OraNA :: Oracle News Aggregator

I will be presenting next week at the Hyperion User Group - Minnesota 'TechDay 2010' event next week in Minneapolis.  The user group has lined up a number of great speakers including fellow Oracle ACE Directors Edward Roske from interRel Consulting and Eric Helmer from The Hackett Group.  Oracle Essbase product managers Alan Lee and Karen Zubetz and HFM product manager Mike Malwitz will also be doing presentations along with a number of other consultants. 

Alan Lee will be speaking on the new features coming in Essbase 11.1.2 and Karen Zubetz will discussing the new OBI Applications Essbase Integrator which will, in essence, spin Essbase cubes from Oracle BI Server sources.  Mike Malwitz will talk about what is new, and what is coming, with HFM.  My presentations are on Essbase 11 installation and on converting a VBA application to Dodeca.  Here is the full agenda for the meeting: http://www.harbinger-group.com/HUGpage.html#.

I will be in Minneapolis for a couple of days and I have promised myself I would take a bit of time to enjoy my trip.  I am planning to visit the climbing gym in St Paul on Wednesday night (Vertical Endeavors - http://www.verticalendeavors.com/st_paul/index.html) and am planning to ski on Thursday night (Afton Alps - http://www.aftonalps.com).  Anyone interested in joining me?

Howard Dresner, formerly the Chief Strategy Officer at Hyperion, is now an independent BI Strategy consultant and is currently conducting a BI market survey. His “Wisdom of Crowds” Business Intelligence Market Study is not underwritten or sponsored by any vendors and no detailed data will be shared with the outside world. If you are interested in having your opinions help shape the BI market, you can participate in the study at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QMZTVSV.

I have known Howard for a number of years and we became fast friends when we learned we were both pilots. For some reason, however, my 210 is faster than his airplane although I didn't buy his explanation that salaries for 'Chief Strategy Officers' are not that high.. Rather, I think it boils down to the fact that I spend a greater part of my salary for the care and feeding of my plane!

ODTUG is set to announce a new contest that gives you a chance to win a free registration to Kaleidoscope or, alternatively, a suite upgrade at the Marriott Wardman Park.

All you need to do is create a 3 minute (or less) YouTube video on “Why You Need to Attend ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2010”.  Make it funny, musical, or informational.  Mostly, make it memorable.  Make it viral and we will see you in DC!

To qualify, make sure to include the ODTUG Kaleidoscope logo and submit your video for consideration by emailing you name and YouTube video link to Crystal Walton at crystal@odtug.com.  By the way, Crystal works on the small team of full-time ODTUG people who work very hard to make Kaleidoscope the best Hyperion conference in the world.

Video Contest Guidelines: Video must be three minutes or less, contain no inappropriate content, and be posted publicly to YouTube by March 31, midnight EST. All videos must remain in public domain until after July 1st, 2010. The winning video will be selected from among all the entries. The judges’ decision will be final. Judges may include members of the ODTUG Kaleidoscope Conference Committee and others. Winner will be notified by April 2nd, 2010. Winner will have the choice of a complimentary non-transferable registration to ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2010 or a suite upgrade at the Marriott Wardman Park.

There was a question on the Network54 recently about formatted values in Essbase 11, so I thought I would post a little info from 'under the covers' with formatted values and how they relate to Text Measures and Dates.

First, Essbase does support formatted values in Essbase 11. You can see in this screenshot from EAS, the format string is a property of the member.












The format string is in MDX format and there seems to be no valid examples in the docs of how to actually do a format.  Thanks to the beauty of the internet and the hard work of Venkat at RittmanMead Consulting, I found an example on their blog.  In the screenshot below, you will see the result of the formatted value:





Under the covers, there is a setting at the API level that determines if the formatted values are retrieved from the database.  Uses of Smart View control this setting using the 'Format String' option in the Options dialog.

The same setting also governs whether Date and Text Measures are returned as either the formatted values or as numbers (which are what are stored in the database).   Here is a screenshot of how the Java API returns formatted values with both the formatted values returned and the the formatted values not returned:








The value circled in yellow is a formatted value; note that the number below is the numeric value (which can also be returned in the same retrieve at the API level).  The value circled in green is a Date measure; I don't think my date values are valid though.  It seems limited that the earliest date supported is January 1, 1970 (and I think I used Excel dates to fill the cell which starts at January 1, 1900.

The values circled in red and blue are Text Measures.  Text Measures get their values from Smart Lists.  Here is the EAS editor showing my simple Smart List:















OK, so it says 'Text Lists' in the dialog, but if you look at the API level, you see Smart Lists:










Now you probably know more about Formatted Values, Text and Date Measures than you ever cared to know.