Fragmentation occurs naturally when a database is used frequently by adding, deleting, and modifying the data within it.  The more changes occur, the more fragmented the database gets as data becomes scattered through the pag files, and the size of the database becomes inflated.  The index files have to compensate for this, and what starts as a simple map becomes a spaghetti mess. 

If you are unfamiliar with Essbase’s storage method, here is a brief overview.  Essbase has two sets of files related to the data stored in a database.  The numeric data is stored in files with an extension of pag.  Essbase also has files with an ind extension.  These index files are used to store the pointers to the data in the pag files.  As data is requested, Essbase must read the index files to know where the data is located in the pag files.

The result of a more fragmented database can have drastic effects on size and performance.  If you have a database where performance continues to decrease, fragmentation might be the source of the problem.  Performance degradation can occur over weeks or months, but can also occur much more frequently.  Databases with frequent data loads, or updates, can be impacted within a day.

A great way to identify the impact fragmentation is having with a database is to export your data (level 0 in most cases), reload it, and execute the process in question.  By exporting and reloading the data, fragmentation can be completely eliminated.

For more information about pag or ind files, please refer to the database administrator’s guide provided by Oracle.

Over my journey through the Hyperion toolset, there are a plethora tools I have developed that make repetitive tasks easier, make some tasks unnecessary, and provide functionality that doesn’t exist otherwise.  I am going to devote time to add these to the in2hyperion BLOG so that others may benefit.  You can find a new menu item that reads tools that will take you to the tools section of the BLOG.

The first free tool added is a utility that will convert Hyperion Essbase business rules’ exports, which are in the XML format, to a more readable format for documentation.  This tool will extract the name, description, and syntax/formula for all the business rules in the export.

I had the honor of presenting at the September 2009 user group in the Hyperion track for those who attended the Ohio Valley Oracle Application User Group in Louisville.  The presentation focused on Maxl best practices, and how to integrate the results of maxl into other technologies.  The presentation was driven from a project completed late last year.  A recent client spent a tremendous amount of time verifying the results of daily and monthly processes. 

Adding some consistency in the Maxl scripting, I integrated the results of the scripts, including the error and process logs, with .NET to produce a website that summarized the state of nearly 50 processes.  Administrators were able to view a web page that showed real time status of all their applications, including links to error logs.  The increased productivity of the administrative staff created a positive ROI in the first month of use.

Download the presentation

Many people use Custom Lists in Excel – sometimes without even knowing.  If you have ever typed January into a cell and used autofill (click the dark plus sign, and drag across other cells) to create February through December, you have used Custom Lists.

Excel has a few Custom Lists setup for users when it is installed. Select the Tools / Options menu, and display the Custom Lists tab to view them.  Users can create their own Custom Lists in this dialog box by entering a list separated by commas or importing a range of cells that already includes a list.

For Essbase users who use the Hyperion Spreadsheet Add-In or SmartView, this can become a valuable tool.  Many times Essbase users will want to display a specific list of accounts, measures, products, etc.  Rather than selecting these from the member selection, or typing them, Custom Lists can be created and used to reduce the effort.

Let’s assume a user is responsible for a subset of the existing products and those products are only sold in a few of the markets.  The user may spend a lot of time creating the market list every time they create a new retrieve.  If the user creates a Custom List, they can automate this selection process.  A Custom List might include the following members.

Columbus,Cincinnati,Los Angeles,Tempe,Dallas,Austin,Seattle,Denver,Nashville

All the user has to do now is type Columbus in the first cell and use the autofill to list the rest of the markets.  This function can save those who frequently create add hoc reports a lot of time.

Custom Lists can be created for just about anything, are easy and quick to create, and are useful in a variety of situations.  www.In2Hyperion.com is not just for those in a technical capacity.  User related ideas, such as using Custom Lists, will become more prevalent on this site.  Sign up for our newsletter and receive notifications when more Excel tips for Essbase users become available.

There are a host of new features in version 11.  As with most product releases, there are the typical improvements related to memory, scripting, and stability.  But, there are some other, very notable, functional additions that might peak your interest. 

Lifecycle Management

Shared Services now provides a consistent way to manage environments.  This console gives administrators the ability to compare applications, search for artifacts, and perform artifact migrations. It comes with a command line tool to automate tasks, as well as a full API for those who want to customize the process even further.

Typed Measures

Essbase now stores text!  Well, somewhat.  Text measures give administrators a way of storing a value other than a number in a data intersection.  Technically, it still stores numbers, but it represents a string.  A member in the measures dimension can have a text attribute.  This member is associated with an enumerated list.  Each member in that list has an index number, which is what is in the database.  When reporting is done, that number is converted to the associated text value in the enumerated list.  Members can also be tagged as Date, which changes the formatting to; you guessed it, a date.

Varying Attributes

Attributes have been around for a while now in Essbase.  Some people hate them and some love them.  They definitely have their place in the design of a database.  One limitation has been the inability to walk forward attributes over time.  For example, assume we have an attribute that identifies our customers into tiers based on their credit score.  If a customer’s score changes such that they move to a higher or lower tier, the history is lost because their attribute is the same for all time periods.  Not anymore.  Varying attributes adds the capability of Essbase to store, and calculate measures for attributes that vary over multiple dimensions.

Backup and Recovery

I have seen many methods to making sure Essbase applications are secured.  In version 11, there are some new options for BSO databases.  First, an option in EAS exists to backup the entire database, including its data and all of its objects, to one file.  When changing things rapidly through the day, this is a nice feature to ensure you don’t lose valuable work.  The entire database can easily be restored.  This is much quicker than manually archiving all the objects (calc scripts, load rules, outlines, and reports) and keeping data exports. 

Secondly, Essbase now includes the option to log transactions and replay them.  With this option turned on, Essbase applications can be restored with the option to replay all transactions that occurred after the backup occurred.  Now, a database can be restored to a specific point in time.

ASO Data Management

ASO now includes Maxl scripting to enable administrators to clear data from regions of a database in two ways.  The first and most obvious is to remove the values from the database.  The second is the ability to copy the data into another member as the inverse, resulting in a total of zero.

The use of Environment Variables

If your process management uses variables to decrease maintenance tasks from, this might be something that will intrigue you.  Version 11 has access to not only Essbase variables, but operating system environment variables as well. 

Monitoring Environment Reponses

Many environments take advantage of partitioning.  Now, there is a way to evaluate the cost of using partitions.  Using the ENABLE_DIAG_TRANSPARENT_PARTITION configuration setting in the essbase.cfg file, administrators can log transaction response times.

Common Log Locations

Version 11 organizes all log files in one location.  This is a very nice improvement.  Rather than searching through each products’ directory tree for the area logs are stored, they are now located in one common folder, with a folder for each of the Hyperion products.

Override Implied Shares

Essbase now includes an option in the outline management section to ignore the default setting for implied shares.  This can be very helpful when using partitions, as well as a host of other situations.

Notable Calculations Additions

Now that members can carry a text or date value, there are a host of functions that open up a whole new realm of possibilities.  DATEROLL will increase a value based on a specific time interval.  DATEDIFF will take the difference between two dates at the interval designated.  DATEPART will pull the time period (week, month, day, etc) from any date.  These operations were difficult at best, in previous releases of Essbase. 

Users of Essbase have some control over the performance of a database and how responsive it is when retrieving data.  With a basic understanding of how Essbase stores data, users can optimize performance by changing the order of the dimensions and members in a report.

It might be helpful to read our article on sparse and dense dimensions.  Here is a brief overview:

An Essbase database is comprised of thousands, if not millions or billions, of data blocks.  Each block of data, and its size, is defined by the dense dimensions in the Essbase outline.  The volume of blocks is dictated by the unique combinations of sparse dimension members.  If Time and Accounts are dense, each block created would hold all the months for every account.  If Organization and Product are sparse dimensions, there would be a block for each unique combination of Organization and Product.  A block would exist for Center 10 / Product A, as well as Total Organization / Total Product.  If the outline has 20 members in Organization and 15 members in Products, the database could have up to 300 independent blocks.

If a report is written to show an entire income statement for all 12 months for Total Product and Total Organization, how many blocks would have to be queried?  Remember, there is a block for each unique member combination of Organization and Product.  The answer is one, because there is a block for Total Organization/Total Product that includes every account and every member in the time dimension.

How many blocks would be accessed if a report pulled Total Sales (a member in the Accounts dimension) in January for every product?  Since the Product dimension is sparse and there are 15 products, 15 blocks would have to be opened to return the results.

Here is where your understanding of what sparse and dense represents will help you improve your reports.  Opening a data block, reading the contents, and closing it, is similar to opening, reading, and closing a spreadsheet.  It is much faster to open one spreadsheet, or block, than 15 spreadsheets.  So, if the database retrieves are written in such a way to minimize the number of blocks that need to be accessed, or the order in which they are accessed, performance can improve.

I will agree that if data for all 15 products is needed for the report, all 15 blocks have to be opened.  There is no way around that.  That said, often times users will build one worksheet for income statement and one worksheet for balance sheet.  This means that the report is making two passes on the same blocks.  In theory, it takes twice as long to open/read/close a data block 2 times than it does once.  It is faster to have the income statement and the balance sheet accounts in one worksheet, which only makes one pass on the required blocks.  One worksheet for Income Statement and one for Balance Sheet can be created with cell references to the worksheet that has the retrieved data, if 2 separate reports are required.

I frequently see another example of a report requiring multiple passes to the same data block.  Using our example dimensions above, assume product information is required in a report for multiple accounts.

The Essbase retrieve above would start from the top of the spreadsheet and move down the rows to retrieve the data from Essbase.  This cycle would open the Product A block, then B, C, and D, and retrieve the associated income for each.  It would then have to reopen the same 4 blocks to access expenses. 

The following example, again going from top to bottom, would access both income and expense while the block is open.  The way this retrieve is setup, it eliminates the need to access the same block multiple times, yet still pulls the required information.

These examples are very small.  In a real world example, a report of this size would not produce significant variances in the time it takes to retrieve them.  Users often have spreadsheets that are hundreds of rows long and take minutes to retrieve.  In these situations, eliminating the need to access the same block multiple times can produce notable improvements in the time it takes to retrieve data from Essbase.

With a basic understanding of how your database is setup, users of Essbase can help themselves with some simple changes to the format of the retrieve worksheet.  If access to the dimension properties in your database is unavailable, ask your system administrator to supply them for you.