Oracle Essbase 9 Implementation Guide- P65 pot

Creating an application Using the MaxL scripting language you can either create a new application or copy an existing application.. Well we may need to create a yearly MaxL job which re

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The following screenshot shows you the list of all of the available MaxL statements:

Let's walk through some of the MaxL statements which will be used in the

day-to-day life of an Essbase administrator

Logging on to the Essbase server

Obviously, the first step that is required to use MaxL is to log on to the Essbase

server Here is a step-by-step demonstration of how to log on to an Essbase analytic server using MaxL statements

Login

<USERNAME> /* enter your user name or batch id */

Identified by

<PASSWORD> /* enter your password or batch password */

On

<HOSTNAME> /*enter the server name */

Code Sample:

login <USERNAME> identified by <PASSWORD> on <HOSTNAME>;

Guess what? You have just written your first MaxL statement Did we say something new here? Well, we have learned a little bit about a few MaxL statements in earlier

chapters of this book, but here we are discussing MaxL for the sole purpose of learning how to use the MaxL scripting language and all of the benefits these commands can

bring to the Essbase administrator

Working with an Essbase application in MaxL

As a part of your weekly or monthly maintenance, you may have routine tasks to

perform on the application level Guess what? You can easily execute repetitive tasks using the MaxL scripting language A word of caution, the user who performs these

MaxL actions should have System Designer access or higher.

At the application level you can do some very important actions with MaxL You can create a new application on the analytic server or you can create a copy of an existing application You can also alter an application, display an application, and finally

even drop an application Let us see how we can use each of these actions in

a MaxL script

Creating an application

Using the MaxL scripting language you can either create a new application or copy

an existing application You may wonder why we would need to create an application

by using a MaxL script Well we may need to create a yearly MaxL job which requires you to copy an existing application to a new application as a backup, but also you will need to create a new application to replace the old application for the new year's cycle Both of these tasks, creating a new application and copying an existing application can

be done using the MaxL Create statement as shown in the syntax and code sample

as follows:

create application 'Application_Name' type 'Mode' as 'Application_

Name ' comment 'Comment-String';

'Application_Name': Name of the new application should be upto 8 characters

long as with all Essbase database objects

type: Indicates whether this application is to be Unicode or not with the default

being is non-Unicode mode Unicode is a system of assigning a unique number to

each character regardless of the language or platform When a database is created

using the Unicode convention, users from all parts of the globe, using all different

character sets can use your Essbase system without worry of data corruption

As 'Application_name' [optional]: Name of the existing application which

will be copied to the new application

comment 'Comment-String' [optional: This is a comment which is given to

the application and can be viewed in the application properties screen

Example 1: In the following example, we are creating a new application Since we

did not mention the Unicode mode, by default, it will be created as a non-Unicode

application

Create application ESSCARNW comment 'New Esscar Application';

Example 2: In the next example, we are creating a new application which is same

as the existing application and will be for the purpose of an application backup

Create application ESSCARBK as ESSCAR comment 'Back up of Esscar

Application';

Now that you have seen how we can create an application using a MaxL statement, let us see how we can use the alter application statement in MaxL

Altering the application

With the alter statement, you can set the properties for an application, add, modify,

or drop a substitution variable, load or unload an application, enable or disable

application start up commands, add an application comment, or clear an application log file

Keep the following screenshot in mind when you are looking at the MaxL alter

application command examples that follow For reference, whatever that is

performed in the script can also be performed through the Application Properties

screen accessed through the EAS tool

Let's look at a few more commonly used alter statements

Using the SET properties statement

You can set an application's properties using the alter and set statements Some

of the set commands are:

• set minimum permission: Grants all authorized users a minimum

application permissions level which is valid for all of the databases under

this application This command directly corresponds to the Minimum access

level setting in the Application Properties screen on the General tab.

Syntax:

alter application <App-Name> set minimum permission <READ |

WRITE | CALCULATE | DATABASE DESIGNER>;

Code Sample:

alter application 'ESSCAR' set minimum permission read;

• set lock_timeout after: This is the maximum time a user can maintain

a database lock if idle The default lock time out is 60 minutes

Syntax:

alter application <App-Name> set lock_timeout after integer

<MINUTES | SECONDS>;

Code Sample:

alter application 'ESSCAR' set lock_timeout after 75 minutes;

• set max_lro_file_size: You can set a maximum file size of an LRO

This can be either unlimited, or you can specify a file size

Syntax:

alter application <App-Name> set max_lro_file_size

<UNLIMITED | LRO SIZE>;

Code Sample:

alter application 'ESSCAR' set max_lro_file_size 32768b;

This code sets the maximum LRO file size to 32KB

• set type unicode_mode: You can convert a non-Unicode into a

Unicode mode

Remember, you cannot convert a Unicode application

to a non-Unicode application However, you can convert a non-Unicode application to Unicode

Syntax:

alter application <App-Name> set type unicode_mode;

Code Sample:

alter application 'ESSCAR' set type unicode_mode;

Using load/unload database

These commands will load and unload the databases into or out of system memory Syntax:

alter application <App-Name> load database <Db-Name>;

alter application <App-Name> unload database <Db-Name>;

Code Sample:

alter application 'ESSCAR' load database 'ESSCAR';

alter application 'ESSCAR' unload database 'ESSCAR';