Table 1: A Process Map
Learn the fundamentals of Analytic Services and distributed OLAP. |
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Assess your needs and requirements.
Have a clear idea of your data analysis needs and of what types of calculations and reports you want to run. |
Your budget, forecasting, and other financial reports with notes on how you want to improve them |
Analyze your data from a multidimensional perspective. Consider the following:
- Where are your data sources?
- What type is the data? Is it detailed, relational data or is it higher-level, hierarchical data that can be used for analysis?
- In what format is the data?
- How will you access the data? If you need to access relational data, you may need SQL Interface or Integration Services (a separately purchasable product).
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Install Analytic Services.
Decide what components you want to install. Be aware that the license your company purchased might not include all options. |
Essbase Analytic Services Installation Guide |
Design your application and database.
- Identify business and user requirements, including security.
- Identify source data and determine the scope of the Analytic Services database.
- Choose whether to leave lowest-level member data in a relational database and access with Hybrid Analysis, or to load all data.
- Define standard dimensions and designate sparse and dense storage.
- Identify any need for attribute dimensions.
- Identify any need for currency conversion applications that track data in different currencies.
- Define calculations needed for outline dimensions and members.
- Identify any need to monitor data changes in the database. You monitor data changes using the Analytic Services triggers feature (licensed separately).
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Case Study: Designing a Single-Server, Multidimensional Database |
Estimate the size of your database, check disk space, and ensure that the sizes of the index, data files, and data caches in memory are adequate. |
Limits |
Create an application and a database. |
Creating Applications and Databases |
Design a currency application. |
Designing and Building Currency Conversion Applications |
Build an outline for your database. |
Creating and Changing Database Outlines |
Assign alias names to your members. |
Setting Dimension and Member Properties |
Build the dimensions. Decide whether your data loads will introduce new members into the outline. If so, consider dynamically building your dimensions using a rules file and a data source. If not, set up regular data loads. |
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Load your data. You can load data these ways:
- Free-form
- With a rules file
- With Hybrid Analysis
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Calculate your database.
- Decide on a type of calculation: outline or calculation script, or a combination of both.
- Ensure that relationships between members and member consolidations in the database outline are correct.
- Consider whether tagging some members as Dynamic Calc or whether using Intelligent Calculation will improve calculation efficiency.
- Consider which members you need to tag as two-pass calculation to ensure correct calculation results.
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Learn about dynamic calculations and how they can greatly improve performance. |
Dynamically Calculating Data Values |
View data with Spreadsheet Add-in, other Hyperion tools, or third-party tools. |
- For Spreadsheet Add-in, see the Essbase Spreadsheet Add-in User's Guide
- For other tools, see the documentation for that particular tool
- For a list of tools, visit the Hyperion site: http://www.hyperion.com
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Learn about Partitioning. Think about whether your data can benefit from being decentralized into connected databases. |
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Link files or cell notes to data cells. |
Linking Objects to Analytic Services Data |
Copy or export data subsets. |
Copying Data Subsets and Exporting Data to Other Programs |
Back up and restore your data. |
Backing Up and Restoring Data |
Allocate storage and specify Analytic Services kernel settings for your database.
- Data compression: Specify data compression on disk and the compression scheme.
- Cache sizes: You can specify the index, data file, and data cache sizes. To prevent a slow-down of the operating system, ensure that the sum of index and data cache sizes for all the active databases on the server is not more than two-thirds of the system's RAM.
- Cache memory locking: You can lock the memory that is used for the index, data file, and data caches into physical memory.
- Disk volumes: You can specify the storage location of Analytic Services index files and data files, specify the appropriate disk volume names and configuration parameters.
- Isolation level: Specify either committed access or uncommitted access.
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Generate a report.
- Choose a type of report: structured or free-form.
- Plan the elements of the report, such as page layout, number of columns, identity of members, format of data values, and content of titles.
- For a structured report, create page, column, and row headings (unnecessary for a free-form report).
- Create and test a report script, use Administration Services' Report Script Editor or any other text editor.
- Save the report on OLAP Server or on a client computer.
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Fine-tune your database performance and storage settings. |
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Automate routine operations by using MaxL or ESSCMD. |
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Design security for your database.
- Create a security plan for your environment based on database security needs.
- Create users and groups and assign them administrative or data-access permissions, if necessary.
- Define common data access permissions at the scope of the server, applications, databases, or data-cell levels.
- To define global application or database permissions, select the relevant application or application and database and adjust the settings.
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Maintain your applications. |
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Analyze and improve performance and troubleshoot errors if they occur.
- Ensure that block size is not excessively large.
- Set the correct size for the index, data file, data, and calculator caches.
- Validate the database to ensure data integrity.
- Consider using partitioning to distribute data across multiple cubes for better scalability and performance.
- Ensure that disk space is adequate to allow the application to grow over time.
- Archive data from OLAP Server on a regular basis.
- Enable logging for spreadsheet update to ensure that log files are updated after archiving.
- If sorting on retrievals, increase the size of the retrieval sort buffer.
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