How the Essbase CLI Login Works

March 8, 2023March 8, 2023 by TimG | Leave a comment

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?

MDX – CrossJoins, Filters and “Perspective”

October 20, 2018October 20, 2018 by TimG | Leave a comment

This post expands on a concept I touched on a few years back in the context of #Missing suppression (see the section on NONEMPTY in this post) and specifically the “perspective” from which any kind of filter – for #Missing or not – is evaluated. This question on the Essbase Users board got me thinking about the topic again, and the potential MDX ‘gotcha’ it presents.

ASO Query Tracking Trivia

May 12, 2017May 13, 2017 by TimG | 2 Comments

A Network54 Essbase board user asked a question today that I’ve heard a few times without ever being sure of the answer:

“If the MDX report run after query tracking is enabled returns no data… ….does it still aggregate?”

In other words, if you turn on query tracking in ASO and then run queries, but those queries only return #Missing instead of finding some data, will the queries still affect the aggregate views that Essbase chooses?

Data Cache Size Recommendation – Why?

April 1, 2017April 1, 2017 by TimG | Leave a comment

A quick post prompted by a recent OTN thread. The Essbase Database Administrator’s Guide tells us that the recommended size of the Data Cache is 1/8 the size of the Data File Cache. Even granted the usual caveats on these recommendations, I think this one is really odd.

Query Performance vs Query Logging

November 2, 2016November 3, 2016 by TimG | Leave a comment

I’ve been working on tuning aggregate views with a test copy of a large ASO cube to which I added some additional dimensions. Tuning aggregate views can be tricky, because aggregate views make query performance heavily dependent on the exact combination of levels being queried. And there’s always some user that comes along with an unusual query that happens to hit a combination of levels that performs particularly poorly. So when I handed the system over for front-end certification by users, I enabled query logging. By parsing the log for “worst case” query times, I could proactively monitor and then investigate any particularly nasty cases the users encountered. Unfortunately, I was being a little bit too smart for my own good.

Add a Dimension to ASO without Breaking Aggregate Views

August 17, 2016August 19, 2016 by TimG | 3 Comments

This post is a quick follow-on to my last, inspired by the same piece of client work. Fair warning: it’s only going to make sense if you are already somewhat familiar with aggregate views and view definition scripts (.csc). If you’re not already familiar with the concepts but want to read this anyway, I’d refer you to a presentation given at Kscope11 as an excellent (ahem) primer on the topic (free associate membership of ODTUG required).

But in summary: Many people maintaining larger or complex ASO cubes have developed very carefully crafted sets of aggregate views to optimize query performance. They also know that, unfortunately, some structural changes can invalidate those view definitions – adding levels to stored dimensions and adding new stored dimensions to name two. This can necessitate a lot of painstaking, trial-and-error optimization to generate a new set of aggregate views that provide equivalent performance to the original set.

In the course of adding a new dimension to an existing cube, I realized that there was a straightforward way to preserve the validity of my existing set of aggregate views.

Adding a Dimension to an ASO Cube

July 18, 2016July 26, 2016 by TimG | 9 Comments

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.

Useless Use of Crossjoin

February 24, 2016February 25, 2016 by TimG | 5 Comments

Even fans of MDX like me will agree that it isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing language, so it’s painful to see it made more convoluted than strictly necessary. This post is a grumble about a piece of redundant syntax that appears far too often, and has really begun to grate…

Why BSO Disk Space doesn’t follow Block Density

February 3, 2016February 6, 2016 by TimG | 1 Comment

When choosing which BSO (or Hybrid) dimensions to make dense and which to make sparse, a higher block density is generally considered ‘better’. This is a simplification, as the densest combination isn’t always the best performing, but bear with me. The point I want to make and explain in this post is this:

When using bitmap compression, squeezing a given set of data into a denser arrangement doesn’t always result in a space saving of the same magnitude

This isn’t totally intuitive, and it can come as surprise to see that your huge increase in block density has only made a modest dent in the size of your .pag files.

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Essbase, Oracle EPM and related technologies

Category Archives: Essbase

How the Essbase CLI Login Works

MDX – CrossJoins, Filters and “Perspective”

ASO Query Tracking Trivia

Data Cache Size Recommendation – Why?

Query Performance vs Query Logging

Add a Dimension to ASO without Breaking Aggregate Views

Adding a Dimension to an ASO Cube

Useless Use of Crossjoin

Why BSO Disk Space doesn’t follow Block Density

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