Infratects Top Gun 2014 Event

This year's Top Gun event is drawing closer. You still have an opportunity to sign up and get your share of this exceptional selection of technical EPM/Hyperion content:

• Keynote Speaker Kash Mohammadi (VP Product Development EPM/BI at Oracle) will be covering the latest developments in Oracle EPM products.
• Presentations with topics ranging from EPM customer projects to troubleshooting, tools, integrations and more presented by Infratects staff, our customers and Oracle.
• Chance to meet and greet the Infratects staff and other Hyperion professionals from customers and partners.

The two-day conference will be held in the respected Hotel Okura in Amsterdam on March 14th and 15th. Visit the Events page on the Infratects website for registration information: http://www.infratects.com/events.

See you in Amsterdam!

On A Lighter Note

;)

Backup Utility And Index Update Utility for HFM 11.1.2.2 And Later

In my previous post I mentioned the following information that was originally included in the readme file for HFM 11.1.2.2 Patch Set Update 306 (the rows have later been removed though):

• Defect Fixed: 16317490 - HFM application backup utility provided for 11.1.2.2.X.
• Defect Fixed: 12332259 - HFM Index update utility provided for 11.1.2.2.X.

I thought this meant that the aforementioned utilities would be included in the PSU package but this was not the case. The Application Backup Utility has been updated to support HFM versions 11.1.2.2 and 11.1.2.3 but you still have to log on to Oracle Support and open the following article to download it: How To Use HFM Application Backup Utility (HFMApplicationBackUpUtility.exe)? - Doc ID 1515967.1

Please note that the HFM Application Backup Utility is not meant for production use (as a means to back up your HFM applications for example). But I still find it handy for extracting single applications from a running system (the tool produces a single zip file) and loading them into a virtual machine for testing or troubleshooting purposes. The utility includes options for anonymizing data values and strings, making it safer to transfer applications into sandbox environments.

The HFM Index Update Utility is still a mystery though. The original Support article written about the utility (How to Find the FMIndexUpdateUtility for Hyperion Financial Management? - Doc ID 1535195.1) tells me that I should find an updated version included in the new HFM PSU package but either I am blind or it just is not there. I have just asked Support about the utility and will update the post once I receive their reply.

2014-02-03 - Update from Oracle Support about the Index Update Utility (thanks Usha):

It seems that the statement about the updated HFM index utility has been added to the documents in error:

"Development are currently working on an indexing utility that will work with 11.1.2.2.x, but currently there is no such utility available"

December Patch Set Update Bonanza

Quite a few Patch Set Updates were released for the EPM products in December. The latest ones for HFM and Planning 11.1.2.2 (both PSU 306) are probably the biggest updates and include lots of fixes for both products. HFM for example has received further improvements to web data form performance and two handy utilities - HFM Application Backup Utility and HFM Index Update Utility - have made a comeback. Have a look at the readme files for more details and the prerequisites!

Oracle Business Analytics - Proactive Support blog: December EPM "Patch Set Updates" released

Blog Tweak

I have just added a widget called My Twitter Stream on my blog's front page. The widget will show my tweets and retweets so you can also see those updates and links that I don't write a blog post about. I hope you will find it useful!

New Tuning Guide For EPM 11.1.2.2 and 11.1.2.3

The Oracle EPM/BI Customer Engineering & Advocacy Lab (CEAL) team has release an updated version of the EPM Infrastructure Tuning Guide. Existing information has been updated to match the latest EPM versions and some new sections have been added:

• monitoring and tuning Essbase Analytics Link (EAL)
• tuning Oracle ADF
• monitoring and tuning IBM WebSphere and IBM HTTP Server
• tuning Smart View
• tuning Data Management products such as DRM and FDM
• tuning web browsers (Internet Explorer and Firefox)
• the Essbase tuning section has been extended

To download the document head on the EPM/BI CEAL blog post: EPM Infrastructure Tuning Guide v11.1.2.2 / 11.1.2.3

First PSU Out for HFM 11.1.2.3

Oracle has released the first Patch Set Update for HFM 11.1.2.3 last week. The PSU .100 (patch number 16956060) includes one new "feature":

The HFM UI has been tested in accordance with the software accessibility standards required by the US Federal Rehabilitation Act (Section 508).

Besides mentioning this accessibility feature the rest of the readme is stuffed with fixed defects (41 in total!). One of the most important corrections is that the web form performance fixes already released for HFM 11.1.2.2 have now been brought over to 11.1.2.3 as well. For the rest of the list please see the readme file on Oracle Support.

Note that this PSU requires three patches to Oracle common components: ADF patch 16788543 and two general Fusion Middleware patches: 13866584 and 16810628. Make sure you get the correct version (111170_Generic) of these packages when downloading them from Support.

Update: There are quite a few PSUs released for other products as well. See the Oracle Business Analytics Proactive Support blog for the lengthy list: October EPM patch set updates released.