Essbase Enterprise Services Release 6.5 ********************************************************************** This file contains the following sections: ------------------------------------------ 1. WHAT IS ESSBASE ENTERPRISE SERVICES? 2. PLATFORMS SUPPORTED 3. FEATURE SUPPORT 4. INSTALLATION INFORMATION 5. RELEASE 6.5 DOCUMENTATION 6. KNOWN PROBLEMS 1. WHAT IS ESSBASE ENTERPRISE SERVICES? -------------------------------------------- Essbase Enterprise Services provides a highly scalable, available, and reliable platform for developing large-scale, web-enabled Hyperion Essbase applications. Essbase Enterprise Services works with Hyperion Essbase and large-scale Java programming technology to bring enterprise-level performance and reliability to Hyperion Essbase applications. The Essbase Enterprise Services platform supports large scale Hyperion Essbase applications by providing the following capabilities: - Hyperion Essbase server clustering: Essbase Enterprise Services allows you to group sets of Hyperion Essbase servers running applications with identical databases and use them as a single resource in your client programs. - Hyperion Essbase server load balancing: Essbase Enterprise Services servers can receive requests to a single Hyperion Essbase server and distribute requests across a cluster of Hyperion Essbase servers running copies of an application. - Hyperion Essbase server failover support: Essbase Enterprise Services detects Hyperion Essbase service interruptions and automatically re-routes requests to another Hyperion Essbase server. - Hyperion Essbase server connection pooling: Essbase Enterprise Services allows client requests to share connections, conserving software and network resources and improving performance. These features create a highly scalable and reliable platform on which to build enterprise-level client applications for Hyperion Essbase. 2. PLATFORMS SUPPORTED --------------------------- Essbase Enterprise Services supports the following operating systems: - Windows NT 4.0 - Windows 2000 - Windows XP - AIX 4.3.3, 5L - Sun Solaris 7/8 (Sun OS 5.7/5.8) - HP-UX 11.0 / 11i 3. FEATURE SUPPORT ----------------------- New Features in this release: * External Authentication * EES as a service in NT * EES as a background task on Unix * Updated Platform Matrix * Startup Accounts and Privileges * Security Synchronization * Domain Storage Types * Changes to Connection Pools * Changes to Clustering * EES as a Servlet using WebLogic and Jigsaw Every effort has been made to make the features of this product ready for use. However, there are some known limitations in feature support for this release: Hyperion Essbase Servers: ------------------------- Essbase Enterprise Services supports Hyperion Essbase 6.2 and higher. Domain Storage: --------------- Use of the flat file database (domain.db) for domain storage is provided for testing purposes only. This feature may not be supported in future releases. Use of Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) for domain storage is provided through Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) drivers. In order to use RDBMS for domain storage, you must have a JDBC driver for the RDBMS. 4. INSTALLATION INFORMATION -------------------------------- On supported UNIX platforms, the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) must be installed and configured before running the Essbase Enterprise Services installation. The JRE is included as part of this installation but is also available for download from the Hyperion Enterprise Services Beta website. For information on the supported versions of the JRE see the Essbase Enterprise Services Installation Guide (installgd.pdf). Installation of the Java Runtime Environment may require operating system patches. Refer to the documentation which accompanies the Java Runtime Environment download site for more information. The following software products can be used with Essbase Enterprise Services, but are not included with the product: - Jigsaw 2.2.0 is available from the World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org/Jigsaw - WebLogic Server is available from the BEA Systems, Inc.: http://www.bea.com - VisiBroker 4.1 is available from Inprise Corporation: http://www.inprise.com/visibroker - DB2 is available from IBM Corporation: http://www.ibm.com/db2 - Oracle is available from Oracle Corporation: http://www.oracle.com - SQL Server is available from Microsoft Corporation: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver 5. RELEASE 6.5 DOCUMENTATION --------------------------------- The following online documentation is included with this release: Essbase Enterprise Services Launch Page -- provides links to all the online documentation \hyperion\essbase\essenterprise\docs\index.htm Essbase Enterprise Services Installation Guide (PDF) \hyperion\essbase\essenterprise\docs\books\installgd.pdf Essbase Enterprise Services Console online help (HTML) \hyperion\essbase\essenterprise\docs\console\console.htm Essbase Enterprise Services Essbase.properties File Reference (HTML) \hyperion\essbase\essenterprise\docs\props\propfile.htm Essbase JAPI Reference (HTML) \hyperion\essbase\essenterprise\docs\ess_japi_html\index.html NOTE: The Essbase Enterprise Services Console online help can be viewed in Internet Explorer (version 3.0 or later) or Netscape Navigator (version 3.0 or later). However, certain features of the help system are not supported by older versions of these browsers. For this reason, we recommend viewing the online help in the most recent version of Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. 6. KNOWN PROBLEMS ---------------------- Every effort has been made to ensure that Essbase Enterprise Services is as free of bugs as possible. However, there are some known problems. () Domain Storage: Although a flat file database is installed and used by default for domain storage, use of the flat file database for storage of Essbase Enterprise Services domain information is not suitable for full production use. For more information, see Chapter 3 of the Installation Guide. () In a multi-threaded client program, creating multiple threads that call the IEssOlapServer.open method can cause timeout problems in the Hyperion Essbase server (Agent). For example, if your client program performs dozens of query operations by creating threads, and each thread connects separately to Hyperion Essbase by calling the IEssOlapServer.open method, this can cause timeout errors in the Hyperion Essbase server (Agent). To avoid this problem, create the connection using the IEssOlapServer.open method in a single thread, and then create multiple threads which perform only queries and do not repeatedly call the IEssOlapServer.open method. () In order to activate a new cluster definition after adding it to the essbase.properties file, you must stop and restart the Essbase Enterprise Services server. Releases following Release 6.1 will allow you to add new cluster definitions without stopping and restarting the server. () Essbase Log files: Product-level use of Essbase Enterprise Services generates a large amount of log messaging. Extremely large logs can effectively stop an Essbase server. To workaround this problem, you must periodically delete information from the log files and set log messaging options to reduce the amount of messaging. For more information, see "Configuring Hyperion Essbase Servers" in Chapter 4 of the Installation Guide. () Console; cube views, outline views: The cube and outline view features are not documented for this release and are included for ad hoc use only. Saving of cube views is not supported. () The method IEssDomain.syncSecurityStores doesn't check the domain name, it will always assume root domain. () If you try to use EES without first starting the RDBMS domain server, EES operations will return NULL instead of a proper error message. 32450 Locking and then update methods gives a timeout error when EES is running as a servlet. 31540 The member selection object of EES opens a separate connection to Essbase server. This causes no problem if the user has the same username on EES and on Essbase. For cases where multiple EES users connect through a connection pool to Essbase using the same Essbase username, the Member Selection results might not be returned to the correct EES user. 31996 This release of EES does not support connecting through the HTTPS protocol. Attempts to connect with ConnectUsingHttpUrl return the following error: Cannot sign on to domain. Cannot connect to enterprise server. unknown protocol: https 31795 The method IEssCubeView.performOperation returns an Exception if the result set is empty (null). 28120 In the Java API, if you use QUERY_TYPE_WILDSEARCH for the IEssCube.executeQuery() method the result is not complete. 26742 The JRun application server produces the following warning message after each EES operation: (JRun) Error while parsing POST data [java.lang.IllegalArgumentException]. Switch your browser to use http 1.0 instead of http 1.1. Under Internet Explorer, the option is in Tools|Internet Options under the Advanced tab. 28657 This release of EES does not support editing or deleting Linked Reporting Objects (LROs) from Essbase databases. 28663 From the EES Console the Member Selection Edit filter returns an error. 23539 In the EES Java API, the method IEssGrid.getDataCellAttributes does not return valid information when two or more objects are linked to the cell. 31262 The EES console does not verify that all Connection Pool fields are properly filled out and valid. Before saving, be sure to complete all the connection pool fields such as ServiceComponentName, User Name, and password. 25508 The IEssMember.getDimensionStorageCategory method returns the attribute when it is called on an attribute member. When it is called on a non-attribute member it returns zero(0) instead ot the actual storage category. 31035 In the EES Java API, the IEssEnterpriseServer.setEnabledCluster and .setEnabledConnectionPool methods do not perform any validation. Be sure that the Cluster and Connection Pool are actually implemented and valid names are used with these functions. 24541 In the EES Java API, the IEssDomain.syncSecurityStores does not validate the domain name. If an invalid domain name is passed to the method, the method will return "success", but the operation might be performed on the wrong domain or not actually performed at all. 24765 This release of EES does not support the cube replication feature through TCPIP. If you use TCPIP, which is the default choice, the cube data replication fails without error. 23544 The EES install program can not successfully identify all different types of JVM installed on the target machine. The installer can identify JVM in JDK1.2.2 and Borland JBuilder4. JDK1.3 is not successfully located by the EES installer. The user needs to make sure that JDK1.3 is identified in the system path before installing EES. 25442 If one of the Essbase Agents in a cluster is stopped for any reason while EES is running, EES issues the error:"Error Network Error [%s]: Unable To Connect To [%s]. The client timed out while waiting to connect to Essbase. Agent using TCP/IP. Check your network connections." 25443 If two or more Essbase Agents in a cluster stop for any reason, EES goes into a loop and issues a message: "Incremented only 0 connections out of the capacity increment 2 connections. Error: Cannot open cube view. Network Error [10061]: Unable to Connect To [agent1]. The client timed out waiting to connect to Essbase Agent using TCP/IP. Check your network connections'" This happens only when incrementing. In other cases EES does not loop. It displays an error message and stops. 32671 This release of EES on Solaris does not support the Java API method IEssCube.QueryMembers. This method works on NT. On Solaris, EES displays the error: Network error: The client or server timed out waiting ro receive data using TCP/IP. Check network connection." 26254 Attempts to sychronize cube replicas (IEssDomain.syncCubeReplicas) produce errors if the EES server is not on the same machine as the Essbase server. 29431 In the EES Java API the CreateOlapfileObject, GetOlapfileObject, and CopyOlapfileObject methods do not work with the None, Backup, Worksheet and Data object types. The CopyOlapfileObject method does not work with Outline object type. In this case, EES will issue the error: "Operation not allowed with on outline type". 27091 The sample program SyncCubeReplicas does not work. EES issues the error: Error: Cannot export data from primary cube. Cannot export to file. OLAP error (1005000): Ascii Backup: Failed to open file. ********************************************************************** Copyright 2001-2002 Hyperion Solutions Corporation. All Rights Reserved.