How the Essbase CLI Login Works

I’ve been using the Essbase CLI ever since it was released with Essbase Cloud in 2017 and although I’d read all the docs, used the CLI to automate tasks, and even given presentations on it, exactly how authentication worked with it always seemed a bit obscure to me. In a very simple workflow, I might call the CLI and then use it to list applications on my server, like this (commands entered are in bold):

tim$ ./esscs.sh login -essbaseurlhttps://myserver/essbase-user myuser -password mypassword
user "myuser" logged in with "Service Administrator" role
Essbase version = 21.3.2.0.0, build = 023
Essbase Command Line Interface version = 21.3.2.0.0, build = 023
tim$ ./esscs.sh listapp
Sample
Demo
MyApp

The thing that always puzzled me is that — unlike, say, MaxL, where once you start a session you are “inside” the tool until you exit — after each Essbase CLI operation you are simply back at the command prompt. So how does the CLI know about my session / login when I go to issue that listapp command?

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Adding a Dimension to an ASO Cube

A long gap since my last blog entry – for which I’m going to mostly blame Kscope

I’ve mentioned before that I really enjoy the Unix tools and am working at becoming more competent with them. In this post, I’m going to explain why adding a new dimension to an ASO cube while retaining existing data is slightly harder than doing the same to a BSO cube, and then show how I used a very simple script (ksh, but these are such basic commands that I’m sure it can be translated easily if not used exactly as is) to modify native export files and solve the problem.

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UltraEdit with Essbase: Part 1 – Running MaxL

I’ve been using UltraEdit (actually, UltraEdit Studio but this technique works fine with ‘regular’ UltraEdit too) as a text editor / SSH client / FTP browser for a couple of years now, although I’ve barely scratched the surface of its capabilities. In this series of posts, I’m going to show some simple but helpful features that I use when working with UltraEdit and Essbase. First up will be turning UltraEdit into a bare-bones MaxL environment.

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Another ‘New to Me’ Oracle Support Feature

I seem to be spending a lot of time in My Oracle Support (MOS) recently, and I’m going to say this is due to the vast quantity of helpful information contained therein, not because everything I touch has broken for past three months.  It has been an opportunity to explore some MOS functionality.  One nice feature I hadn’t seen before is the configurable ‘Hot Topics’ email, which provides a great way to keep up to date with new support information. Continue reading

Productivity Tip – Firefox Smart Keywords

No MDX, Essbase or ASO internals in the post (you may be relieved to read).

Instead, I want to highlight a very simple but wonderful feature of the Firefox browser – using Smart Keywords (aka ‘Smart Bookmarks‘) to perform custom searches. In brief, ‘Smart Keywords’ allow you to associate the search function of a web page with a text keyword.

If you’re already familiar – as many ‘tech’ types will be – you can stop reading now. If you aren’t, I think you’ll be very pleasantly surprised by how easy this makes accessing your go-to EPM online resources. Continue reading

Running Web-Launched EAS with the Right Java Version

This OTN thread reminded me of some unsuccessful work I did a while back trying to ensure that the appropriate version of Java was invoked when launching EAS from the web.  After reviewing my notes and doing more digging I came up with a (hack-y, admittedly) workaround, so I decided to write it up. Continue reading