Applied Dimensionality

Using this blog as offline memory. Just ignore this post, if you’re not up to Essbase )

If you’re configuring DataDirect ODBC drivers on *nix system, be aware of following:

1. There are 2 versions of odbc.ini file, one in 32bit driver folder, other in 64. 64 essbase uses 64 drivers.
2. You should copy required odbc.ini file to essbasepath\bin. And you should create a symbolic link (ln -s) to odbc.ini file in essbase user home folder (/home/hyperion, for example)
3. When creating a SQL data source rule file — ServerName corresponds to database server name, not essbase server name (type TNS name for oracle database)

Useful links:

“Okay, this column in our BI metadata was supposed to be named Sales, not Sals.

But when we change it, what will happen to the reports that were created, using this name? And how many reports use this column anyway? Maybe we shouldn’t touch anything to keep things working…”

Take 5 minutes to watch screencast for FreeBase Gridworks — an interesting new approach to data transformation. Instead of ’transformation-based’ approach of every tool on the market, this tool uses ‘data-based’ approach, which looks rather intriguing. Especially ‘Undo-Redo’ function )

TM1 TurboIntegrator (TI) is truly a highly customizable tool :) I recently needed to be able to pass cube view names as a parameter for export process and it turned out to be really easy.

As many of you already know I have a mixed attitude to Cognos BI DMRs (dimensionally modeled relational source) models:

• performance is allways a consideration, full-table scans are unpredictable
• there’s always ’local processing’ vs ‘database only and some things not working’ dilemma
• using multidimensional functions in reports is oh-so-hard to debug when they don’t work in complex situations.

Even after 4 years working with Cognos BI I still have to start multidimensional reports with simple cases to prove that functions work as I expect them to (sigh).

I consider Single Sign-On setup through Active Directory(AD) a key point in every system’s life. Up to this point — it’s just a PoC, a prototype or a department (10-20 users) level application.

How to set up a trick called ‘put a file in a folder and it’ll dissappear in DWH’ with Oracle Data Integrator.

Imagine that we need to upload a text file in DWH whenever it appears in some folder with no defined schedule.

Since I’ve spent a day sweating through this mess, I’d share my way of getting ODI to work with XE as a repository.

ODI repository creation is sucessfull, but after that Topology Manager and all other ODI modules won’t work, throwing ORA-12705: invalid or unknown NLS parameter value specified while connecting to XE.

This post spent a year in drafts ;-( But Macro functions are an interesting feature of Cognos BI and sometimes their usage is unavoidable.

You can use macro functions in Report Studio to do some manipulations with prompt values before they are used for actual processing in filters, report functions, etc.

Since I’ve spent some time working with Oracle Business Intelligence last year, I think I’d write a simple comparison list of strengths\weaknesess of OraBI EE vs Cognos (see post on the same topic by Venkatakrishnan). All of this is imho, of course.