Oracle Business Intelligence

Whole Lotta Love: Closing the books on stressed out accountants

Author: Timothy Simkiss Date: May 6th, 2013
Categories: Hyperion EPM

Using the music of Led Zeppelin as our theme, let’s examine some of the ways Accounting and Finance departments can often be considered Dazed and Confused, and then well provide solutions on how they can transform themselves, with some help from Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Tools. In little time at all, Accounting and Finance can go from being Over the Hills and Far Away to one a company can rely on to build the proverbial Stairway to Heaven for their operations. 

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Here, There and Everywhere: Oracle Business Intelligence On The Go

Author: Timothy Simkiss Date: January 25th, 2013
Categories: Oracle Business Intelligence

I am a self-proclaimed Beatles nut, as well an Oracle Business Intelligence and Mobile technology enthusiast. Believe it or not, these qualities aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Not anymore. When I think about the availability of Oracle Business Intelligence metrics, dashboards and reports on the go, I am often reminded of the great Beatles Song, Here, There and Everywhere. In today’s fast paced environment, managers need the latest information, access to reports, updates on customers and clients and the ability to see key performance metrics on a daily basis. The need to react to critical information almost instantaneously is the biggest change in the business world in the past ten years.  

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Integrate, Consolidate, Translate, and Validate using Oracle Hyperion Financial Management

Author: Timothy Simkiss Date: November 1st, 2012
Categories: Fusion Applications, Hyperion EPM, Oracle Business Intelligence

Learn how Oracle Hyperion Financial Management can help your company integrate data from disparate ERP systems, translate local currencies into the parent currency, consolidate all the data seamlessly, and validate results before approval. 

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Less Paralysis, More Analysis

Author: Timothy Simkiss Date: October 26th, 2012
Categories: Fusion Applications, Hyperion EPM, Oracle Business Intelligence

Oracle's EPM applications support strategic planning and goal setting, financial and operational planning, the end-to-end financial close and reporting process, and profitability management in a comprehensive and fully integrated suite. Applications that can deliver greater speed and agility, grouped under the general category of Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), are themselves more agile than ever before.  

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Operating Room Business Intelligence, Lessons Learned from Manufacturing Companies

Author: Stephen Goldsmith Date: October 22nd, 2012
Categories: Oracle Business Intelligence

With continued mounting pressures to reduce healthcare costs, healthcare providers can leverage the lessons learned in the 90’s by the world’s leading manufacturing companies. This blog is the first in a series of blogs that will discuss how healthcare organizations can employ manufacturing best practices to reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve patient satisfaction. Given that this is a business intelligence blog, the focus will be on how existing data can be transformed into information to achieve the aforementioned healthcare objectives. 

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OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 issues

Author: Stephen Goldsmith Date: October 22nd, 2012
Categories: Oracle Business Intelligence

11.1.1.6.2 BP1 Upgrade

The latest bundle patch set has been available for OBIEE for a few months now.  We have noticed an issue where the SQL generated by the RPD is different after the Patch set is applied.

Issue

The new SQL generated by the .RPD file aggregates data incorrectly.  For example, I created a report based off of one column in a fact table.  The SQL that was correctly generated in 11.1.1.6.0 is as follows:

WITH
SAWITH0 AS (select distinct T185463.COLL as c1
from
CC_FINANCIAL_DETAIL T185463 /* Fact Financial Detail */ )
select distinct 0 as c1,
D1.c1 as c2
from
SAWITH0 D1
order by c2

This is what you would expect.  A distinct listing of 1 column.  However, after upgrading the instance to 11.1.1.6.2 BP1, this is the sql that is generated:

WITH
SAWITH0 AS (select T185463.COLL_GROUP as c1
from
CC_COUNTS_ALL T171648 /* Fact Counts All */ ,
CC_COUNTS_DETAIL T171654 /* Fact Counts Detail */ ,
CC_FINANCIAL_DETAIL T185463 /* Fact Financials Detail */
WHERE ( T171648.GRP_ID = T171654.GRP_ID AND T171654.COLL = T185463.COLL AND T171654.GRP_ID= T185463.GRP_ID) )
select 0 as c1,
D1.c1 as c2
from
SAWITH0 D1
order by c2

This doesn’t make much sense.  There are a few things wrong with this query, but the most obvious is the lack of a distinct clause.  With more complex answers based off of the business model, you start to see that all of the aggregation is incorrect.  The upgraded RPD is issuing Cartesian joins in many cases.

Here is the solution

Solution

1)      Take a copy of the 11.1.1.6.0 .RPD file.

2)      Open the 11.1.1.6.2 version of the Admin tool

3)      Open the 11.1.1.6.0 version of the .RPD file with the 11.1.1.6.2 version of the Admin tool.

4)      Save the .RPD file and upload it.

Note that opening a copy of the .RPD file from the upgraded (11.1.1.6.2) OBIEE server will not work.  The version of that RPD is already 11.1.1.6.2, so the 11.1.1.6.2 Admin tool will not “upgrade” it to the current version.  You need to use the 11.1.1.6.0 RPD.

Blog author: Brian Makarewicz

Brain is a contributing blog author on the Business Intelligence Practice team at BizTech.

Oracle Hyperion: A Better Plan for Planning

Author: Timothy Simkiss Date: October 17th, 2012
Categories: Fusion Applications, Hyperion EPM, Oracle Business Intelligence

A Typical Planning (Budget) Process • Excel Templates are prepared by the Finance team (usually in October) with last’s year budget amounts is cleared out • Current year actual results are annualized and emailed out on separate Excel templates. • All spreadsheets must be checked to ensure that links and calculations are working • Templates are instructions are emailed out to department heads • Each department head is responsible for their own budget. • In larger companies this often involves sub-departments separated by location or line of business.  

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Setting up iBots in OBIEE 11 g

Author: Stephen Goldsmith Date: October 3rd, 2012
Categories: Oracle Business Intelligence

This post explains how to setup ibots in OBIEE 11g. In this case, the ibot setup was done by the weblogic OBIEE administrator. ibots are received by the end user and the end user login is integrated to OBIEE 11g from EBS. The limitation on this setup is that the end user can’t create iBots and send it to another user. Only weblogic administrator can login to OBIEE directly and create the ibots. 

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Using Presentation Variables to Dynamically Configure Aging Buckets at Runtime

Author: Stephen Goldsmith Date: September 24th, 2012
Categories: Oracle Business Intelligence

I came across a requirement where a client wanted to see specific records that had end dates before 30, 60, or 90 days from now. In other words the client wanted to dynamically change the date range to include records with a date less than Today’s Date + (30,60,90 days). 

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Why OBIA Financial Statements Cannot be extended through ETL Enhancements

Author: Stephen Goldsmith Date: September 17th, 2012
Categories: Oracle Business Intelligence

Why it’s not possible to modify a P&L statement just through the OBIA csv files? We recently ran into an issue that most clients who use OBIA Financials encounter. We want to show two revenue line items on the BI apps prebuilt P&L dashboard (for example: Line of business #1 Revenue and Line of business #2 Revenue). The account group names from file_group_acct_names partially determine what shows up on the balance sheet and income statement.  

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