●Dimensionality ●Data Loading ●Dense vs. Sparse (BSO ONLY)

10. #Kscope The 4 D’s DESIGN ●Before you start building - “Take the time to Design” ●Blueprint ● Define Key Business Indicators ● FOCUS or PURPOSE? ● ELEMENTS ESSENTIAL FOR DECISION MAKING? ● Determine Source of the Data ● Decide what the expected output should be (reports, dashboards, self-service ad-hoc, etc.)

11. #Kscope 4 D’s, Continued FOCUSED LIST OF REQUIRED ELEMENTS KEY BUSINESS INDICATORS DIMENSIONS

12. #Kscope 4 D’s, Continued DIMENSIONS ●Total limited (more in ASO) ●Types of Dimensions: ● Account ● Time ● Attribute ●Storage Tags: ● Label Only ● Shared Member ● Dynamic Calc ●Data loads at Level 0

13. #Kscope 4 D’s, Continued DATA SOURCE ●Where is the data? ●What form is it in? ●Can I move and change it? ●Do I have everything I need? Various types of sources supported: ●Flat Files ●Excel Files ●SQL Interface

14. #Kscope 4 D’s, Continued DESIGN DOUBLE-CHECK REQUIREMENTS KBI DIMENSIONS DATA SOURCE

15. #Kscope 4 D’s, Continued DESIGN DOUBLE-CHECK AGAIN REQUIREMENTS KBI DIMENSIONS DATA SOURCE REPORT OUTPUT

16. #Kscope BSO Structure DENSE vs SPARSE ●The most pivotal concept to understand ●The term actually refers to the configuration of a dimension in terms of storage ● Size of cube ● Speed of calculations ● Speed of data loads Made up of two elements: ●The Data Block ●The Index

17. #Kscope BSO, Continued The Data Block is made up of a combination of all stored Members in the dimensions marked as DENSE ●Storage Unit ●Data Block stored in a pag file = 2 GB

18. #Kscope BSO, Continued

19. #Kscope BSO, Continued The Index is made up of a combination of all of the dimensions marked as SPARSE. ●Stored in.ind files that are 2 GB each ●Configurable for optimization

20. #Kscope BSO, Continued

21. #Kscope BSO, Continued Dimension Order is Important in BSO Cubes Guideline – not a hard, fast rule

22. #Kscope Structure of the ASO Cube Everything important in a BSO Cube is no longer important: ●Dense vs Sparse ●Data Blocks ●Ind and pag files ●Index and Data Caches Some things remain the same (or very close): ●Dimensions; hierarchies ●Data Loading

23. #Kscope ASO, Continued Proprietary method for storing and calculating the database ●Calculations are 10+ times faster ●Database sizes are reduced significantly Dimensionality is enhanced ●A greater number of dimensions ●A greater depth of dimensions Calculations change ●MDX for member calculations ●Limited batch calculations available

24. #Kscope ASO, Continued Data is no longer stored in page and index files ●Stored in a.dat file in theDefault tablespace ●Temp table space utilized during builds ●Free space = 3x size of largest cube ●Internal indexing (proprietary algorithm) Three types of hierarchies in ASO: ●Stored Hierarchy ●Dynamic Hierarchy ●Multiple Hierarchy

25. #Kscope ASO, Continued Data loaded at level 0 always Created aggregate views for speed

26. #Kscope ASO, Continued Reporting from ASO vs. BSO is the same Not apparent to a user which technology is being used Wizard available to convert BSO to ASO Cubes Wizard available to help design aggregations

27. #Kscope Can I See Anything? Use Data Viewers ●EAS – built in ●Excel – Classic or SmartView ●Other tools ● Harder ● Install ● Configure

28. #Kscope Next Steps Formal Training Teaching Yourself ●Cloud Options ●Books ● Third Party ● Oracle Guides ● Online Guides ●Experiment – Push the buttons

29. #Kscope Question and Answer Book Drawing – Come by our booth to pick up!