Before you begin working with Essbase Studio, you must decide where you will set up your Essbase Studio catalog database (sometimes referred to as “the catalog”). You may include the catalog database in one database instance that serves all Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management System products, or you may create a dedicated relational database on your database server computer expressly for the catalog.
The catalog is the metadata repository for Essbase Studio. When Essbase Studio users create any kind of metadata element in Essbase Studio—for example, dimension elements, hierarchies, cube schemas, and Essbase models—the metadata for those elements is stored in the Essbase Studio catalog.
During the configuration process (after installation), you use the EPM System Configurator to configure Essbase Studio to use the catalog database that you specify, whether it is part of one database instance for all EPM System products, or a database expressly created to hold the Essbase Studio catalog.
Information about the catalog database is stored in server.properties, located in the MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/epmsystem1/BPMS/bpms1/bin directory. It contains the name, location, user name, and the encrypted password for this catalog database. When you start Essbase Studio, server.properties is read to determine the catalog database location and security credentials.
You can use any supported relational database to hold the Essbase Studio catalog database.
You must specify a catalog database user during the configuration process. The catalog database user must have at least write privileges to the Essbase Studio catalog database.
Each Essbase Studio Server instance must have its own catalog database.
If Oracle is your catalog database: Each time you start Essbase Studio Server, the server will try to execute the following ALTER SYSTEM statement:
ALTER SYSTEM SET open_cursors=300 SCOPE=MEMORY
If the catalog user (specified in the server.properties file during configuration) does not have the privileges necessary to execute the ALTER SYSTEM statement, Essbase Studio will log a warning message and continue working.
If you are using one database instance for all EPM System products, refer to the Oracle's Hyperion® Shared Services documentation for information on setting up this database.
If you are using a dedicated database for your catalog, complete the following procedure.
To set up a dedicated catalog database for Essbase Studio:
In your RDBMS, create an empty database schema.
This will be your Essbase Studio catalog database.
After configuration, this is the database specified by the catalog.db property in the server.properties file.
In your RDBMS, grant at least write privileges to the user who will be the designated as the database user of the catalog.
After configuration, this is the user specified in the catalog.username and catalog.password properties in the server.properties file. This must be a user with at least write privileges to the database specified in the catalog.db property. These properties are set during the configuration process.
If you are using the Shared Services repository for the catalog database, the same privilege requirements apply.
After Essbase Studio installation, run the EPM System Configurator and provide the information requested for the catalog database.
After configuration, in MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/epmsystem1/BPMS/bpms1/bin, verify the information related to the catalog database:
catalog.db—The name of the catalog database you created in step 1.
Note:
If you configured the catalog database for an IBM DB2 or Microsoft SQL Server database, the schema name should be appended to the name of the database; for example, catalog.db=esbstudio.dbo where esbstudio is the database name, and dbo is the schema name.
catalog.username—A user with at least write privileges for the catalog database. See catalog.username.
catalog.password—The encrypted password for the catalog database user. See catalog.password.
When finished, close server.properties.
Essbase Studio Server reads the server.properties file at startup for this catalog database information. See Configuring the Server Properties File for information on configuration options.