Introduction

A couple of months ago I moved to Atlanta. I’m no longer consulting, now working in-house at a large company in the area. So far I’m enjoying the change in perspective. While consulting I often didn’t get to see the results of projects. Now I will be around to see exactly how my cubes are used, or abused. This will hopefully give me the opportunity to get more involved in optimizing cubes. I’m thinking here about MDX member formulas in ASO replacing BSO calc scripts. ASO databases seem to be Oracle’s preferred solution going forward, so I might as well get used to transitioning BSO cubes to them. I think the limited ASO calc functionality introduced in 11.1.2 is just the tip of the iceberg.

I’ve already gotten the chance to work with some new-to-me areas of Essbase. For example, I’ve used replicated partitions to move data from a BSO to an ASO rather than exporting level 0 data from the BSO then importing it into the ASO. Partitioning is an order of magnitude faster and easier to maintain. I’ve heard that partitions have a tendency to become corrupted, so I’m keeping a close watch on the replication process. I've also used MDX formulas in ASO to replace currency conversion calc scripts in BSO.

As I’m no longer working crazy consulting hours, I’m hoping to have more time to update this blog with my Essbase escapades. We’ll see how that works out...