Manage Essbase Files and Artifacts

Explore the Files Catalog

The Files catalog helps you organize the information and artifacts associated with using Essbase.

You can access the Files catalog from Cube Designer or from the Essbase web interface.

The files catalog is grouped into the following folders:

applications
gallery
shared
users

What you can do in each folder depends on your permissions.

The applications folder is where Essbase saves applications and cubes.

The gallery folder contains application workbooks you can use to build sample cubes. These cubes help you learn about Essbase features, and model a variety of analytical problems across business domains.

The shared folder is a good location to store files and artifacts that you can use in more than one cube. Its contents are accessible to all users.

The users folder contains individual user directories. You can use your user folder for any files and artifacts that you use while working with Essbase.

In your own user folder, as well as in the shared folder, you can upload files and create subdirectories. No special permissions are required.

Explore the Gallery Templates

Gallery templates are application workbooks that you can use to build fully functional Essbase cubes. Think of these templates as starter kits you can use not only to build cubes, but to learn about Essbase features, and to model a variety of analytical problems across business domains.

The gallery templates include README worksheets, describing the purpose and usage of the workbook and cube.

Gallery templates are packaged in the form of an application workbook, and may also have additional supporting files. You use an application workbook to create an application and cube using either of these methods: the Import button in the Essbase web interface, or the Build Cube button on the Cube Designer ribbon in Excel. To access the gallery from the Essbase web interface, click Files and navigate to the gallery section. To access the gallery from Cube Designer, use the Essbase button on the Cube Designer ribbon.

The gallery templates are grouped into the following categories:

Applications Templates

Gallery templates in the Applications folder demonstrate various business use cases for Essbase across several organizational domains.

The following cubes, located in the gallery > Applications > Sales and Operations Planning folder, connect together to perform their respective aspects of sales and operational planning tasks:

Forecast Consensus—develop and maintain an agreed-upon forecast shared across departments
Demand Consolidation—forecast customer demand
Production Schedule—compute a weekly master production schedule for all products and locations
Capacity Utilization—ensure that existing plant capacity can handle the production schedule

Compensation Analytics illustrates how Human Resources analysts can perform headcount and compensation analysis, analyze attrition, and allocate compensation increases.

Organization Restatements demonstrates how operational expenses can be restated, after organizational changes, for internal management reporting.

Opportunity Pipe demonstrates how to manage a sales pipeline.

Spend Planning shows how procurement analysts can manage operational spending using top-down and bottom-up forecasting methods.

Project Analytics demonstrates project planning risk analysis, accounting for factors such as workforce skills and costs, revenue, margin, inventory, and schedule.

RFM Analysis demonstrates how to identify the most profitable customers based on metrics.

Consolidation Eliminations is a financial analysis application demonstrating how to identify and eliminate balances between two companies.

Organization Restatements is a financial analysis application demonstrating how to restate expenses after an organizational change.

In addition to these business applications, the Applications grouping of templates also includes:

Demo Samples— simple examples of block storage and aggregate storage cubes commonly referenced in Essbase documentation.
Utilities—cubes that may be utilized by other sample cubes. For example, the Currency Rates template takes currency symbols and returns the exchange rate to USD. The Currency Triangulation template uses a calculation script to triangulate currencies.

Technical Templates

The Technical templates demonstrate the use of specific Essbase features.

Calc: Allocation Tracing—perform allocations and debug calculation scripts
Calc: Sample Basic RTSV—pass member names into a calculation script using runtime substitution variables
Calc: Zigzag Calculation—learn how Essbase performs complex calculations across a time dimension
Calc: CalcTuple Tuple—optimize asymmetric grid calculations across dimensions
Drill Through: Drillthrough Basic—drill through to external sources to analyze data outside of the cube
Filters: Efficient Filters—design and use variable data-access filters
MDX: AllocationMDX Insert—allocate and insert missing values
Partitions: Realtime CSV Updates— access real-time data
Solve Order: UnitPrice SolveOrder—use and understand solve order in a hybrid mode cube
Solve Order: Solve Order Performance—compare query performance using dynamic calculations versus using stored members and a calculation script
Table Format— build Essbase cubes from tabular data
UDA: Flip Sign— learn how to flip signs of data values during a data load to meet reporting requirements

System Performance Templates

System performance templates monitor system status for optimization purposes.

The Health and Performance Analyzer helps you monitor usage and performance statistics of your Essbase applications.

The Analyzer enables you to scan Essbase logs. After parsing the data, it compiles a csv Excel worksheet, optionally on the time interval that you set in Settings. Then, you can use the csv files to build charts and other displays.

Access Files and Artifacts

Your access to the Files catalog in Essbase depends on your user role and application-level permissions.

You can access the Files catalog from Cube Designer or from the Essbase web interface.

If your user role in Essbase is User with no application permissions, you can access the shared, users, and gallery folders. The applications folder is empty.

The gallery folder is read-only for all users.

The shared folder is read-write for all users.

Within the users folder, users have read-write access to their own folders, and the service administrator has access to all.

If your role is User and you have Database Access or Database Update permission for a particular application, you can additionally view (and download from) the appropriate subdirectories beneath the applications folder. These subdirectories contain files and artifacts for applications and cubes you can access.

If your role is User and you have Database Manager permission for an application, you can additionally upload files and artifacts to the cube directory, as well as delete, copy, and rename them.

If your role is User and you have Application Manager permission for an application, you can do everything with files that the Database Manager can do, and your access is expanded to the application directory in addition to the cube directory.

If you are a Power User, you have the same access to files and artifacts that an Application Manager has, for applications you created. Your access to other applications is restricted according to the application permission you have been granted.

A service administrator has full access to all files and directories (except the gallery folder, which is read-only).

Explore the Application Directories

The applications directories in the Files catalog contain artifacts associated with using Essbase applications.

For each application that someone creates or imports, Essbase creates a new folder inside the applications folder in the Files catalog. The application folder contains the cube folder, and the cube folder contains cube artifacts.

Artifacts are files related to working with Essbase applications and cubes. Artifacts have various purposes, such as defining calculations or reports. Artifacts pertaining to a cube are stored, by default, in a folder associated with the cube -- also known as the database directory.

Common cube artifacts include:

Text files of data or metadata that can be loaded to the cube (.txt, .csv)
Rules files for loading data and building dimensions (.rul)
Calculation scripts that define how to calculate data (.csc)
Application workbooks and other Excel files (.xlsx)
MDX scripts (.mdx)
Stored metadata about the cube (.xml)

Note:

File extensions must be lower case. For example, filename.txt

Work with Files and Artifacts

Depending on your level of access defined in Essbase, you can perform file operations on folders and artifacts in the Files catalog.

This topic describes working with files and artifacts using the Essbase web interface, but you can also work with files from Cube Designer or the Command Line Interface (CLI).

To upload an artifact,

Navigate to a directory for which you have write access.
Optionally, click Create Folder to add a subdirectory (available for shared and user directories only).
Click Upload Files.
Drag and drop, or select a file from the file system.
Click Close.

Note:
You can enable antivirus scanning in the Essbase web interface so that files are scanned for viruses before they are uploaded to the server.

To download an artifact,

Navigate to a directory for which you have read access.
From the Actions menu to the right of the file, select Download.

To copy an artifact,

Navigate to a directory for which you have read access.
From the Actions menu to the right of the file, select Copy.
Navigate to another folder for which you have write access.
Click Paste.

To rename an artifact,

Navigate to a directory for which you have write access.
From the Actions menu to the right of the file, select Rename.
Enter a new file name, omitting the extension.

To move an artifact,

Navigate to a directory for which you have write access.
From the Actions menu to the right of the file, select Cut.
Navigate to a new directory for which you have write access.
Click Paste.

To delete an artifact,

Navigate to a directory for which you have write access.
From the Actions menu to the right of the file, select Delete.
Click OK to confirm that you want to delete.