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

Introduction

During Part I we discussed the general steps. In this post I will go into commonly faced issues and how to address them. Although these issues where experienced by myself, it could very well be others / you will experience different issues.

Migration Issues

In chapter I will go into the issues experienced related to Planning. The issues are split by the activity as they occur: EPMA Validation, EPMA Deployment, LCM Import of Planning artifacts and refresh database within Planning (towards Essbase).

EPMA Validation

#Issue 1 - Error "Member 'D-T-D' in the period dimension has no value for the period type"

Once the EPMA Planning application artifacts are imported, and you try to validate the application you might receive the following (repetitive) error which prevents you from deploying the application:

This error is caused by a bug in version 11.1.2.1, the source system in this case and results in a faulty LCM export. This issue is documented by Oracle in Doc ID 1511120.1.

Please be aware that this issue might be in the shared or local period dimension. In my case I had to migrate multiple Planning applications from which a few used the shared dimension and the rest had the local period dimension configured.

Important!: If you already imported the EPMA Planning application artifacts, you need to delete the application from the EPMA application library. In case the period dimension is shared, the period dimension must be deleted from the EPMA dimension library.

Within the EPMA LCM export located in the LCM import/export folder, navigate to "\EPMA-EPM Architect\resource\Application Metadata\Planning Applications\Local Dimensions". Using notepad(++) open the file "PERIOD". Delete only the following text blocks from this file:

Save the file and import the EPMA Planning application artifacts through LCM. When imported, run validation from the application library and verify the error has disappeared.

#Issue 2 - Error : The Alias '' is already used in the Alias Table 'Default'

It seems EPMA validation behavior changed in 11.1.2.4 compared to 11.1.2.1, where this configuration is allowed in 11.1.2.1, it is refused in 11.1.2.4.

The fix (from a technical perspective) is do delete the mentioned aliases from the member in the mentioned dimension (It cannot be used for member 'name' in dimension 'name') from within the EPMA dimension library.

EPMA Deployment

#Issue 1 - You cannot have only a semicolon as a formula for a dynamic calc sparse member

In EPMA 11.1.2.1, it was not allowed to have a empty formula. You where required to place a single semicolon. This behavior changed in 11.1.2.4 to the opposite. A single semicolon is not allowed, just must leave the formula field empty. During deployment of the application you receive the following error:
The solution is simple, find the member in question and delete the semicolon from the formula field.

Planning LCM Import

#Issue 1 - /Global Artifacts/Calculation Manager Rulesets/ruleset name:- Business rule import partially succeeded. The following artifacts failed to import Rulesets: [ruleset name]

In my case, for some reason rule-sets do not always import through LCM. In order to import the missing or incomplete rules sets I when to the source system and within calculation manager I exported the rule-sets in question. This will result in a XML file which can be imported in the target system through calculation manager.

Final Note

Some issues are to be expected due to version differance. It seems that while EPM version is progressing, validation of (meta) data becomes more strict and advanced. Which is from a functional perspective a good thing. However during migration activities this can provide additional challenges. In your specific case you might encounter additional or even a complete different set of issues.

Part I