EPM Test Drive Deux
Since KSCOPE12 I’ve had some time to configure the Metavero 11.1.2.2 release and that’s what this post is about.
Do you want to get your feet wet with 11.1.2.2 however dread the long download time for the gigabytes of files or don’t have a server handy?
The word on the street is the major patch set PSU1 will come out sometime in the September time frame. Once that patch set is out I will be recommending this version for all.
Oracle allows for use of their software for evaluation and prototyping in non-production environments with minimal restrictions and one of the easiest ways to take advantage of this is a cloud environment.
I’ve put together a basic installation which includes most of the media downloads and the following products already deployed:
- Oracle Data Integrator
- Planning and Essbase
- Essbase Studio
- FDQM and ERPi
- HFM
- EPMA and Calculation Manager
- Financial Reporting Studio and Print Server
You may kick the tires and also deploy some of the other products already there or download and install anything else!
NOTE: This AMI is in no way intended for any production purposes and using it for such is against Oracle licensing rules.
For those of you who are Amazon EC2 savvy I’ve installed and deployed several of the 11.1.2.2 products on the cloud; check out:
AMI: ami-ef933886 – epmtestdrive ii – Metavero 11.1.2.2 Hyperion EPM Test Drive; use m2.xlarge or m1.xlarge instances.
Windows: administrator, epmtestdrive
Shared Services: admin, epmtestdrive
Weblogic: epm_admin, epmtestdrive123
SQL Server: hypsql, hypsql
NOTE: Remember to setup your security group to allow RDP (3389) and be sure to shutdown your Amazon machine when you don’t use. $1.00 / hour is inexpensive however can add up. The image is set to shutdown at 1:00 central time each night just in case you forget. Edit the task to change the shutdown time.
Use the below information and Cameron Lackpour’s nice walkthrough to get started. Firefox works best with Amazon EC2.
A book you say?
A book you say?
The blog has gotten a little dusty over the last 9 months.
What’s been going on? Business has been booming at Emerging Solutions and our Q4 FY11 was busier than ever for my Hyperion and OBIEE Infrastructure Practice.
Cameron Lackpour my partner in crime on Network 54, OTN, and of course KSCOPE somehow convinced quite a few people it was a good idea to write a book. I was the lucky first choice to write about Essbase infrastructure and put forth a good effort to write what I hope is a mostly timeless (as much as can be said with technology changing so rapidly) chapter.
An excerpt from Developing Essbase Applications: Advanced Techniques for Finance and IT Professionals follows:
Patching and upgrades
“Typical code bases for commercial software have hundreds of thousands of lines of code and can run into the millions of lines of code. There is intensive effort on software quality assurance in order to reduce, locate, categorize, and resolve defects. When releasing software vendors weigh the severity of known defects with the impact. If there are no “show stopper” defects and the product passes their quality tests within acceptable parameters, it will go to a generally available status.In the case of the Oracle Hyperion suite of products the known defects are communicated to end users in the product README documentation.”
| Installation Type | Recommendation |
| Patch | Individual patch applications usually take less than an hour and the system can be tested in less than a day. Only apply patches which have been released for longer than one month. Always apply patches to your non-production environment and allow it to burn in for two weeks. |
| New install | Select the most recent version when you are implementing Essbase for the first time and your timeline is greater than three months. This will provide the best feature set, support the most recent client software, support the most recent server software, and provide more longevity over older releases. |
| Service pack | A service pack is a mini in-place upgrade. Wait at least one month before applying a service pack. Perform full regression testing in your non-production environment and attain formal sign-off to install in production. |
| Major upgrade (migration) | Select the most recent version which has over three months of release time.Major upgrades can run from a few weeks for a very small user base with a minimal number of applications to several months for a large global user base with hundreds of applications.A few upgrade best practices:• Enact a change freeze
• Do not upgrade in-place; use new environments • Perform full regression test using a POC environment |
EPM Test Drive Redux
I’ve dusted off the original EPM Test Drive AMI and deployed Hyperion Planning and applied some of the key patches that came out in the last year; one of the patches I was happiest about is the patch which makes the managed WebLogic servers start reliably. I also switched to IIS from Oracle HTTP Server.
Do you want to get your feet wet with 11.1.2.1 however dread the long download time for the gigabytes of files or don’t have a server handy?
Oracle allows for use of their software for evaluation and prototyping in non-production environments with minimal restrictions and one of the easiest ways to take advantage of this is a cloud environment.
I’ve put together a basic installation which includes most of the media downloads and the following products already deployed:
- Foundation Services
- EPMA
- Calculation Manager
- Essbase
- Planning
- Reporting and Analysis Framework
- Financial Reporting Studio and Print Server
You may kick the tires and also deploy some of the other products already there or download and install anything else!
NOTE: This AMI is in no way intended for any production purposes and using it for such is against Oracle licensing rules.
For those of you who are Amazon EC2 savvy I’ve installed and deployed several of the 11.1.2.1 products on the cloud; check out:
AMI: ami-3173a358 - Metavero Sandbox – Partially configured Oracle | Hyperion 11.1.2.1; use m2.xlarge or m1.xlarge instances.
Windows: administrator, epmtestdrive
Shared Services: admin, epmtestdrive
Weblogic: epm_admin, epmtestdrive123
SQL Server: hypsql, hypsql
NOTE: Remember to setup your security group to allow RDP (3389) and be sure to shutdown your Amazon machine when you don’t use. $1.00 / hour is inexpensive however can add up.
Applied Hyperion Patch Sets
| Product – Patch Summary | Patch ID | Oracle Download URL |
| Weblogic: MANAGED SERVERS FAIL TO START BECAUSE OF JPS EXCEPTION | 12874008 | Download link |
| Opatch: Update 11.1.0.0.0 | 6880880 | Download link |
| Essbase Server: Patch Set Update 11.1.2.1.102 | 11823697 | Download link |
| EAS Server: 11.1.2.1.000 PSE 13262985 | 13262985 | Download link |
| Planning: Patch Set Update (PSU): 11.1.2.1.102 | 12666861 | Download link |
| Planning: Patch Set Exception (PSE) | 13370986 | Download link |
| Financial Reports 13370933: PSU: 11.1.2.1.114 | 13370933 | Download link |
Use the above information and Cameron Lackpour’s nice walkthrough to get started. Firefox works best with Amazon EC2.
Hyperion Infrastructure and Storage
This article originally published in March of 2011 will be updated.
The key take away is you want a storage solution which can give 2500 IOPS per processor core or roughly 45 disks in a RAID 10 configuration per core (or solid state drives).
Making IE8 work on Hyperion 9.3x/11.x (Deprecated)
NOTE: Oracle released patches since this original article was published in July of 2009. Please review my post on Patches and Hyperion compatibility. I have had contacts about the article for those who wanted to change a couple of lines rather than apply complete patches; while I don’t recommend this approach I do respect the need for work-arounds.
With Microsoft is becoming more aggressive with making IE8 the default Internet Explorer browser on windows platforms we are seeing more and more customers having issues with the Oracle | Hyperion 11.x platform and IE8.
The last few days I spent a little tracking down the compatibility issue.
When using IE8 with the 11.1 Suite you would encounter the below issues:
- If you log into Workspace and then run Planning or HFM and then log out of those you would get an error regarding a null object.
- I’ve also had reports of users logging into HFM and it just hanging although have not seen this behavior.
- Library job console links would not work properly when loading dimensions in EPMA or deploying apps in EPMA.
The Problem
The Hyperion platform makes use of a third party Ajax framework made by http://www.bindows.com
They key conflict with IE8 is due to the versions 3.0 / 1.5 of Bindows attempting to use a null value for a zIndex property. This property controls which objects show in front of other objects.
Microsoft documents the zIndex property at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms531188%28VS.85%29.aspx
The Solution
The files that need updated are named (11.x) core.ie.js and (11.x/9.3x) core.js and there will be multiple copies on each application server.
OLD CODE:
- _p.setZIndex=function(nZIndex){this.setStyleProperty(“zIndex”,nZIndex);}
NEW Code:
- _p.setZIndex=function(nZIndex){if (nZIndex==null) this.setStyleProperty(“zIndex”,0); else this.setStyleProperty(“zIndex”,nZIndex);}
TIP
As always with IE you should setup your Hyperion Web Servers as Trusted Sites.
For IE7/IE8 to make menus work properly you need to ensure the below setting is enabled:
- Navigate to Tools / Internet Options / Security / Trusted Sites / Custom level / Misc
- Enable ‘Allow script-initiated windows without size or position constraint’
Web Analysis is not compatible with Java 6 — for Web Analysis to work properly you will need to use Java 5 Update 22.
See: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/5u22/jre
