Version 11 Installation

I was going to start with going through the new functionality of Planning but before we can get to that stage we need to go through the installation.

I am going to be brave and pretty much install the full suite of products on one windows 2003 server vmware and on my trusty macbook, funnily enough vmware for the mac is called fusion, is this the word of the moment?

Please note that this just my experience of the installation and configuration, I never profess to speak the gospel word, please correct me if I am wrong.

First point to make is the installation has totally changed, gone are the days of just being able to double click an executable, now you have to download the installer (463MB) and the three parts of foundation services (just under 2.2gb), apparently on every machine you need these core elements, it seems
a bit crazy to me that you need to have 2.6gb of files just to install something like essbase server, I am not sure if this is totally correct as I am just going off the documentation.
Even the client essbase software is all stuck together in a whopping 312MB file, I am just hoping it does get split out in the future.
Inside most of the zipped files there is an assembly.dat file, looking quickly into the file I don't see much of existence of executables so looks like we are going down a totally new route.

If you are going to download version 11 from edelivery be aware that is now under Oracle Enterprise Performance Management and not in the Hyperion section.

All documentation for version 11 can be found online at :- http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12825_01/index.htm


Enough waffle, onto the install. Everything has been unzipped into one folder. (if you don't put it all into one folder you will receive some java errors on startup I noticed somebody on the forums had already experienced this)

I think one of the many complaints in the past is that the Hyperion installers had too many parts to them and now it has all been simplified into 8 easy steps.

1. Welcome - Displays if the machine has passed the pre-requisites and the resolved hostname it will use (but will it use it throughout configuration?
   
   
   
2. Choose install directory
   
   
3. Installation type – New by tier (client,web application,service) or individually, upgrade or re-install by tier/individually
   
   
4. Select the products to install
   
   
   
5. Upgrade homes (fresh install this is missed out)
   
   
6. Confirmation screen of the products you are going to install
   
   
7. Displays progression of install
   
   
8. Summary of installation
   

And that’s it, couldn’t be simpler, quite impressive.

I have had a quick look at the uninstaller and it is based on the same methodology as the installer, it doesn’t seem to clean up the registry so well, it did remove all the services though but can you call that a full uninstall?

I must admit it was the fastest install I have ever done albeit to one machine, I am sure in the near future I will be trying a multiple server install just to try and break it and aren’t you lucky you will get to be involved.
I did notice that Application builder has made a comeback I honestly thought that was going to disappear; I know Hyperion produced a 9.2 version but not one for 9.3, you can use it with 9.3 with a few minor changes. I did test Application builder and it’s pretty decent if you want to develop .net apps for Essbase. I have ended up going down the JAVA API route as I feel it is far more powerful, I have even been pushing myself to learn JAVA which I am sure there will be more about in future blogs.

Right onto the configuration, I am not going to dwell too much on this only to try and point out the differences.

I have always wondered if you can configure the products using SQL server express, it is not down as a supported but it is free and looks very capable of doing the job Hyperion requires which is not much in the relational world. It uses JDBC most of the time so I thought I would give it a go, the thing to note with SQL server express is that it doesn’t automatically run on port 1433 so changed it so it did so just for ease.

All the products look to be in the same area on the start menu, which is now called Oracle EPM System, the configuration utility is called EPM System Configurator.


The configurator look and feel is pretty much the same as in 9.x. It uses the same type of xml files for the configuration settings which are located in E:\Hyperion\common\config\9.5.0.0\product

(Notice the 9.5.0.0 you will see that a lot if you delve into the file structures, there must not have been enough time to change between it being renamed to 11, all just to add to the confusion)

I must admit I have tried to configure a few times because I have hit a few oddities. I do recommend reading up on the configuration sequence in the install documentation.

In the documentation it recommends if you are installing on one machine you should configure all products at once, now if you do that it only lets you use one database and puts everything into there, I am not a big fan of this mainly for backup and recovery reasons plus I am sad and like to see which tables the product actually uses, comes in handy for diagnostics.


This is a new feature and I just have a feeling it is used to try and simplify things, it does also have advanced options, which let you enter the JDBC connection string directly and overrides the setting in the panel.

I went down the route of individually configuring the products so I could use a separate database for each one. This is where I came across the first issue if you try and configure Essbase on its own using HSS security then when it tries to convert to external authentication it fails, it does the conversion automatically now through the configurator, it just basically runs a maxl script in the background. It does say that the configuration was successful though. (always check out \Hyperion\logs\config\to be sure)

I think I found that if you configure Essbase and EAS at the same time it doesn’t hit this issue or if you configure all Essbase items at the same time.

If you do try and configure Essbase more than once it will not remove the previous windows service and create a new one with the number incremented by one.

While we are on that note I have been warned that if you don’t include the Hyperion and Reporting Migration utility assembly then workspace will not install fully, nice feature. ( I think it is the Workspace services and Common Libraries it doesn’t install which are definitely needed if you want to use workspace)

The default application server now known as the Embedded Java Container automatic deploys Tomcat 5.5.17

Shared Services now uses port 28080 instead of port 58080 as default, I am not sure why they have changed this (maybe a conflict with external products?), everything else looks to use the same port as before.

There is a validate option now which goes through and checks whether the product is all correctly configured and generates a nice little web page with the output.


This can also be accessed from the start menu > EPM System Diagnostic

I don’t think there are many more differences with the configuration but it does feel like there are fewer screens to through now.

The foundation element now uses something known as the Shared Services registry which on first inspection looks like a few tables in the HSS database holding configuration details which is definitely a step in the right direction



All services have finally been prefixed with Hyperion, Integration Services being the last one that needed updating.


Notable additions are Hyperion Annotation Server, Hyperion CALC Manager, Hyperion EPM Architect - .Net JNI Bridge.
BI+ Core services are now known as Hyperion Workspace – Agent Service

Logs – throughout versions in System 9 there has been a stepped change to try and put all logs files together which seems pretty logical. In 11 there are a number of extra product logs appeared in \Hyperion\Logs\ , the most noticeable is that Essbase has moved all its logs, it looks like there is no extra logging for planning, I suppose the auditing is considered to be the logging functionality.

There is \Logs\Services\ which logs all the web server activity for each product that is set up as a service, this is useful as you use to have to run the application server in the foreground or add extra information in the registry, had a quick look in the registry and that is how it has been done. I have always found this is the best method to troubleshoot planning.

I also noticed that there OPatch (Oracle patching utility) in the Hyperion directory so hopefully in the future patches will be much easier to apply.

One thing I have noticed though I am not sure if it is just my vm image is that if I don't shut down all the hyperion services then the image takes around 10 mins to shut down, not sure which service it is which is causing the problem.

I think that pretty much concludes the installation and configuration; everything looks to be up and running and even working with SQL server express (maybe it will come back and bite me)

Now for the product new features…..