Installing Financial Analyzer on Client PCs

Client installation options

You have two options for installing Financial Analyzer on client PCs:

• You can install Financial Analyzer as a single-user installation.

• You can install Financial Analyzer as a shared installation.

Important Client Installation Information

If a previous version of the Financial Analyzer client software is already present on the PC where you are installing Financial Analyzer 11i, you must uninstall that previous version before installing the new version.

Single-user installations

Description: Single-user installation

In a single-user installation, users install Financial Analyzer directly from the CD-ROM. The single-user installation copies client files to the PC.

Configuration options: Single-user installation

A single-user installation offers two options for client mode: thin client or thick client. For a description of these modes, refer to "Client configuration options".

Advantages: Single-user installation

A single-user installation offers the following advantages:

• Users are set up individually.

• The installation process is not affected by network traffic.

Shared installations

Description: Shared installation

In a shared installation, you install Financial Analyzer Client to a common staging area on the network. This area is referred to as a shared OLAP home. Users then access the shared area to install Financial Analyzer on their PCs.

For further information about setting up a shared OLAP home on the network, see "Procedure: Setting up a shared OLAP home on the network".

Configuration options: Shared installation

A shared installation offers thin client mode and thick client mode. For a description of these modes, refer to "Client configuration options". There is also a third option: a thinner thin client installation, referred to as a "thinner client installation," in which most of the client files are stored on the network rather than on the PC.

Advantages: Shared installation

A shared installation offers the following advantages:

• Users have access to the same standardized software from the network.

• If you choose the thinner client installation, the shared installation installs a minimum number of files on the PC, thereby requiring considerably less disk storage. Most of the client files reside on the server, which can be anywhere on the network.

• A shared installation is easy to update. Updates can be run from the shared OLAP home on the network.

Procedure: Setting up a shared OLAP home on the network

Follow these steps to set up a shared OLAP home as a staging area for a shared installation:

1. Insert the Oracle Financial Analyzer CD-ROM into the drive and run setup.exe from the f:\lan client directory, where "f" represents your CD-ROM drive.

2. On the Welcome screen, choose Next.

3. On the File Locations screen, specify the Oracle Home that you want to use, then choose Next.

4. On the Shared OLAP Home Location screen, specify the location for the shared OLAP Home on the network. The drive that you specify must be a mapped drive. After you have specified the path information, choose Next.

5. On the Summary screen, make sure that all of the specifications for the installation are correct, then choose Install.

   Installer performs the installation on the network.

6. On the End of Installation screen, choose Exit to close Installer or choose Next Install to install additional Oracle products.

7. Notify your users of the shared OLAP home location on the network that contains the setup.exe file that they must run to perform the shared installation on client PCs.

Providing multiple shared installations

When you provide shared installations for users, you have the option to provide different installation packages (that is, different product and component configurations) for different sets of users. You can specify a unique set of products and components for each installation package.

For each shared installation package that you want to create, follow the procedure in "Procedure: Setting up a shared OLAP home on the network", with the following stipulations:

• On the File Locations screen, you must specify a unique Oracle Home for each shared installation package.

• On the Shared OLAP Home Location screen, you must specify a unique shared OLAP Home for each shared installation package.

Note: For each installation package that you set up, users must install the entire set of products that you have specified for that package; they cannot choose individual products from the set that you have provided.