Are You Ready?

We’re guessing that some of you will be attending Oracle OpenWorld September 19-23 in beautiful downtown San Francisco. It’s the world’s largest conference for Oracle technologists, business users, and partners. And because we’re an Oracle Platinum Partner, you can count on members of our EPM team making the September trip to the City by the Bay. They’re also going because they know how to have fun, and it sounds like OpenWorld won’t let them down.

 

 

Still not decided on whether to attend? Here’s what you’ll be missing if you decide to take the road more traveled and hang out at the office that week.

 

The Big Picture

• 1,800 sessions, 400 partner exhibits, almost 400 Oracle demos, and keynotes from the world's technology leaders

 

Networking Events

• Oracle Welcome Reception – Sunday, 7:45 p.m. - 9:45 p.m. Join the Oktoberfest celebration and raise a stein of German ale with other attendees
• Oracle Appreciation Event – Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. - 12:00 a.m. If you’ve attended before you know it’s the best part of OpenWorld, and this year it brings

o   Black Eyed Peas

o   Don Henley

o   Steve Miller Band

o   Montgomery Gentry

• It’s a Wrap! – Thursday, 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

 

Keynotes

See what's on the technology horizon by attending keynote speeches Sunday through Wednesday, featuring:

• Technology leaders
• Oracle top executives and key partners
• Technology sneak previews
• New product demos

 

General Sessions

Countless sessions will be offered, including many Hyperion-related and industry-specific sessions. Here are some sessions that might interest you:

• Oracle's EPM and BI Strategy and Roadmap – S318278
• What's New and What's Coming: Oracle Hyperion Planning – S316891
• Failure to Success: Best Practices for Driving Oracle Hyperion Planning Success – S319127
• Oracle Hyperion Applications Strategy and Roadmap – S317486
• Strategy Maps and Scorecards for Getting onto and Staying on the Same Page – S318319
• Using Oracle Essbase for Enhanced Financial Reporting – S315635

 

Things to do in San Francisco

When you’re not at the conference and still have per diem to burn:

• Fisherman’s Wharf
• Alcatraz
• Golden Gate Bridge
• San Francisco 49ers game Monday night
• Cable Cars
• Some of the best eateries in the country

 

Ready to register? You can still register for Oracle OpenWorld, with discounts offered for pre-registration.

 

Interested in learning about Crown’s Hyperion services and solutions? Email us at info@crownpartners.com or check out our Oracle Hyperion platform solutions.

 

By Kevin Bath 

Questions or comments? info@crownpartners.com

Face to Face Networking in Ohio

Written by: Dennis Hogan

Social and Professional networking sites are all the rage.  The list of sites is long including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.   We use text messages and "IM" software to communicate with people in the same building, often as close as the next cubicle.   Blogs and Message boards offer great options for educating yourself or finding solutions to issues you may be experiencing.    Since you are reading this  blog entry, you obviously believe that these technologies offer us great advantages in communications.  With all of these communication options available, does it make sense to take time out of our busy schedules to engage in face to face networking opportunities like user groups?   Yes it does!

In the past I regularly attended and presented at Hyperion User Group meetings across Ohio.   These sessions were widely attended and produced great opportunities for information exchange between individuals using the Hyperion product line to meet business needs.     After the Oracle purchase of Hyperion, these conferences seemed to fade out of existence.   About a year ago I began working with Jon Riley of the Ohio Valley Oracle Application User Group (OVOAUG) in an effort to bring an EPM/Hyperion track into their meetings.     While the turnouts have not hit the level of the old Ohio Hyperion group meetings yet, we have had good numbers and expect to continue to grow the attendance numbers with each meeting.    

The content of the breakout session presentations for the EPM track at the OVOAUG meeting has been excellent.   However, what I believe is more important is the level of interaction that we have seen.   Virtually every presentation has gone "off-script" due to questions or comments from attendees in the audience.    This was so prevalent that our last meeting actually included a panel discussion where a handful of long-time Hyperion users opened the floor for any questions the audience wanted to tackle.     Some of the topics covered were lessons learned, best-practices, upgrade plans, product selection criteria, and complimentary products.    

Beyond the fact that the meeting itself offers great exchange of ideas, many of the attendees have established trusted advisor status with one another.   They now have peers that they can call or email to discuss a specific issue or to debate alternative approaches.  

Whether you agree with me that conferences offers a great opportunity for information sharing,
or you simply long for the "good-ole days" of face to face communications, please consider joining us for the next OVOAUG meeting in Cincinnati (details and link below).     See you there!

What:                    Ohio Valley Oracle Application User Group Meeting (OVOAUG)
When:                  February 19, 8:30 - 4:00
Where:                                 CrossRoads in Oakley

For more information go to http://ohio.oaug.org/index.html

Questions or comments? info@crownpartners.com

An OLAP Primer – Part 1

OLAP Overview
My previous blog entries have discussed various ways to utilize Essbase for a company's analytical processes. At this time, I'd like to step back and provide an OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing) primer for those readers that may not be as familiar with the technologies. Many readers are familiar with relational databases, even if it is only with casual use of an MS-Access database to perform some simple database queries. While relational databases are better suited for transactional and textual data, OLAP databases and arranged and stored for fast analysis. OLAP databases are inherently designed to avoid the limitations of relational databases which are not well suited for instantaneously retrieving and analyzing large amounts of data.

E. F. Codd is considered the "father of relational databases." In 1994 he introduced his 12 rules for OLAP. These rules included 4 differentiators:

• Multidimensional
  Users analyze numerical values from different dimensions such as Product, Time, Scenario, Customer, and Geography.
• Consistently Fast
  "Speed of thought"
• Varying Levels of Aggregation
  Pre-aggregated summaries of data stored in hierarchies allows users to "drill to detail" rather than "sift through the details"
• Cross-Dimensional Calculations
  Database provides calculations across multiple dimensions

The following table illustrates how OLAP databases overcome some of the limitations of relational databases.

Relational Limitations	OLAP Capabilities
Singular in nature	Interactive / Ad-hoc
Slow to deploy	Fast deployment
Normalized / Denormalized Design	Dimensional/Hierarchical
Speed varies; often slow	Consistent; speed of thought
Sophisticated calculations in query language	Sophisticated calculations part of database engine
Multi-dimensional SQL is not efficient	Multi-dimensional query language is part of the database
Summarized data is labor-intensive and expensive to store	Summarized data is inherent to the database design

The intent of this table is not to infer that OLAP is better than relational - both are very good at what they are intended to provide. A combination of relational and OLAP will provide the best analytical tools for analysis.

OLAP Flavors
OLAP databases are prevalent across the software industry. Each of the OLAP software vendors has taken the same basic rules and developed versions that excel in a particular area. All of these are viable alternatives and have pros and cons as to why they would be valuable in your company. Regardless of which one you choose, your company needs one of these!

DOLAP - Desktop (or Dynamic OLAP)

• All computations are done on the desktop in virtual cubes after data has been extracted from the source
• Advantages:
  • Inexpensive
  • Development is not extremely technical in nature
• Disadvantages:
  • Limited in size
  • Limited capabilities and functionality
  • Typically slow

MOLAP - Multidimensional OLAP

• Traditional OLAP
• Data is stored in a multidimensional cube
• Proprietary database format provides fast response times
• Advantages:
  • Excellent performance - optimized for "slice and dice" and drilling operations
  • Complex calculations inherent
  • Easier to implement
  • Advanced data manipulation capabilities
• Disadvantages:
  • Can be limited by the amount of data (this has changed over time with technology improvements)
  • Requires additional investment of a proprietary database

ROLAP - Relational OLAP

• Uses traditional relational structures but gives the appearance of OLAP "slice and dice" functionality
• Advantages:
  • Can handle extremely large data sets
  • Can leverage functionalities inherent in the relational database
• Disadvantages:
  • Performance can be slow (uses standard SQL on the backend data queries)
  • Limited by SQL functionality
  • Requires database tuning expertise (aggregate tables, temporary tables, etc)

HOLAP - Hybrid OLAP

• Combines the features of ROLAP and MOLAP
• Integrates the relational database (ROLAP) with the proprietary database (MOLAP) to provide seamless integration
• Users can "drill through" from MOLAP to relational data
• Advantages:
  • Eliminates size restrictions inherent with MOLAP
  • Seamless integration
  • Best of both worlds
• Disadvantages:
  • Requires some technical expertise to "join" the two environments
  • ROLAP is inherently slower than MOLAP and does not integrate some of the MOLAP functionality
  • Requires education for user expectations

OLAP Technical Advantages

OLAP technologies have changed the analytical world by allowing analyses to be focused on a subset of a sometimes very large data warehouse or operational data store. Creating data marts (smaller subsets of data for focused analysis) has allowed companies to take advantage of the technology and provide near real-time, speed of thought analysis.

In future posts, we will explore some of the technology behind OLAP and OLAP database design that allow it to provide the speed and functionality. For now, let's review some of the high-level features that give OLAP a technical advantage over traditional relational stores.

OLAP (particular MOLAP) databases are often pre-calculated and pre-aggregated data that provides sub-second query response. Additional features, specific to analysis is built into the database itself, eliminating the need to create special functionality to perform analysis around things like time balance, expense reporting, variance analysis, and time series computations. Complex aggregations like rankings, moving ratios, medians, and various other statistical calculations and functionality are inherent to the database and available "out of the box." OLAP allows analysis to take the next step faster and easier.

Look for the next blog posting that will look closer into the underlying architecture of OLAP and a closer look at some of the architecture, functionality, and operational ability with OLAP.

Questions or comments? info@crownpartners.com