More about new features in production release

There are several new features that I'd like to call attention to in the production release. One of the most important, even though it's not visible to end users, is the installer's ability to create a Windows service. Previously, the only way to run cubeSavvy on Windows was to use the start.bat file. While very easy to use and understand, it had a major shortcoming - the DOS command window remained open as long as cubeSavvy was running. The window could easily be closed accidentally, ending the cubeSavvy session in the process. Also, it's just not a good practice from a system administration point of view to have open DOS windows for each process running on a server. The Windows service allows for stopping and starting cubeSavvy just as you would any other service.

The next new feature of note is the ability to share ad-hoc grids with other cubeSavvy users. Administrators have always had this capability, using the "Users" - "Edit User Access" button of the "Home" tab. Now regular users can also share the grids they create. This is key: users can only share those grids that they themselves create. For such grids they have the option of giving fellow users either "Read/View" access or "Full Access". As the name implies, read access means that the grid appears in the user's list of grids on the left. The user can then open the grid, refreshing the retrieval contained therein. They can even modify the retrieval on the grid while they have it open, however, they do not have the ability to save their changes and make them visible to other users. Users with "Read" access to a grid are also not authorized to share it with other users. Only the creator of the grid, and admins, have this level of authorization.

An "Insert Attributes" button has also been introduced. Clicking this button will add those attribute dimensions to the grid that are not already present. For example, using an ad-hoc grid based on Sample.Basic, if the retrieval already contains "Caffeinated_True"; "Ounces", "Pkg Type", "Population", and "Intro Date" will be added to the header row. If no attribute dimensions are currently present, they will all be added.

The last enhancement is the "Environment" button, also for ad-hoc grids (are you seeing a trend here? ;-)). Clicking on this button presents a slide-out panel on the right of the grid. This panel displays most of the information available when creating or editing a grid: Environment, Application, Database, Calc script, Shared Services Groups, Comments, Description, and Decimal Places. A user with read access will see these options all grayed out, but can at least see the main settings for the grid. An admin user, the grid's creator, or a user with "Full Access" will be able to edit these fields and save the changes.

Give cubeSavvy a try. It has a 30-day free trial, so you have nothing to lose!

If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.

Regards,
Harry

Announcing the first cubeSavvy production release

I’m proud to announce the official production release of cubeSavvy 6.0.0. Almost four months in beta status has resulted in a battle-hardened, reliable product. I’d like to thank everyone who tested and provided feedback and/or suggestions. It was a tremendous help and I couldn’t have done it without you!

As I mentioned at Kscope, I will be charging a licensing fee for cubeSavvy. I know this goes somewhat against the grain in the Oracle EPM space, where free third-party tools abound. In fact, I myself offer the freely-available cubeSavvy Utilities on this website. So why then am I not making cubeSavvy available at no cost? The answer is simple – it’s the only way to determine if it actually provides value to users.

With that in mind, here is the value proposition for cubeSavvy as I see it:

• Web-based. This gives it several inherent advantages over traditional client-server products:
  • No need to install on every user’s computer, with all the administrative and technical problems that inevitably entails.
  • Works on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, UNIX, as well as iOS and Android.
  • NONE of the Excel add-in issues inherent in the classic add-in and Smart View, such as:
    • Multiple instances of Excel preventing it from loading.
    • All manner of registry issues around DLLs.
    • Missing Excel menu item.
    • Inability to handle large queries. Smart View uses compression, but it’s compressing XML which is already a large, bloated data-transmission format. cubeSavvy is much more efficient.
    • Inexplicable Excel crashes. Oracle blames them on Microsoft, who in turn blames them on Oracle.
• You get the best parts of Planning functionality: fixed forms, focused calculations, monitoring of user data input, etc. All without having to deal with Planning’s confusing architecture and tools and the administration nightmares they create. cubeSavvy allows you to just use Essbase without having to deal with Planning’s headaches.
• Price. Save your organization hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Oracle’s listed price for “Planning Plus” is $4,270 per user per year with a minimum of 25 users. That comes out to $106,750, minimum. Compare that to cubeSavvy, which would cost around $3,000 for the same number of users for the first year (and less than $2,000 for subsequent years) – and has no minimum number of users. Your organization is already spending a fortune on Essbase. Make the most of that investment!
• Speed. Most users have reported retrievals are faster than Smart View. Some have even noticed speeds faster than the classic add-in!
• Sharing. cubeSavvy allows users to create ad-hoc grids and share them with other users. No more emailing Excel retrieves or saving them to shared drives.
• Faster development and support. We all have our horror stories with Oracle Support. Many people at Kscope even mentioned that they’ve completely stopped logging SRs, seeing it as an exercise in futility. Being a smaller, more agile company with a more compact, better-architected product allows for much faster response times. For example, during beta testing it wasn’t unusual to turn around major feature requests in less than a week. Bugs were squashed in mere hours, not quarters.

You can download cubeSavvy at the usual place. Try it out for a month with up to 10 users. Why not give it a test-drive given the above value it could bring to your organization?

If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

Thanks,

Harry

harry.gates@cubeSavvy.com

cubeSavvy web-based Essbase grids: beta 9.7 – Windows service

This beta release contains no changes to core cubeSavvy functionality. Rather, the installer received a major improvement in preparation for the upcoming production release. Now, when installing on Windows, a cubeSavvy service is automatically created. cubeSavvy can then be stopped and started like any other Windows service:

Please give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

As there have been no new reported issues (and all the others have been addressed), I’m currently planning on launching the production release by this Monday, August 1st. Look for several blog posts/videos in the coming days.

cubeSavvy web-based Essbase grids: beta 9.6 – add attribute dimensions

I’ve been on vacation for the past 2 weeks, hence the lack of development/posts. I have had time, however, in the day since I’ve been back to add a requested feature – the ability to add attribute dimensions to an ad-hoc grid. Intuitively, only attribute dimensions that are not currently on the grid will be added.

Here you can see an ad-hoc grid that doesn’t contain attribute dimensions, along with the new “Insert Attributes” button on the toolbar:

After clicking “Insert Attributes”:

Even those of you who aren’t interested in this feature will want to download this last release, since the license file in the prior version has expired and will no longer allow you to use the program.

The production release of cubeSavvy is still on-target for August. This is primarily due to the ongoing positive feedback received from beta testers, including in-person at Kscope in Chicago a few weeks ago. I really appreciate it, so please keep your comments and suggestions coming!

cubeSavvy web-based Essbase grids: beta 9.5 – users can now create & share ad-hoc

version 6.0.0 BETA 9.5

Enhancements and improvements in this release and BETA 9.

• Added ability for users to create ad-hoc grids.
  • Users no longer need to wait for an admin to create an ad-hoc grid for them. They can do so directly from the Home tab, using the 'New Adhoc grid' option.
  • Users can also edit and delete ad-hoc grids to which they have access.
• Improvements made to Environments management when creating/editing grids.
• Now only grids to which users have access are displayed in the Grids list on the left. As a reminder, there are three ways a user can have access to a grid:
  1. Through direct access given by an admin on the Users tab
  2. Through membership in a Shared Services group that has been assigned to a grid by an admin
  3. Through creating an ad-hoc grid themselves using the new functionality above
• Added ability for users to share ad-hoc grids with other cubeSavvy users. I'm finally getting to some of the features I've been looking forward to creating since I started this project. Most of the features till this release have been recreating (and improving) functionality that Smart View already has. However, this ability to collaborate by sharing grids is something that you can't easily do in Excel, and hence in Smart View.

cubeSavvy will remain in beta for a little while longer to make sure that it's as stable and fast as possible. I'm tentatively targeting August for the 6.0.0 production release.

I'll be at KScope in Chicago in a couple of weeks. Please find me and say hi!

cubeSavvy web-based Essbase grids: beta 8 – run calc scripts on ad-hoc submit data

Enhancements in this release:

Ability to run calc scripts on ad-hoc grids after Submit Data.

This functionality is the same as for MDX and Report Script grids: all the members for each dimension are passed to the report script, allowing for super-focused calculations/aggregations. Click on FAQ on the Home tab for more details, and an example.

I'll walk through a simple example.

First, select a calc script:

The "subs1" calc script above:

Note the use of @IL and @L member selection commands. These take a @LIST (since there can be multiple members), which is passed in from the cubeSavvy grid on submit.

Data has been entered in an ad-hoc grid below, but has not yet been submitted (Submit Data).

After clicking Submit Data on the grid above, we can see that data has been aggregated:

The Essbase log for our application (Sample_U.Basic) gives us the full details:

And we can get detail that the Essbase log fails to provide by looking at the "Data Updates" tab on the cubeSavvy Home page. Here we can see the full Member Intersection, along with the Old Value and New Value for each data point:

Added Dataless Navigation

Improved administration of multiple Essbase environments

• It's now much easier to add/edit/delete Essbase environments, directly from the Home page
• The "default_configuration" below is the one set up in the installer. You can edit or delete it as you would any other environment. However, there must always be at least one environment. If you delete them all, the "default_configuration" will be added back the next time you start (start.bat/start.sh) the application.

I've decided to keep cubeSavvy in beta for a little while longer to make sure that it's as stable and fast as possible. Your feedback is still shaping the product. Please keep it coming! Download it here.

cubeSavvy web-based Essbase grids: beta 7 - multiple Essbase environments

There are several small bug fixes and enhancements in this release. The major enhancement is the ability to add multiple Essbase environments for ad-hoc grids. Prior releases only allowed connecting to a single Essbase server/Provider services combination. That limitation has now been lifted.

• Here's an excerpt from the cubeSavvy.conf file: The 'default' environment below is used to test whether a user has Essbase access to even log into cubeSavvy. The user should be provisioned in its Shared Services instance. The names are important (e.g. dev, test, main) since this will be displayed on grids. You can add as many environments as needed. At least one, however, is required as the default.

cubeSavvy.esbEnvironments {
default: prod,
dev {esbServer = "epmDev", esbProviderUrl = "http://192.168.56.101:9000/aps/JAPI"},
test {esbServer = "epmTest", esbProviderUrl = "http://192.168.56.102:9000/aps/JAPI"},
prod {esbServer = "epmProd", esbProviderUrl = "http://192.168.56.103:9000/aps/JAPI"}

}

• By default the installer will prompt for, and fill in, the "main" environment values, like so:

cubeSavvy.esbEnvironments {
default: main,
main {esbServer = "epmMain", esbProviderUrl = "http://192.168.56.103:9000/aps/JAPI"}

}

To add additional environments, as above, you will need to manually edit the $INSTALL_DIR/cubeSavvy/conf/cubeSavvy.conf file.

This enhancement was requested by so many people, I decided to release one more beta to incorporate it.

Grid edit/setup:

Prompt to log into environment when clicking on grid (only displays if you're not already logged into the particular environment):

Environment indicated on ad-hoc grid:

cubeSavvy web-based Essbase grids: Beta 4 – more options

The following features were implemented for Beta 4:

• Undo/Redo. In theory, the number of these operations is unlimited. In practice, browser memory is the limiting factor.
• Display both member names and aliases on retrieves. The alias displayed is determined by the selection in the dropdown next to "Name & Alias", "Default" in this case.

• Choose #Missing text label or numeric value. The retrieve above with #NumericZero selected:

• Select indentation level: subitems, totals, or none. The retrieves above have "Indent None" applied. Previously, all retrieves used "Indent Subitems" exclusively. That remains the default, just as in the classic add-in and Smart View.

Please continue to provide your feedback. It really does let me know what I should work on next. So download Beta 4 and let me know what you think.

-Harry

cubeSavvy web-based Essbase grids: Beta 3 - double clicks

version 6.0.0 BETA 3 Highlights

• Implemented mouse actions, such as control button+double-clicking to zoom in and control+right double-clicking to zoom out. You have to press the control button (Ctrl on Windows) while double-clicking. This is necessary because plain double-clicking on a cell opens it for editing.
• The first iteration of member information and member selection has also been included for testing.
• Licensing. There is now a license.sec file under the conf directory. This file must be present, and valid, for cubeSavvy to start. For the beta, it allows 30 days of use for up to 10 users.

The member information screen is pretty similar to the ones in the classic add-in and Smart View:

The member selection screen is still a work-in-progress, but is functional. For example, the Search field currently only finds matches for members that are already displayed. It doesn't yet go back and search the database for other potential members that also match the entered criteria. That will be included in the next beta release. You might also wonder why the Alias column is showing Russian below. That is because the alias table chosen on the grid is RussianNames - you can see it in the background:

Since I've now implemented the licensing functionality, I've decided to open up the beta to everyone. Therefore, I've made the beta 3 version the main cubeSavvy download.

Please let me know what you think in the comments.

-Harry

cubeSavvy add-in: beta update - Submit Data implemented

I've implemented Submit Data functionality for the second beta version, to be released tomorrow.

It also incorporates the feedback I've received from the current beta testers. The most common item mentioned has been to increase the number of rows in a retrieve from the current 20,000 limitation. I'm glad to announce that there is no limit now, besides the one imposed by Provider Services. And, in keeping with my focus on speed, performance is excellent, exceeding that of both Smart View and the classic add-in for large retrieves.

I've also finished perfecting the Save Changes option, to allow changes made to the grid during ad-hoc retrieval operations to be saved:

If you'd like to test the beta, please let me know and I'll make it available to you. I'll be sending out an update to the current beta testers tomorrow.

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cubeSavvy - add-in: beta this weekend

Just a short post, since I'm currently spending all of my limited free time working on development.

I'm shooting for releasing the first beta version of the cubeSavvy web-based Essbase add-in to testers this weekend. As a reminder, this version will only have retrieval capability. Ability to save data will come in the next beta release. Speed has been the major focus, and compares favorably to Smart View, and in some cases exceeds that of the classic add-in.

Please send me an email if you'd like to help test.

In the meantime, here's another brief video demonstrating basic functionality:

-- NORMAL --

cubeSavvy - the big one

Yes, this has been the plan all along: I'm creating a web-based Essbase add-in. My first attempt was the ill-fated Google Sheets Essbase add-on. I say this not because it was somehow technically-inferior. But because IT Information Security departments across the planet had a collective heart attack at the mere thought of poking a hole in the corporate firewall for Google traffic. Even though many of them had already done the same thing for Oracle XYZ Cloud Service.

cubeSavvy avoids this problem completely, by running inside the corporate firewall. In the latest, de rigueur terminology, it is an internal/private/corporate cloud application.

cubeSavvy allows users to retrieve Essbase data from any browser, on any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix), without having to install anything on their computer. No Excel, no DLLs, XLAs, .Net. Nada. Although it doesn't require Excel, data can easily be copied and pasted to/from it.

Users can also save their retrieves and administrators can make them visible to other users. This captures the primary functionality that drew me to Google Sheets - the ability to share Essbase data pulls.

As you can see in the short video below, the basic functionality is already working. Additional functionality like member selection, member information, pivot, zooming in to various levels/generations, etc. will be added next. Afterwards, the ability to save (i.e. lock & send) data will be implemented. One of the final steps will be to support mouse functions, like double-clicking and right-clicking.

This version is not yet available for download, but will be coming within the next couple of weeks. Please send me an email if you'd like to participate in the beta program.

As the Grids structure in the video above shows, cubeSavvy already has the ability to create web-based grids using MDX queries and Report scripts. These grids can then be provisioned to users either with Shared Services groups or on a by-user basis:

Grids can also have Page member drop-downs to allow one grid to be used for entering data to multiple member combinations:

MDX and Report grids already have the ability to submit data. All data submissions, including the old value and new value, are also logged and reportable: