Oracle EPM 11.1.2 Thoughts

Oracle EPM 11.1.2 Thoughts

THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 2010 AT 11:16AM

Well, I have just finished my first installation of Oracle EMPA 11.1.2 and I wanted to take some time to share my thoughts on the installation and configuration process.  Let me start by saying that this isn't the easiest or most intuitive process in the world.  The documentation is there, the readme's are pretty good, but the support matrix has become a bit more of a riddle then it used to be and there are a number of hidden 'gotchas' within the install (do I use Oracle DB 11.1.6 or 11.1.7, does it really matter, what about ODAC...in fact what is ODAC?).

Let me begin with saying that those who use the online documentation library should be wary (http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17236_01/nav/portal_1.htm).  When I was trying to use those guides, I kept seeing items replaced by random ASCII characters and the like...I'd wait till next month or so when they should get updates.  In the meantime you can download the Doc Library with the code from Oracle e-delivery, just be prepared for a lot.

Moving on from the documents, I'd say the install really went fairly well.  I'm not saying it's perfect, but for a new(ish) release it is pretty good.  I'm not planning on going through a 'how to' here, that's what experience and the install guides are for.  I would like to share some brief observations though:

• Be careful with the Oracle DB version.  I personally had issues making 10g work.  The issue occurred with making EPMA happy with the ODAC connector required for that product.  When I installed the 11g ODAC with an 11g instance, it worked no problem.
• Be prepared to send a LOT of time on OHS configuration.  If I had one complaint about this code, this is it.  I've seen this thing configure for well over 30 minutes for a fairly-simple 4 server environment.  Since this is largely Apache HTTP under the covers, I can't guess what is going on here.  So, I recommend installing everything, configuring the other pieces, then running OHS configuration.  Of course, the issue with that in the real world is that you usually want to know if Shared Services, Workspace, and friends work before installing Essbase, etc.
• When configuring OHS, make sure the DNS entries are rock solid.  This may not happen much in a non-lab environment, but OHS would keep crashing when a server component with an unknown name was registered to Shared Services and you'd run the tool.  Was this logged...sure, but not where you'd expect it.  It was in a registry.log (probably since it was reading the EPM registry on the Shared Services server) and not in the configtool.log.
• During download there is an innocuous looking component called 'Additional Components'.  Make sure you download it and place it with your foundation pieces...that's where they stashed OHS.
• Beware the uninstaller if you make a mistake.  I had two different server instances fail to uninstall after sitting at the 'initializing' stage for over an hour.  if you are using VM, I recommend some Snapshots.
• Essbase now needs to install OHS and WebLogic (in fact pretty much every server will have one, if not both, of these components).  In this case it would appear that configuration isn't necessary, but OHS is present for logging purposes.
• It's possible that re-running the 'Web Server' configuration may push the updates through.  I encountered an issue after installing Financial Reporting and Web Analysis.  I was able to run a Web Preview of a report through the Financial Reporting Studio, but I could not 'see' them in Workspace (I lacked an 'explore' option as well).  A restart of the services did not resolve this for me, but a restart of the server did (yes, this was a Windows install).
• I still don't like this installer for 11.x.  I'm not convinced I want to 'lug' around that much software, server-to-server and I just don't trust installations across a LAN/WAN.
• I also don't subscribe to the notion that you can install all this in one DB/schema.  I personally think Oracle tuning (sometimes necessary for HFM/FDM) and restoration of individual components would both be problematic.  In my install each product was given its own Tablespace and Schema.

OK, that's about it.  I hope you can gain a little something from my brief observations of the install.  I think it could be better (what couldn't be?) but it was a fairly pleasant experience compared to some versions.  I will state that before installing this onsite at a client, I'd want to 'prep' them for some of the wait times in the install, ect.  I would also recommend that most clients not install this one on their own.  There is simply a LOT more complexity here then even System 9 possessed and it took a good deal of old Hyperion acumen to get through it in a short time window.  I look forward to any questions or comments you might have. 

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