What Is Oracle Essbase?

About Oracle Essbase

Oracle Essbase provides a wide range of powerful and comprehensive functionality.

Best-in-Class Functionality

Oracle Essbase can be accessed on an intuitive web interface, or using Microsoft Office, for all of your analytic and business modeling needs, from multi-dimensional analysis to complex procedural business logic applied to your data. You can easily create and share on-the-fly transient models or deliver enterprise-wide long-established databases. New agile forecasting functionality facilitates collaborative what-if analysis and modeling. A gallery of cube templates provided with Essbase helps you get started.
Proven Platform and Technology

Oracle Essbase can be easily deployed on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or independent deployments, and then widely used to solve simple to complex business analytics use cases across all industries. It is designed to help you model business performance levels and deliver what-if analyses for varying conditions.

When using Oracle Essbase on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure via Marketplace, it helps you build your company's cloud strategy efficiently by avoiding data and business process fragmentation. With Oracle Identity Cloud Service, Essbase can utilize enterprise-wide user profiles to integrate with Oracle Cloud.
Flexible

Oracle Essbase leverages the best of your own applications, adds new functionality, and reduces the complexity of deployment. You get specially built technology to facilitate your rapid deployment of on-the-fly analytic models, enabling them to be extended as your business needs evolve or discarded in favor of your new models. By creating and sharing ad hoc models, you can quickly build and collaborate using Microsoft Excel or web interfaces.
Enterprise Ready

Oracle Essbase is your one-stop application to build, deploy, and manage analytic and reporting applications for any size organization and deployments. It supports data backup and migration, and can also distribute application templates throughout your organization without compromising ease of use or self-service options. The software provides flat-file, Excel-based, and SQL-based import and export.
Rapid Deployment

With latest Essbase 21c independent deployment release, you can deploy Oracle Essbase with a stand-alone installer and configuration tool.

When using Oracle Essbase on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure via Marketplace allows you to quickly deploy relevant Oracle Cloud Infrastructure stack components to get started using Essbase. You don't have to buy, install, or configure hardware on-premises. With quick deployment, you can deploy database, storage, and required network infrastructure components.

Using the new application workbook upload, you can also leverage the deep product expertise of the worldwide Oracle Hyperion Partner network and the Essbase gallery templates to quickly develop and deploy cloud-based analytic models.
Portability

When using the Essbase 21c independent deployment release, you can migrate your Essbase users and applications and take advantage of the latest Oracle Essbase features.

If you’re an existing Essbase customer, you can choose to leverage its built-in migration capabilities to port your on-premises or cloud applications to Oracle Essbase on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure via Marketplace. Migrating to the cloud enables your organization to extend Oracle Essbase usage across the enterprise to other lines of business, without additional demands on your IT resources, hardware, personnel or budget.

Features of Oracle Essbase

Oracle Essbase provides a complete set of tools and features for deriving and sharing data insights.

Both large organizations and small teams can share data more simply, without the need to manage or consolidate multiple versions of spreadsheets, and quickly perform ad hoc analysis of the spreadsheet data. Application developers can utilize interfaces that enable them to extend, customize, and embed rich analytic experiences in the application flow.

You can also:

Create and manage Essbase applications from Microsoft Excel by using Cube Designer
Create connections and data sources for drill through, data loads, and dimension builds
Collect collaborative data, create scenarios, and perform what-if analysis using Smart View
Create transparent and replicated partitions
Manage Essbase, including backups, migration, monitoring, and patches, giving you control and manageability
Using Essbase on the cloud, with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure via Marketplace, you can use Oracle Analytics data flows including ingestion, transformation, and persistence, to create Essbase applications. You can also set up a private VCN to connect to on-premises data sources.

Overview of Latest Oracle Essbase Platform

Oracle Essbase on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) via Marketplace and Essbase 21c on independent deployments, are available as part of standalone deployments as a powerful analytic platform with robust new features added since Release 11g.

You can implement Essbase:

on the cloud, using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure via Marketplace listings
by installing Essbase 21c on independent deployments. For supported platforms, see the Oracle certification matrix.

Platform Features

Architecture — The Essbase 21c independent deployment architecture includes a middle-tier platform that runs on WebLogic. This Fusion Middleware architecture enables fast performance, optimized memory usage, high concurrency, flexible deployment options, and failover.

Essbase on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure architecture utilizes OCI to enable the same benefits. Both independent and cloud-based architectures utilize Oracle Database and/or your choice of relational database to store Essbase schemas.

Query Engine — Hybrid mode is the default query engine for block storage cubes, providing robust dependency analysis and fast aggregation. Hybrid mode has fewer limitations than it did in Release 11g, handles more calculations, and is enhanced with several tuning options.

Failover — In Essbase 11g, Provider Services enabled failover leasing managed through OPMN. Today, on Essbase 21c independent deployments only, failover is integrated with WebLogic to support a central request leasing system that determines which node is active and which nodes are waiting on standby.

Security — In Essbase 21c independent deployments, all data is encrypted in transit layer using Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2. You can implement a load balancer. In deployments of Essbase on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you can implement public or private subnets, policies, firewalls, and other network security options available in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

For user authentication, you can choose WebLogic Embedded LDAP in conjunction with your choice of external authentication provider, or, if you already use EPM Shared Services security, you can continue to use it with Essbase 21c independent deployments only. Authentication using Identity Cloud Service (IDCS) is an option if you are deploying Essbase on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure via Marketplace.

There are three Essbase user roles: User, Power User, and Service Administrator. Application permissions, granted separately, are Application Manager, Database Manager, Database Update, and Database Access. All roles from EPM Shared Services can be mapped to the new roles and permissions, or, you can continue to use EPM Shared Services (Essbase Essbase 21c independent deployments only).

Essbase filters help you implement fine-tuned, cell-level access controls to your cubes. Using dynamic filters with built in functions/variables, you can make filters extensible and adaptible to a changing user base and real-time source data. You can use LoginAs to test the filters in the administrative interface.

Administrative Interface —The Essbase web interface enables you to manage applications, users/groups, and Essbase artifacts. It includes a rich outline editor, scripting editors, a data analysis interface where you can save grid layouts, and a load rules editor with built-in data previews. A centralized Jobs interface lets you initiate requests, and monitor active and recent requests. Cube Designer and Smart View, as well as utilities for migration, automation, and administration, are available to download from the Console.

Essbase Administration Services Lite — Although the Essbase web interface is the modern administration interface and offers the current platform features, a light version of Essbase Administration Services (EAS) is a limited-support option for continued management of your applications, in case your company is not ready to adopt the new interface. The features and functionality of EAS are limited to what was available in Release 11g and do not encompass the modern platform features.

Accelerated Development and Audit Capabilities — Calculation tracing lets you monitor and debug calculation scripts. Query tracing can be used to monitor and debug query performance. Audit trail enables you to track changes made to data. Solve order can be adjusted while you're working in Smart View.

Automation and Developer tools — REST API helps you automate management of hosted Essbase resources and operations over secured HTTP. Java and C API are also available, as well as a new command line interface (CLI), the MaxL administrative scripting language, Report Writer, and backward-compatibility support for the ESSCMD command language.

Catalog — The Catalog is a central place to store files and artifacts associated with Essbase applications and users. It includes user and shared directories, and an instructive Gallery of sample cubes.

Gallery — Included in the Catalog is a Gallery of cube templates, in the form of Excel application workbooks. You can easily import these workbooks to build a diverse variety of sample cubes. The samples are instructional for learning about different use cases for Essbase applications and features, as well as learning how to build and design cubes from structured and unstructured workbooks.

Cube Designer — The Cube Designer extension for Excel is a client interface for designing and building Essbase cubes from application workbooks. This interface offers a flexible and portable cube design and administration system. Structured workbooks simplify everyday cube design, optimization, and portability. Cube Designer infers patterns found in unstructured workbooks, to help you shape raw data into hierachically organized cubes.

Connectivity — Essbase APIs use TLS/SSL for secure connectivity both internally between components and externally with other applications. You can connect from any software using Essbase Runtime Client (RTC) over secure HTTP without needing to open additional TCP/IP ports to enable client connectivity.

Connections and Datasources — Essbase administration tasks often require connectivity to remote source data or hosts. With reusable connections and Datasources, you no longer have to code the connection details into artifacts like rule files or filters, or enter them each time you perform other connection-dependent tasks.

Analysis — You can perform ad hoc data queries/grid analyses on cube data from the administrative Essbase web interface, as a built-in alternative to connecting via Smart View. You can save your grid layouts, run report scripts, and run and save named MDX queries.

Calculation — Essbase offers a rich library of calculation functions and commands to suit most analytical applications, and you can add your own custom defined functions and macros built using Java. Calculation tracing helps you analyze and debug calculation script performance and member formula processing. Tuple-based calculation helps you optimize and refine calculation scope, limiting it to focus on the active Smart View grid. Hybrid mode calculation can be selected, and is enhanced with several tuning options.

MDX Insert and Export — In addition to MDX’s well-known utility as a multidimensional query language, you can use its Insert and Export directives to shape, copy, move, and update any custom slice of multidimensional data.

Aggregate Storage Calculation — You can use MDX Insert to perform custom calculations and allocations. You can automate the creation and maintenance of default aggregate views.

Data Load and Dimension Build — The Essbase web interface load rules editor with built-in data previews enables import of data and dimension from the Catalog or from outside sources. Rule file columns can employ functions like Sum, Min, Max, Count, and Avg to help you shape your import. SQL-based loading has improved performance. Batch Outline Editing can be performed programatically from Java or REST API. Command-line interface (CLI) supports streaming data load from a variety of sources. Aggregate storage data load optimizations are added, including buffer, merge, and cache tuning options.

Drill Through — When you need more data than what you can see in the Essbase cube, you can use drill through reports to access external data sources. Performance is improved for drill through connections to Oracle Database. The flexibility of drill through report design is improved, allowing diversified selection of multiple cells or ranges of cells. Selections can be recursive, non-recursive, level 0, contiguous, or non-contiguous.

Scenario Management — Scenario management offers the ability to build private work areas or “sandboxes” in which users can model different assumptions within the data to see the effect on aggregated results, without affecting the cube.

Shadow Applications — To perform cube modifications and restructures with limited down time, you can create a shadow application that is a copy of the primary application. The primary application continues to serve read-only operations, such as queries, while you perform modifications on the shadow application. You can make the shadow application visible or hidden. For more information, see the Create Shadow Application endpoint in the REST API.

Configuration — Most configuration parameters you need for application tuning should be set per application, using the Essbase web interface. If you install Essbase 21c on independent deployments, you also have control of the system wide configuration defaults in essbase.cfg, if needed.

Logging — Logs are in Oracle Diagnostic Logging (ODL) format. You can download log files from the Essbase web interface. You can use Performance Analyzer to analyze Essbase logs to generate usage and performance statistics.

Migration, Backup/Restore— Lifecycle Management Utility (LCM) makes it easy to migrate on premise applications across Essbase releases and host servers. An additional migration utility that helps migrate users and groups is also available to download from the Console. For deployments on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you back up your Essbase stack using the infrastructure.

Use Case Examples

Here are some use cases examples for your deployment of Oracle Essbase.

Sample Scenario	Description
Drill Through to Source	Define and execute drill through reports so that you can analyze additional detailed data retrieved from external data sources.
Perform What-if Analysis	Create, manage, and analyze scenarios, and also use light-weight life cycle management of the scenario themselves.
Forecast	Perform top-down and bottom-up forecasting and allocations.
Create and Manage Cubes from Excel	Design, create, and modify fully functional cubes from Excel-based application workbooks. Design the cube within the application workbook, import the workbook to the cloud service to create a cube, load data, and calculate the cube. Create cubes from tabular data, from any source system.