I just can't seem to abandon the idea of developing a Google Sheets Essbase add-on. Maybe I'm a little ahead of my time, or maybe I've got some of this guy in me. I don't know. What I do know is that every time I fire up my personal Essbase development environment, a Google Sheets script editor seems to also magically appear. If I build it, maybe they will come.
With Oracle moving more and more services to The Cloud, I have to think that companies' resistance to also moving at least some users to cloud-based office productivity tools like Google Sheets is destined to crumble. After all, the security model of Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Services is exactly the same as Google Sheets. All your data is already in the cloud, so why not do your analysis there, too? And since a spreadsheet is really only useful if you can share it with others in your organization, which is where Google Sheets excels (sorry for the punny), why not eliminate the Excel middleman?
As the animation below demonstrates, the add-on currently has the ability to retrieve data from a range using the Essbase Query By Example (”QBE”) paradigm explained by Tim Tow in a blog post here. It actually even eliminates the need to prefix numeric member names with a single quote. This requirement can be extremely vexing to both users and admins alike. The add-on accomplishes all of this through the XMLA web service that you already have running through Provider Services. No additional software currently need be installed.
Of course, in order to also provide the ability to send updated data (a.k.a. lock & send; a.k.a. L&S) back to the Essbase server, it would be necessary to either install a Java API-based web application in-house or to enable the new Essbase Web Services that no one, outside of Oracle, appears to be using.
Before I expend any more effort on this add-on, am I tilting at windmills? Please let me know in the comments.
-Harry
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