Using QlikView with Hyperion Apps

Some interesting updates regarding the integration of Hyperion with QlikView.

http://bi.cbronline.com/news/mcafee-partners-with-star-analytics-qliktech-to-power-their-business-intelligence-insights-301111

QlikView for Essbase: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vyBSi_mssE

QlikView for HFM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7TChKCYKEs

Star Command Center Trial Edition

A free 30-day trial of Star Command Center is now available at: http://staranalytics.com/products/product-trial-request/?dlv=scc. The trial edition of the software is self-contained with its own pre-configured agent and automation repository, so you will be up and running quickly and efficiently – in less than 3 minutes! See how: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEJP3yl1W3M


The trial version of the software is completely compatible with the full version of Star Command Center. So, if you want to get your hands on the best application to address all your automation needs with full integration with products like Oracle’s Hyperion EPM products (Essbase, Hyperion Financial Management (HFM), Financial Data Quality Management (FDM), Hyperion Planning), QlikView, email automation and system administration, try it out today!

Running your BI and EPM applications in the Cloud

Hosted and Cloud-based application offerings are rapidly expanding their footprint in the enterprise application landscape. In the Hyperion EPM space, those offerings are available from Oracle On-Demand (http://www.oracle.com/us/products/ondemand/index.html), Key Performance Ideas (http://keyperformanceideas.com/) and Full 360 (http://full360.com/) to name just a few.

There are many benefits to moving applications to the Cloud. Cloud computing shifts the responsibility of the installation, configuration and management of the application from an in-house (on-premise) responsibility to an out-sourced and off-premise arrangement. It insulates the user from the complexity of the application and provides a consistent and fixed billing arrangement. As this new marketplace matures and the kinks are worked out, it is becoming a compelling option for rapid application deployment.

Despite the many advantages of Cloud computing, the traditional complexities of application automation not only remain, but get compounded.

Hybrid computing environments require advanced orchestration of the critical steps between on-premise and Cloud environments. For example, a simple process might require running a task on-premise and then sequence a dependant task on a hosted application that resides in the Cloud. A seamless and unified handshake is required which is typically a thorny problem to solve with custom scripting and introduces significant security challenges and maintenance headaches. Star Command Center can easily overcome these challenges that exist across a hybrid computing environment. This solution creates a unified computing environment between new applications in the Cloud and legacy applications that exist on-premise.

Recently, Star Analytics announced that Key Performance Ideas will be using Star Command Center Azure Edition to enhance their client deliveries by using a packaged software product to orchestrate automation across environments instead of using customized scripting. Hence they eliminate variability in their delivery and introduce simplicity and control to their automation process. Find out more at http://mwne.ws/neiaev.

Automate and Run Your Hyperion Environment with Zero Scripts, Zero Code and Zero Hassles

Presentation by Quinlan Eddy at K-Scope in Long Beach, CA – Automate and Run Your Hyperion Environment with Zero Scripts, Zero Code and Zero Hassles.

The presentation takes a case study approach on the following topics:

• General Hyperion EPM Automation
  
• Self-service automation for Business Users (via Web)
  
• Start & Stopping Hyperion Services
  
• Real-time Planning BSO to ASO Reporting
  
• HFM & FDM Automation
  
• Automated Data Validation

Presentation Link: http://bit.ly/0Script0Code0Hassles

A Fresh Approach to Essbase Backups

Methods to automate the backup process for Essbase are certainly available but tend to be complicated and often times more than a business user maintaining Essbase wants to take on. Most companies have resources capable of writing old-fashioned hard-coded ESSCMD, MaxL & batch scripts to automate the process but the scripts are cumbersome to maintain, collide with existing processes and when something does go wrong like leaving Essbase in a read-only mode, the administrator only finds out in the morning! Moreover, Hyperion administrators may not have time or may not have enough technical knowledge to maintain or modify these scripts. On the other hand, IT systems analysts may not have enough business background to modify the process. From time to time, the process easily becomes outdated and not able to meet the business’ requirement and needs.

Star Command Center (SCC) gives Hyperion administrators the ultimate solution to automate these processes in a well-organized and manageable way without writing any custom scripts. Using SCC to automate the Essbase backup process can save an incredible of amount of time versus building and maintaining custom scripts.

The following steps details one approach to setting up an Essbase back up process using Star Command Center and the Essbase and Utilities plug-in tasks:

Step #1. Create a backup directory for each Essbase application and database. Note the highlighted areas in the example below:

Create a task “Create backup folder” using the SCC Utilities Task Pack as the first step under the process “Backup – DemoApp” process. Fill in the parameters such as the path and directory name. Setup time – 2 minutes.

Step #2. Disable connections for the target Essbase application:

Create a task to “Disables Connections” using the SCC Essbase Plug-in. Setup time – less than 1 minute.

Step #3. Backup the target database to text file(s):

Create an “Export Data” task using the SCC Essbase Plug-in to export data from Essbase to a text file. Setup time – 1 minute.

Step #4. Detect if any errors occurred during the Data Export:

This task is designed ensure the “Export Data” task has successfully run without error. If there is an error, it will skip the next three tasks: “Reset Data”, “DataLoad” & “Error File Existence – Export”. Setup time – 2 minutes.

Step #5. Assuming the previous step is successful, clear the data in the Essbase cube to remove fragmentation:

Create a task to “Reset Data” using the SCC Essbase Task Pack. Fill in the Essbase application and database names. Setup time – less than 1 minute.

Step #6. Load data from the latest backup file(s) to the target Essbase database:

Create a task to “Data Load Text File” using the SCC Essbase Task Pack. F ill in the Essbase application and database names as well as the data file name. Setup time – less than 1 minute.

Step #7. Detect if any errors occurred during the Data Load:

This task is designed ensure the “Load Data” task has successfully run without error. If there is an error, it will simply skip to the following task. Setup time – 2 minutes.

Step #8. Create current date/time directory in the backup directory:

Create a task to “Create new folder (data)” using the SCC Utilities Task Pack. Fill in the root path where a new folder will be created in the DD-MM-YYYY format. Setup time – less than 1 minute.

Step #9. Move backup file(s) & log file(s) to the current date/time directory:

Create a task to “Copy Logs” and fill in the required Source and Target path and file information. Setup time – 2 minutes.

Step #10. Delete processing logs:

Create a task to “Delete Logs” using the SCC Utilities Task Pack. Setup time – less than 1 minute.

Step #11. Delete any date/time directory which is 15+ days old:

Create a task to “Delete log folders (15+ days old)” using the SCC Utilities Task Pack. This unique task will dynamically remove any folder and all its contents with a naming convention of “DD-MM-YYYY”. Note: all other folders are ignored. Setup time – less than 1 minute.

Step #12. Enable connections for the target Essbase application:

Create a task to “Enable Connections” using the SCC Essbase Task Pack. F ill in the Essbase application and database names. Setup time – less than 1 minute.

Step #13. Send out email notifications to in the event the process fails:

Tips:

1. Review the Star Analytics plug-ins inventory and understand what the plug-ins can do for you. A lot of time can be saved by using plug-ins, instead of writing custom code.

2. Based on the above example, each task takes 2 minutes or less to setup and not a single line of custom code was used to setup this semi-complicated process.

3. Use Star Command Center’s environment or process variables when setting up the tasks. Most tasks above have hardcoded values that can leverage environment variables.

Is there EAL for Hyperion Planning? Yes!

Wouldn't it be great if you would be able to push Oracle Hyperion Planning data to an Essbase ASO reporting cube in real-time? Of course it would! Now you can and this article will describe the simple process on how to make it happen. Your system will work smarter, not harder. The requirements are as follows:

• Star Command Center
• Off-the-shelf Oracle Essbase Report Scripts
• Off-the-shelf Oracle Essbase Rules Files
• Off-the-shelf Oracle Essbase MaxL script
• Minor modifications to the Hyperion Planning ValidateData.js file

Watch this 2 minute video that demonstrates the functionality within Star Command Center – be sure to view in full screen mode: YouTube Link
Regardless of Hyperion Planning complexity and product version v4, v9, v11, this process is fully supported and it is quick and easy to setup (less than one hour).
Step #1 – Edit your data configuration file. Depending on your Hyperion Planning web server (i.e. Weblogic, Websphere, Tomcat, etc) you will need to edit the “ValidateData.js” file (1) so either a new custom button can be placed on the Planning web form or (2) a new action can be defined such as ‘On Save’. For more details, see the blog post:
http://autogration.blogspot.com/2009/12/cool-things-with-hyperion-planning.html.

Step #2 – Create an Essbase Report Script that represents the data set that you want to extract from the source Planning Essbase cube and load into the target reporting ASO cube. The report script should:

• Include all combinations of data within the scope of the Hyperion Planning web form or include an entire Essbase “block”.
• Map the Hyperion Planning page slicers as parameters in the Essbase Report Script.
• Have 'Row' definitions that define the dimensionality of the Essbase block.

Step #3 – Create an Essbase Rules File to load the exported data into the target reporting ASO cube.

• Tip: Often the target reporting ASO cube has dimensionality that is different from the source Planning Essbase cube to allow reporting users to see data in different ways. As such, the Essbase data load rules file should map the source text file to the target ASO cube which can be easily handled in the rules file. This in turn simplifies the Planning model while maintaining rich reporting functionality.

Step #4 – Create a simple MaxL script to run the report script against the source BSO cube and load into the target ASO cube.

• Tip: Star Command Center Essbase tasks could also be used for this step

login $(ESS_USER) $(ESS_USERPW) on $(ESS_SERVER2);
export database $(ESS_APP).$(ESS_DB) using report_file 'ExptData.rep' to data_file 'Delta.txt';
import database 'TotASO'.'Plan1ASO' data from data_file 'Delta.txt' using rules_file 'Delta.rul' on error abort;
logout;

Step #5 – Create a simple task sequence in Star Command Center as illustrated:

• Tip: The above approach can actually be used with any other type of task sequence, for example loading Essbase data into relational data warehouse or running an external variable driven procedure.

Star Command Center 3.0 Launched

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Star Command Center 3.0 is a major release, with a host of new features. Note that the 3.0 launch includes a product name change: Star Finance Command Center is now called Star Command Center (SCC).

You may have seen recent announcements about Star Command Center’s ability to run and monitor your Business Intelligence applications from a Smartphone. We now have a live cloud-based installation of SCC available for you to access from a web browser, from your Smartphone, or from other browser-enabled devices. The URL is http://stardemo.staranalytics.com. Use these logon credentials: Username: "seestar" / Password: "seestar".

New in Version 3.0

• Command Line Client, a new license option. The command line client supports:
  • Querying, starting, pausing and stopping processes.
  • Testing Agent connectivity.
  • Full and partial exports of the automation repository.
• Web Services Interface, a new license option. The web services interface supports:
  • Starting, stopping and querying processes.
  • Support for all major BPEL engines, including Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Microsoft BizTalk Server and SAP NetWeaver.
• An improved Client user interface. The most noticeable changes are:
  • There are now tabbed views of documents, enabling multiple automation objects to be viewed, and/or edited, at the same time.
  • The Process Overview view now uses search in place of drill-down navigation. It is similar to the existing web interface.
  • It is now possible to edit a process from the run view with a single click.
  • You can now run a Process directly from the Setup and Design view. You can run the entire Process, part of the Process starting at a particular Task , or just a single Task.
  • It is now possible to manage both 2.0.8 and 3.0.x servers using the same Client.
  • You can now see user activity via the Web and Windows Client Run & Monitor consoles.
• An Audit Log is now available for all objects. The Audit Log answers the question of who did what, and when they did it.

• Previous versions of processes and file resources can now be viewed and promoted to become the current version.
• A new Label object has been introduced. By labeling a set of specific process and file resource versions, this state can later be restored in a single operation.

• Productivity packs are now managed directly from Command Center. They can be downloaded and installed from the Star Analytics web site, thereby providing a seamless upgrades from one version to another.
• The ability to set schedules with different frequencies on different dates.
• A new Run Process task type allows one process to start another process.
• A new Sleep task type suspends process activity for a specified period of time.
• There is now an option to skip a task.
• Process and ecosystem variables have been improved. Previously a variable could be expanded only once, and you could not nest variable references. Now you can use variables like:
  • VAR_A = Command
  • VAR_B = Star $(VAR_A) Center
  • And $(VAR_B) will expand to "Star Command Center"
• Mathematical expression handling has been enhanced. This is used primarily for automated data validation. The new engine supports the following:
  • Support for basic mathematical operators: + - * / ().
  • Support for mathematical rules of operation.
  • ABS - Returns the absolute value of a specified number. Example: Abs(-1) returns 1.
  • Ceiling - Returns the smallest integer greater than or equal to the specified number. Example: Ceiling(1.5) returns 2.
  • Floor - Returns the largest integer less than or equal to the specified number. Example: Floor(1.5) returns 1.
  • Max - Returns the larger of two specified numbers. Example: Max(1, 2) returns 2.
  • Min - Returns the smaller of two numbers. Example: Min(1, 2) returns 1.
  • Round - Rounds a value to the nearest integer, or to a specified number of decimal places. Example: Round(5.22, 0) returns 5.
  • Truncate - Calculates the integral part of a number. Example: Truncate(1.7) returns 1.

• Import/Export now allows you to import an ecosystem using a different name. Thus, you can now create a copy of an ecosystem on the same server.
• Agents can now process tasks from multiple servers simultaneously. If your setup includes multiple Command Center servers, you can have them execute tasks through the same physical server using a single agent.
• In addition to the product rename, the following components have also been renamed:
  • Windows services are now SccAgent, SccServer and SccQueue
  • The UNIX installation directory is now SccAgent
• Upgrade includes numerous quality improvements detailed in the release notes.

Star Command Center Plug-in Task Packs

There has been an expansion of the Star Command Center Plug-in Task Packs. The current inventory is as follows:

• Oracle Essbase Task Pack - Standard administrative functions for Essbase such as run calculation, load data, set and receive server-side variables.
• Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) Task Pack - Standard administrative functions for HFM, such as clear, copy, and move data, consolidate, open and close period, and execute Extended Analytics extractions.
• Oracle Financial Data Quality Management (FDM) Task Pack - Standard administrative functions for FDM, such as Import, Validate, Export and Load, run custom scripts, run standard FDM reports.
• Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Architect (EPMA) Task Pack - Ability to run an EPMA script.
• Utilities Task Pack - Various utilities used for data, file management and systems management.
• Email Task Pack - Email automation, providing the ability to send plain and HTML emails with file attachments.

Introducing Star Command Center 3.0

The next major release of Star Analytics’ flagship product is undergoing the final steps in the QA process. It will be released at the end of this quarter (Q1 2011). We are very pleased with this release, and we would like to provide an overview of some of its new features.

With new capabilities, and with increased support for cloud-based computing environments (discussed in a future blog post), the 3.0 release has a new product name: Star Command Center (SCC). SCC provides a significant expansion of capabilities that go well beyond the initial use within finance departments of Fortune 1000 companies, such as MasterCard, EDMC and Symantec.
See and read more:

• EDMC Webinar: http://bit.ly/EDMC-SCC
• MasterCard Webinar: http://bit.ly/MC-SCC
• Symantec Information Management Article: http://bit.ly/SYM-SCC

Based upon user feedback, the Star Command Center Client has improved usability, enhanced audit tracking, and an additional interface to handshake with 3rd party IT-based schedulers and enterprise management systems. The screenshots below, combined with short descriptions, help to illustrate the new capabilities found in Star Command Center 3.0.

• Tabbed/Multiple document view, enabling multiple automation objects to be viewed and edited at the same time.

Example #1: In tabbed view mode:

Example #2: In document view mode:

• The Process Overview view uses filters instead of drill down navigation

• It is now possible to edit a process from the Run View with a single click, thereby allowing an iterative approach to automation setup.

• Is it now possible to run a process directly from the Setup and Design View. This allows a user to run the complete process, to run a single task, or to do a partial run starting from a task.

• The system of Task Plug-ins has been vastly improved, and it can now be managed directly from the Star Command Center client. Task Plugins are used to add new Computing Resources and Task Types to the system.

• An Audit trail is now available for all objects. The audit trail answers the question of who did what and when they did it, which is especially important when managing automation.

For processes and file resources, old versions of a file resource can be promoted to become current versions, thereby providing the ability to restore from a previous state. Combined with the new labeling system in 3.0, a baseline of processes and file resources can be created. This can be restored in a single operation, thereby becoming the new baseline version.

• The Star Command Center Server audit log now can be filtered.

• As noted earlier, a new Label object has been introduced with Star Command Center 3.0. A label can be created with a set of specific process and file resource versions, which later can be used to restore in a single operation. During an Ecosystem Export operation, Star Command Center automatically labels the automation repository before doing an import, easily allowing the import to be undone.

• A new Run Process task type has been introduced. This task type allows an automation process to be started as a subroutine.

Functional changes

• Improved scheduling: It is now possible to schedule a process to run at 2pm on Wednesdays and at 3pm on Thursdays.
• Improved process and ecosystem variable usage: Previously, a variable was expanded once and did not allow for nested variable references. With this enhancement, variables behave like this:
• VAR_A = Command
• VAR_B = Star $(VAR_A) Center
  In turn, $(VAR_B) will expand to "Star Command Center"
• Import/Export now allows ecosystem import using a different name. This enhancement allows making a copy of an ecosystem on the same server.
• Agents can now process tasks from multiple servers simultaneously. With a setup that includes multiple Star Command Center servers which utilize a common remote agents, the agents can now execute tasks from each server.

Command Line Client

With the release of Star Command Center 3.0, a command line client has been added as an additional licensed feature. The command line provides the following capabilities:

• Start/stop/pause a Star Command Center processes
• Query the state of a running process (not started, running, paused, warning, error, complete)
• Query process statistics (run time, last run, number of runs, run by user)
• Test connectivity to a Star Command Center agent
• Export one or more ecosystems

The Command Line Client complements the existing Event Listener interface and the Web Service interface. It enables Star Command Center to be part of a larger automation ecosystem traditionally made up of IT-based scheduling and enterprise management tools such as CA AutoSys, IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, BMC Control M, UC4, ActiveBatch and HP OpenView.

A link to the above can be downloaded here.

QlikView for Essbase

In the previous posts, we discussed Hyperion Automation and noted that long time Hyperion luminaries within Oracle have been very supportive in lending their praise to the Star Finance Command Center (SFCC) and its value proposition for automating processes not only across Hyperion products, but a whole ecosystem of other applications as well. This post focuses on our second product: the Star Integration Server (SIS).

Star Analytics’ goal is to provide software that truly opens and connects application processes and data with other applications. SIS is designed to provide high volume extract of any level of data and metadata from Oracle Essbase, Oracle Hyperion Planning and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) to a standard Star Schema. Star has many customer cases of SIS being used to not only move data between the varying dimensionality of Hyperion applications, but also to data warehouses for consumption by various reporting and BI tools. Thus, SIS far more fully enables users to have open application solutions and more easily use their tool of choice around their Hyperion data.

One BI tool of choice that has been gaining popularity over the past few years is QlikView. At Star, we’ve seen a notable uptick in QlikView at large enterprise accounts, and a growing interest to bring Hyperion data into QlikView for mashing with other operational data for a more comprehensive organizational view.

Recently, Star Analytics released a new version of SIS that serves up QlikView ready data; making it easy to share all levels of Essbase data across financial and operational oriented dashboards. To see more, check out the PDF file: http://staranalytics.com/blog/blogfiles/Integrating_Hyperion_to_QlikView.pdf

As a final note, consulting companies like NxGen Consulting see the demand for this solution which is contributing to growing their practice: http://nxgenconsulting.com/services_Star.html

Automating Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) Tasks

In the previous posts, Star Finance Command Center (SFCC) was introduced as an alternative to scripting and manual processes. In this post we discuss the automation of Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) Tasks.

Since SFCC was launched over 18 months ago, Star Analytics has focused on the need to automate a complete finance systems environment. One of the key areas that our early adopters asked us to focus on was automation of the HFM environment. Simply put, there was no real way to automate the updating, calculating, consolidating, and exporting of an HFM application. All this required “all or nothing” access by an HFM administrator to go into the HFM console and manually run processes. The alternative was to whip out some Visual Basic code and perhaps tie it into a Windows scheduler or use the rudimentary capabilities of HFM Task Scheduler. Either way, a costly and/or inflexible, and un-scalable approach for business users at any HFM installation of significant size.

In fact, in showing SFCC to the HFM product team, they seemed to be impressed enough with the product’s capabilities to drive us to release our first SFCC Automation Task Pack for HFM. With that, some long time Hyperion luminaries like John O’Rourke saw the tremendous value-add for their customers and have spoken on the product’s behalf on numerous occasions:

“We are pleased that Star Analytics is leveraging Oracle’s open application framework with the Star Finance Command Center,” said John O’Rourke, vice president of product marketing at Oracle. “This helps makes it easy for Oracle Hyperion Financial Management customers to automate their financial processes across multiple applications and systems.”

Since introducing the HFM Automation Task Pack, we have had some of the world’s most prominent HFM shops, like Pfizer, embrace SFCC to connect, automate, and eliminate manual processes in their finance systems environment. As the buzz for SFCC has grown at various user groups, and the list of customer success stories has grown, John recently co-presented with EDMC at a recent Star Analytics webinar and provided some additional thoughts:

“Organizations are always looking for ways to speed close cycle times while improving the integrity of their financial data,” said John O’Rourke, vice president of product marketing at Oracle. “The combination of Oracle’s market-leading financial close and reporting applications and the Star Finance Command Center is a powerful one-two punch that helps achieve that goal by streamlining systems for more consistent, timely, transparent and accurate financial data and processes.”

A replay of the webinar is available by clicking here.

In recent times, we have also been asked by perspective customers to compare and contrast SFCC to the newly released Financial Close Manager (FCM). Having seen previews before its commercial release, we were pleased to see its workgroup oriented features to manage the “to do” tasks of the financial close process. We were even more pleased to see that FCM and SFCC were designed to address different sides of “automation”. While FCM is inwardly focused on the HFM close environment, SFCC is all about the connection, automation, and monitoring of HFM in conjunction with the whole ecosystem of application processes that surround it.

Samples of how our SFCC HFM Task Pack works are explored in this PDF file: http://staranalytics.com/blog/blogfiles/Automating_HFM_Tasks_with_Star_Finance_Command_Center.pdf

Automating Oracle Essbase Tasks

In the previous posts, Star Finance Command Center (SFCC) was introduced as an alternative to scripting and manual processes. In this post we discuss the automation of Essbase Tasks.

Since the early 1990s, Essbase has been the market leading multidimensional database solution for planning, reporting, and analysis. Despite its popularity, and strategic importance in serving the needs of large user communities, the product relies heavily on scripting and custom coding to work in non-trivial customer environments. The lack of better tools to orchestrate, automate, and monitor the Essbase environment creates a significant cost for the initial implementation, and ongoing maintenance of the system.


A bit of history…Back in 1992, initial Essbase customers asked for some way to automate the loading and updating of Essbase cubes. At that time, the Essbase roadmap was full of more important features to improve usability, scalability, etc. However, lurking in a back-cubicle of Arbor Software, the Essbase QA Manager, Ron Cho, had built his own Essbase command line interface using the Essbase API; he called it ESSCMD. Despite the fact that it was built for internal QA use, the utility was put in a few customer’s hands, and it did the trick. As the early Essbase installed base quickly grew, more customers ended up with the utility in hand, so basic documentation was provided.

Fast forward to 1999, the Essbase install base was large, and despite its many shortcomings, ESSCMD had become part of the product family. As the demands for more enterprise class deployability continued to grow, it was clear that ESSCMD was not up to the challenge. MaxL was born to provide a more programmatic language based interface that could be more easily used with Perl, Python, or other scripting languages.

The basic idea however, was still to provide the rudimentary command line interface, and let the more technically oriented administrators fend for themselves with scripting languages and scheduling tools. While the Essbase command line interfaces make automation possible, they were never designed to or actually perform the automation of tasks. That is where SFCC comes into the picture. Over the past 18 months the product has been used by a number of long time, and not so long time, Essbase shops to automate and interconnect their ESSCMD and MaxL processes with a whole ecosystem of applications that surround Essbase.

Interestingly enough, one of the frequent requests that we receive from Essbase customers is for pre-defined Tasks in SFCC to perform all the update and maintenance operations on Essbase; without having to resort to ESSCMD or MaxL. Many of them would rather eliminate their scripts, and other code, altogether with out-of-the-box features that are provided by SFCC.

In response to our Essbase customer demand, a library of over 20 Essbase specific tasks is now available for SFCC. Samples of how this works are explored in this PDF file: http://staranalytics.com/blog/blogfiles/Automating_Essbase_Tasks_with_Star_Finance_Command_Center.pdf

Automating Oracle Hyperion FDM Tasks

Oracle's Financial Data Quality Management (FDM) is heavily relied upon as a preprocessor of data in advance of loading into Oracle's Hyperion Financial Management (HFM), Hyperion Planning and occasionally into Oracle Essbase. The product does an excellent job validating, parsing, merging data based upon rules that ensures the output data is correct for loading into the target system. This summary does not nearly give the product justice and more information can be found at: http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/hyperion-data-quality-management-066557.html.

Despite all the benefits that FDM brings to enhancing data quality, it lacks significant ability to automate the various tasks that are necessary to keep the application running across an ecosystem of applications, servers and processes that typical finance administrators need to interact with. FDM does have a built-in “localized” scheduler but it is difficult to job chain FDM processes with other running processes outside of the control of FDM. As a result, clients who depend upon FDM often rely upon manual processes to do such tasks such as running custom file splitters, loading data to various applications via the “4 Fish Process” and generating and emailing reconciliation reports in PDF or XLS formats. In the typical environment, where there is a heterogenous mix of applications and computing environments, each step along a job chain typically requires human intervention which is time consuming, error prone and ultimately undermines SOX compliance.

In the previous post, Star Finance Command Center (SFCC) was introduced as an alternative to manual processes and how a current Command Center customer helped educate their team about the product's capabilities through a comparison of current processes and those under the control of SFCC. In this post, the following three main FDM tasks will be highlighed and how SFCC automates them:

• Running a FDM Custom Script
• Running the “4–Fish” Process (Import, Validate, Export & Load)
• Running the FDM report engine

Details of how Star Finance Command Center interacts with FDM will be explored in this PDF file: http://staranalytics.com/blog/blogfiles/Automating_FDM_Tasks_with_Star_Finance_Command_Center.pdf