The storing of complex business rules to facilitate proper analysis of the data is a huge benefit of Oracle Planning and is accomplished within the module by utilizing a small space on a
Trang 1The storing of complex business rules to facilitate proper analysis of the data is a
huge benefit of Oracle Planning and is accomplished within the module by utilizing
a small space on a relational database such as an Oracle or SQL server database
With the aid of pre-packaged process modules, Essbase Planning can also greatly
shorten the length of time typically required for budget and forecast cycles, thus
lowering the total cost of ownership for this product
Essbase analytics
It's funny, but the word analytics is being tossed about rather often these days
Pretty much anything you do with OLAP or multidimensional database tools,
can be termed analytics
In Essbase however, Essbase analytics, to some, usually refers to Essbase's other
database engine, the ASO database engine The reason given for this is that the
typical Essbase ASO database is primarily used for presentation, analysis, and
reporting which are all analytic functions The Essbase BSO database, while
analytic itself, can also be considered transactional as well
The Essbase analytics nickname dates back to the advent of the ASO database
architecture when all you had was the BSO architecture The new ASO architecture was the analytic tool
Yes, it's funny how Essbase is an analytical package and inside that package is
an analytic piece but that's just how it is
Try not to get hung up on the terminology here though When considering your
options, you need to look at all of the same things you have always looked at How large will the system be? What are the business customer's requirements? What type
of system am I building here?
When you answer these questions, it will matter less what you call what you are
doing than choosing the right tools
Hyperion Application Link/Oracle
Application Link
The name pretty much says it all Hyperion Application Link is a suite of ETL tools that allows the user or programmer to integrate Oracle products, like Essbase, with other third party software packages, especially transactional database packages
Hyperion Application Link (HAL) can integrate all of your data loading and ETL
functions into one place and offer improved performance
Trang 2When gathering data for your Essbase application, you may encounter data from
many different sources HAL allows you to set up a link to your favorite Oracle
database using an ODBC connection HAL will also allow you to load data from
conveniently delivered flat files too In fact, you can usually accomplish just about
all of your data loading needs for your Essbase System 9 installation by using HAL
Oracle Business Rules
This tool can be a tremendous time saver The Oracle Business Rules tool allows
the programmer to create, store, execute, and manage complex business rules as
specified by the business customer and as it relates to the business process and the
data All of this is accomplished by using an easy to understand user interface with graphical depictions of the various elements that go into a rule
Imagine a business process that dictates the values for next month's sales
commitments as follows:
• If the actual sales for the prior month are not received by the 15th of the
current month, then the committed sales for the current month are to equal
the sales number that was forecasted from the prior month
• If the actual sales for the prior month are received by the 15th, then the
number used for the current month's committed sales will be equal to the
prior month actual sales * 1.15
This is just one example of a business rule being automatically executed against
the data for the users of the system There are endless possibilities on how to make
good use of this tool
The advantages of the Oracle Business Rules tool are clear, especially in today's
fast-paced business world where static structures in data load and calculation
scripts need almost continual modifying With the Hyperion Business Rules tool,
the dynamic nature of the business can more effectively be supported with the
creation of minimal maintenance dynamic rules
Trang 3Oracle Reports
Oracle Reports is a powerful new tool for creating reports that presents complex
financial analytic data in an easy to read, professional looking, graphical format
The reports you create can contain many elements such as colorful charts, graphs,
and even text box objects
Creating reports is quick and easy and objects embedded in one report can be
linked to appear in another report
Essbase Shared Services
Essbase Shared Services or Shared Services is a component of Oracle's Essbase
Foundation Services Shared Services is a standardized infrastructure framework
that facilitates the deployment of other Essbase System 9 components and also
simplifies the ongoing system maintenance of those components
Shared Services provides a central framework for creating and maintaining users
It can also be used for managing user security across all Oracle Essbase modules,
including external authentication
One nice feature of Shared Services is that you can build your applications for easy
user ID set up and maintenance If you are able to use external authentication or
network authentication, where Essbase allows the network to authenticate the user
ID, your password maintenance is all but eliminated and a user who has access to
the network can also access any Essbase application that you have given him or her access to If you plan to use Essbase authentication, the user ID is authenticated by
the Essbase analytic server at login time
Finally, Essbase Shared Services provides the capability of managing the migration
of components from your test environments to your production environments
You perform the development and testing in the Dev environment and then use
the Shared Services tool to copy the objects to the Prod environment
Trang 4Oracle Essbase Provider Services
Oracle Essbase Provider Services is a middle tier data source provider between
an Essbase Server and Smart view, XMLA, and/or Java API The following figure
shows the Provider Services architecture:
Client Tier XMLA Clients
Middle Tier Hyperion Provider Services
Database Tier Essbase
SOAP HTTP HyperionProvider
Services
TCP / IP
As you can see, Provider Services is a three-tiered architecture One of the other special features is that you can configure Oracle Provider Services from the EAS tool When
you are working with Smart View for Microsoft Office, you will have the option of
selecting Oracle Provider Services to connect to the Essbase analytic server
Essbase Smart Office
Essbase Smart Office or more commonly known as Essbase Smart Space, is a unique new tool in the world of real-time analytic analysis and reporting
The most amazing feature of Essbase Smart Office is that it offers the first
gadget-based user interface Smart Office consists of a set of configurable gadgets
that run on the business customer's PC desktop and provide continuous access to
financial, operational, and performance related data Additionally, Smart Office
Trang 5Here comes the awesome part Smart Office can also act like a sort of desktop
instant messenger tool or collaboration tool, where users can notify one another
on the fly of changes in business processes, task completions, or anything else that
can affect their performance
Oracle Essbase Financial Reporting
This tool can be easily compared to a conductor in an orchestra With it's easy to use, user friendly graphical user interface, Oracle Essbase Financial Reporting gets high
grades on its usability factor
While advanced users will enjoy the intuitive, quick and easy, drag-and-drop
method for creating impressive reports, even the most computer illiterate users
can produce high level, executive quality reports with just a little practice