Clarifying Oracle EPM Versioning

Introduction

Even for EPM insiders, Oracle's versioning scheme for Oracle EPM can be confusing. With this post I attempt to shed some light on this matter. This post will assume the latest version of EPM available at the time of writing, which is 11.1.2.4.x. The rumour is that this is the last EPM 11.x version, in 2017 version 12.x is expected. Essbase v12.x has recently been released embedded in the latest version of OBIEE.

Identification of Landscapes Through Workspace Title Bar

Introduction

Most clients have two or more Oracle EPM landscapes. Landscape is e.g. development or production. In some cases clients have 5 landscapes: development, staging, acceptance, production and a disaster recovery environment. During certain processes it is common that administrators have Workspace open from different landscapes. In those cases it might be practical to be able to easily identify on which landscape you are working.

How to migrate EPMA enabled Planning applications from 11.1.2.1 to 11.1.2.4 - Part I

One of the most recent challenges I faced is migrating EPM Architect enabled Planning applications from 11.1.2.1 to 11.1.2.4. Personally I find it hard to get an official approach from Oracle. The only official path seems to be a in-place upgrade. However this is rarely an option, it is unlikely a customer would agree to this for various reasons. Maybe a subject for a different post.

So, what to do? Personally I like to recommend a "test migration" using the customers most critical application. During these test migrations you will have the opportunity to determine the best method to migrate their application(s). In addition this allows you to discover any customer and product issues which you can than resolve and document. When you perform the final migration, you simply follow your own manual and you should be good to go.This will shorten you final migration run time significantly!

Collect all Oracle EPM Patches Installed

As you may know from my previous post, I am fund of automating Oracle EPM installation and configuration tasks. However automating some documentation tasks is also very much appreciated ;-) Below a small old school Windows NT Shell script that produces a computername_epmservices.txt file containing all patches installed for each Oracle EPM Oracle home. Please note that this script requires another script which is a wrapper for opatch. Please copy hpatch.cmd to "\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1\OPatch" and then execute getPatchList.cmd from anywhere.

Set all Oracle EPM Windows Services to Manual

It is best practice to set all Oracle EPM Windows services to manual. In most situations maintenance on the Windows servers is performed scheduled and unattended. That means e.g. when installing Windows patches, the servers might be rebooted at any time in any order. In most cases the shutdown is forced. That means all running processes that do not end within a specified time, are killed. In my experience this can damage the Oracle EPM installation. Hence my recommendation. When you perform as many installations as I do, you start to appreciate some automation of certain tasks during installation and configuration.

Below a simple, but effective PowerShell script that finds and disables all Oracle EPM Windows Services. Only works on EPM 11.1.2.2.0 and up.

Syntax Highlighting for Essbase Script Languages

Regularly writing scripts for Essbase and not fund of writing them in EAS Console? Than you might appreciate syntax highlighting in Notepad++, my favorite text editor !

This is how...

Download and install Notepad++ (see My Favorite Tools) and download the syntax definition file from here.

Like shown on the left, navigate to "Define your language..." from the top menu bar.

Click the import button as show in the picture above. Browse to the earlier downloaded syntax definition file "Essbase_userDefineLang.xml". Close the Window, no need to save. Restart Notepad++ and navigate collapse the menu option "Language", you should see the three Essbase languages added to the list as shown the picture below.



Simple, but effective!