Readme File

This file contains the following sections:

Note:  References in the documentation to the Hyperion Download Center pertain only if your site has access.

What is Essbase Administration Services?

Essbase Administration Services is the new administration tool for managing and maintaining Hyperion Essbase. Essbase Administration Services consists of a client console (Administration Services Console) and a middle tier server (Administration Server) that communicate directly with Essbase OLAP Servers. The Administration Services Console provides a single point of access for viewing, managing, and maintaining the Essbase environment. For more information, see the Essbase Administration Services Online Help.

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Installation Updates

• If you plan to use Administration Services with OLAP Server Release 6.5.x, you need to upgrade to OLAP Server Release 6.5.1, which is being released simultaneously with Administration Services. OLAP Server Release 6.5.1 is available on Hyperion Download Center and on CD with Administration Services.



• See the Essbase Administration Services Installation Guide for important information about which Essbase OLAP Server releases are supported by Administration Services.



• If you are downloading software from Hyperion Download Center, see the Start Here document on the appropriate product page for instructions on downloading the installation files.



• If you are installing software from the 6.5.1 CD, find the installer for your platform in the appropriate product directory, or launch setup.exe from the CD root.



• Complete information about installing Administration Services is provided in the following documents:
  
  Installation Checklist (eas_install_checklist.pdf)
  Installation Guide (eas_install.pdf)
  
  Look for these documents in one of the following locations:
  
  
  • In the installation documentation zip file on Hyperion Download Center
  • In the \eas directory on the 6.5.1 CD.
  • In the Information Map: open launcher.htm from the \eas directory after installation.

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New Features

In addition to existing Essbase administration functionality, Essbase Administration Services Release 6.5.1 includes new administration features. For information about these new features, see the New Features document. Look for this document in one of the following locations:

• In the installation documentation zip file on Hyperion Download Center
• In the \eas directory on the 6.5.1 CD.
• In the Information Map: open launcher.htm from the \eas directory after installation.

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Known Issues

Every effort has been made to ensure that Essbase Administration Services is as free of problems as possible. However, there are some known issues.

Outline Editor and Outline Viewer

• When dragging/dropping accounts dimensions, time dimensions, or country dimensions (or members in those dimensions), these dimensions lose certain properties after the drag/drop operation (for example, members of an accounts dimension will lose expense settings).



• Aliases are not duplicated in any copy/paste operation.



• If you are creating non-text attribute dimensions with more than two (2) generations, you need to set the "Attribute Setting Suffix/Prefix" value to None or Dimension. If you don't, the members will end up with long names, such as:

  Sizes Attribute [Type: Numeric]
  
  		Sizes_Large
  
  			Sizes_Large_16
  
  			Sizes_Large_32

  This should look like:

  Sizes Attribute [Type: Numeric]
  
  		Large
  
  			Large_16 (or Sizes_16)
  
  			Large_32 (or Sizes_32)
  
  
  
  

• When attempting to open an outline file (.otl) from the File System tab of the Open dialog box, Administration Services does not open the file. In this release, you cannot open outline files on a client machine. (37072)



• There may be a delay when you expand a dimension or member with a large number of children in an outline, and significant system resources may be used. (43440)



• When changing certain dimension or member properties in an outline, it is required to change the focus to another property before the change can be saved. (43194, 56123)



• Multi-line formulas appear on one line after creating, closing, and opening the formula again for editing. (37633)



• Syntax errors in formulas are not flagged during outline verification. (55259)



• Any updates made to an outline since it was last saved are not considered when a formula is validated. For example, if you have added members since you last saved the outline and the added members are included in a formula, the formula will not validate even though it is valid. Similarly, if you have deleted members since you last saved the outline and the deleted members are included in a formula, the formula will validate even though it is invalid. (38236)



• If you select multiple members from the outline and then view properties for those members, the member names are not displayed in the Member Properties dialog box, and the Information tab is blank. (29069, 35346)



• Changes to the "True member name" and "False member name" settings for Boolean attribute dimensions are not saved if an outline already contains Boolean attribute dimensions. These settings are saved if the outline does not yet contain Boolean attribute dimensions. (55159)



• When the Administration Services Console is running on a UNIX platform, extended ACSII characters are not displayed correctly in Outline Viewer, or in the outline tree in Calculation Script Editor and Report Script Editor. (24499)

Migrating/Copying

• When you attempt to migrate a user or group to an inactive OLAP Server, no error message is displayed. (28782)



• Copying applications between HP-UX machines and machines running Essbase OLAP Server Release 6.2 does not work properly. An application directory is created but that directory does not contain any databases. (55624)



• When copying an application or database across servers, the security settings for limiting what calculation scripts a user can execute are lost. (24532)



• Migrating an application that has a Hybrid Analysis enabled dimension migrates the application properly but causes the console to hang. (55719)



• When you copy an OLAP-authenticated user and attempt to change the copied user to be externally authenticated, the copy fails. (55803)



• When copying a group from one server to another and choosing to replace the existing group on the target, the existing group is not replaced. (55870)



• When you copy an application across servers, and the application contains a database with currency properties set up in the Database Properties window (Currency tab), the currency properties are lost after the copy operation. This problem occurs when copying an application using Migration Wizard or when copying an application using the Copy Application dialog box. (56224)

Properties

• Updates to currency properties in the Database Properties window are not saved, and no error message is displayed. (28581)



• In the Modifications tab of the Database Properties window, the following operations performed within EAS are not displayed, or the time that the operation was performed is incorrect: data loads, calculations, and outline changes. (30677)



• When the Administration Services Console is running on HP-UX, sending OLAP Server properties via e-mail does not work properly. (55786)

Partitions

• Attempting to synchronize outlines after renaming a dimension may cause an Essbase error and application termination when only the "Rename" options are selected for dimensions in the Outline Synchronization dialog box. (43261)



• Partitions that were originally created using Application Manager, including the sample partitions provided with Essbase, cannot be overwritten with partitions created using Administration Services. (43387)



• If an OLAP Server machine name begins with a number (for example, "2machine" or "408220"), partitioning will not function. A workaround is to change the OLAP Server machine name to begin with an alphabetic character. (56160, 56161)



• When the Administration Server and console are running on one UNIX machine, and a connection to the OLAP Server on a second machine is created using an IP address instead of the machine name, partitions are not displayed. To avoid this problem, map the IP address for the OLAP Server machine in the hosts file, and then create the connection to the OLAP Server using the server name instead of the IP address. (55860)



• Before attempting to work with or copy the sample partitions provided with Essbase, you must create the user "partitionuser" (password = "password") on the OLAP Server. (55864, 55868, 55829)



• When specifying a username and password for the data source and data target in a partition, you must either specify the user's OLAP Server password or the user's password on an external authentication source, if the user is externally authenticated. (55980)



• When creating or editing a partition, Comment text fields are displayed for both Source Data and Target Data, but only the Source Data comment is being saved. (28233)

Log Analzyer

• After certain operations, such as running the same calculation script twice which produces a log error, only the first instance of that error is displayed in Log Analyzer. (42907)



• Certain unknown member names in an Excel spreadsheet, such as members that contain a special character such as &, may cause Log Analyzer to only load partial log files. (42908)



• Certain report script errors in the Essbase log file are not displayed in Log Analyzer. (43326)

Data Prep Editor

• In Data Prep Editor, when the Administration Server is running on Solaris, data loads may fail when using Excel data files. (55587)



• In the Dimension Build Settings dialog box (Dimension Build Settings tab), if you enable the "Add as child of" option under Build Method, the setting is not saved after you close the dialog box. In addition, no parent members are listed under the "Add as child of" option when it is enabled. (56180, 56176)

Miscellaneous

• Any custom views you create from the Enterprise View tree are incorrectly displayed for all other Administration Server users. Custom views should only be displayed for the user who created them. In addition, all users can delete custom views created by other users. (56174)



• When you change the password for an OLAP Server user through whom an Administration Server user is connected to Essbase, the password is not updated in the Administration Server user's OLAP Server connection definition. This results in the Administration Server user not being able to connect to the OLAP Server unless the password is updated manually on the OLAP Servers tab of the Administration Server User Properties dialog box. (56198)



• You cannot use a single quote in an Administration Server username (e.g., O'Brien). (55062)



• You cannot uninstall the Administration Server or Administration Services Console from a Windows system unless a Java Virtual Machine is already installed. (56264)



• In Calculation Script Editor and Report Script Editor, searching for members in the outline tree does not find all instances of a shared member. (36828)



• Administration Services incorrectly allows you to rename a filter to the same name as an existing filter, and after refreshing the filter list, the filter is not renamed and the existing filter is deleted. (56270)



• When connecting to OLAP Server Release 6.2, importing linked reporting object (LRO) files does not work when the LROs were exported to a directory on the OLAP Server. (54912)



• When using the Administration Services Console on a UNIX machine, the MaxL auto-complete does not work properly. (29082)



• In some cases, when you close an object, the object is closed without prompting you to save unsaved changes.



• In the Location Aliases window, the field widths are displayed too small. (37004)



• When you rename an application whose name begins with a number, custom-defined functions and macros associated with the application are not changed to reflect the new application name. Specifically, the "Statement" part of the function or macro is not updated. (55765)

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Documentation

Accessing Documentation

To access Essbase Administration Services documentation:

• To access Essbase Administration Services documentation after installation, go to the Information Map, which contains live links to all online documentation. Launch the Information Map in one of the following ways:
  
  
  • On Windows platforms, launch the Information Map from the Windows Start menu (Start > Hyperion Solutions > Essbase Administration Services > EAS Documentation), if you chose to add shortcuts to the Start menu during installation.
  • Open launcher.htm from the \eas directory after installation.



• Most documentation files can also be launched directly from the Help menu in the Administration Services Console.

Known Problems with Documentation

• The Essbase Administration Services online help is best viewed in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x or higher. Although the online help system can be viewed in Netscape Navigator (version 4.7 or later), certain features of the help system are not supported by any version of Netscape Navigator.



• The Essbase Administration Services online help contains many links to the online Database Administrator's Guide. If you follow one of these links, scroll to the top of the file, and click the Show button, the Table of Contents for the Database Administrator's Guide is not displayed, as it should be. To view the entire Database Administrator's Guide, select that option from the Help menu in the Administration Services Console.



• If your default Web browser is Netscape, you might need to open Netscape Navigator before you attempt to launch the help system.



• If your default Web browser is Netscape, make sure that the Netscape browser executable file is added to your PATH environment variable before attempting to launch online documentation.



• If your default Web browser is Netscape (any version), you may experience problems when launching "Help Topics" from the Help menu in the Administration Services Console. If you experience problems, try launching the help system directly from the file system on the machine hosting the Administration Server:
  
  /eas/server/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/easdocs/eashelp/eas_help.htm



• Make sure that you don't have older versions of Netscape Navigator (prior to version 4.7x) installed on your machine. In some cases, when you launch "Help Topics" from the Help menu in the Administration Services Console, the older version may be used instead of version 4.7x.
  

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Tips and Troubleshooting

• How do I troubleshoot problems if I'm not seeing error messages in the Administration Services Console?
  
  When the Administration Server is running, a Java console window displays debugging and execution messages for that server. There may be information in this window that is not currently being displayed by the Console user interface. If you are having problems, check this window for additional error messages and relay them to Technical Support.



• I don't see any entries on the Start menu for Essbase Administration Services. How do I start the server and console?
  
  Start the Administration Server by launching the following file from the directory in which you installed the Administration Server (by default, in the ARBORPATH directory, usually hyperion/essbase):
  
  
  • Windows: /eas/server/bin/adminsvr.exe
  • UNIX: /eas/server/bin/adminsvr
  
  
  Then start the console by launching the following file from the directory in which you installed the Administration Services Console:
  
  
  • Windows: /eas/console/bin/admincon.exe
  • UNIX: /eas/console/bin/admincon



• How do I know if the Administration Server has started properly?
  
  When the Administration Server starts properly, you see the following message in the Essbase Administration Server window:
  
  Starting service Tomcat-Standalone
  Apache Tomcat/4.0.2
  Starting Service Tomcat-Apache
  Apache Tomcat /4.0.2
  
  If you do not see this message, the Administration Server has not started properly.



• I get a "Login failed" error message when I try to log in.
  
  Possible solutions:
  
  
  • If this is the first login to this installation of Essbase Administration Services, enter the default login information for the administrator account (username: admin; password: password).
  
  
  
  • If this is not the first login to this installation of Essbase Administration Services, enter the login information for an existing Administration Server user. Your username and password for the Administration Server are not necessarily the same as those for the OLAP Server. Contact your Essbase Administration Services administrator to find out this information.
  
  
  
  • If the login failure is not related to your username and password, make sure you are entering the correct Administration Server name. This name should be the same as the machine name on which the Administration Server is installed. It may not be the same as the OLAP Server name.
  
  
  
• I can see the Administration Server in Enterprise View, but no OLAP Servers.
  
  In the Administration Services Console, launch the User Setup Wizard (Wizards > User Setup Wizard) to help you set up users and access to OLAP Servers. Also, make sure you are logged in to the console as a valid Administration Server user. For more information, see the Essbase Administration Services Help, or click the Help button from the User Setup Wizard.



• I can see my OLAP Server in Enterprise View, but I can't do anything to it.
  
  Make sure you have already started the OLAP Server. You cannot start the OLAP Server from the Essbase Administration Services Console. After you start the OLAP Server, you can operate on that server from Enterprise View.

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